Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I find this a helpful discussion because we all have an interest in improving the legislation. The opening position is that we want to strengthen the credit union movement. One of the weaknesses identified was governance. As members know from their experience, governance varied from very good to not so good. Volunteers are absolutely vital but there are only 18 credit unions out of over 400 that are totally operated by volunteers. It is not as big a volunteer organisation as frequently presented. There are many employees on good salaries working in the credit union movement. Some of the individual credit unions have become quite large. The principle of strengthening governance was put to the commission, which made a series of recommendations. The central principle of the new governance position is that people cannot be answerable to themselves. I understand Deputy Heather Humphreys was a manager of a credit union. She said that one must separate the board of directors from the people working in credit unions. As long as we maintain the principle, I am flexible on the categories. Perhaps we can examine the definition of voluntary assistant on page 9. Deputy Pearse Doherty gave us a prose version of it, which is close to what is in the Bill: "‘voluntary assistant’ in relation to a credit union, means a member of the credit union who, although not a remunerated employee of the credit union, is engaged in any way in the operation of the credit union." That excludes the painter because the painter is not engaged in the operation of the credit union. The final clause is very confining. The exclusion in the Act is that someone cannot be a director and a volunteer at the same time. The person can move seamlessly from one to the other but cannot hold the two roles simultaneously. That is helpful to the debate.

I can see a lot of embarrassment for someone who had served for a long time and then inadvertently fell into arrears, especially in a small community. I will examine an alternative way around it. If we allowed credit unions, within their rules, to make provision for the exclusion of persons in arrears from the board of directors or from other functions in the operation of the credit union, it would be a more discreet way of doing it. I am not making a commitment at this stage because I will have to run it by the Attorney General but I am committing to examine that line of approach rather than the direct exclusion in the Act.