Mr. Kevin Johnson:

First, I thank the Chairman and the committee for the invitation to attend today’s meeting.

For those who may not be familiar with us, CUDA is a legally incorporated representative body. We currently represent 12 credit unions in the Republic of Ireland. Those 12 credit unions are owned by and serve approximately 250,000 members and they would represent a little over 10% of the assets of the credit union sector.

We have consistently campaigned for the reform of the legislative and regulatory framework for the credit union sector. We were active participants in the Commission on Credit Unions and we continue to strongly endorse its findings and recommendations. We very much welcome this draft general scheme of the Bill as it reflects the commission's findings and recommendations.

Five months have passed since the commission published its recommendations and we have had an opportunity to move into an implementation phase where we have started to do work on preparing for all of this change. As has been acknowledged in the past day and a half, it is a significant amount of change and a number of items have surfaced. As the Chairman mentioned, the nine years in 15-----