Peter Mathews (Dublin South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. I arrived during a very interesting part of Ms Motherway's presentation when she was referring to solvency, the spread, stickiness and depth of the deposit, etc. The credit union movement began as a mutual savings framework for, effectively, lending on an unsecured basis. In those early days, the banks tended to be the province of wealthy people and businesses. I refer to landed people, those who owned assets or businesses and individuals with cheque accounts in this regard. Then there were the building societies, which were the mutual, long-term saving and borrowing institutions. The next cog in the machine of finance was the credit union movement. Credit unions understood the working capital requirements - short-term and unsecured in nature - of households.

The economy has developed and we have moved through inflation, deflation and stagflation. All those contexts determine whether there is a viability for the sectors - banking, mortgage-lending on a mutual basis or credit union lending and saving - to which I refer. The risks relating to funding these organisations have changed as a result of the maturities of the funding sources and the breadth of what is involved. Ms Motherway made a very good point in respect of the generational stickiness of the money. At present, €66 million is held by 900 customers. That is €75,000 each. As Ms Motherway indicated, these individuals are probably in their retirement years and are not seeking competitive advantage in the context of the return on their investments. A vulnerability exists in this regard because €66 million is a shockingly large proportion of an overall deposit base of €200 million that is funding the short-term, unsecured loans to which I refer. That is both the problem that exists and the reality which needs to be expressed in order to get the relevant framework and legal and regulatory mechanisms in place in order to govern this area of activity.