Mr. Kevin Johnson:

If I may go back to the Chairman's earlier point - in fairness to the Chairman and the committee they are cognisant of the uniqueness of credit unions - credit unions are regulated by the registrar of credit unions who is part of the Central Bank of Ireland. The Credit Union Development Association has a lot of engagement with the registrar, as do the Irish League of Credit Unions and the Credit Union Managers Association, and it is quite a professional relationship. There are a lot of good people trying to do their best. This is why it really makes one challenge and question where is the logjam. The Central Bank published information in the last few weeks which highlighted its own concerns around the future viability of credit unions. The Central Bank is very conscious of the financial strains coming down the tracks but at the same time, we do not seem to be able to figure out how to relax these rules to allow credit unions to prudently use the funds and the strength they currently have. The time to act in this regard is now, while we have the strength. We need to look at the structure within the Central Bank and we need to look at how the registrar is positioned within the Central Bank. Increasingly, we are finding that regulations that are appropriate for other types of institutions are coming our way. We have to be conscious of the uniqueness of the credit union sector and it is something that must be preserved in all of this. All we have sought in recent engagements, including in engagements with the deputy governor, is greater transparency around the Central Bank's expectations of what it wants us to deliver. In public speeches we constantly hear about the poor quality of proposals or the lack of proposals, but as Mr. McCrory has said, it would certainly help us if we could have greater transparency around the expectation of what those proposals should be like. If the proposals do fall short of expectation then what is required of us to bring it up and turn a "No" into a "Yes"?