Ms Anne Marie McKiernan:

The Senator has raised a number of issues. As I said in my statement, the majority of credit unions undertook appropriately conservative actions in response to the financial crisis to position them better to deal with the challenges ahead. Some of the actions they took include increased provisioning, reduced dividends, building up reserves, and adapting to our regulatory requirements which are proportionate to the nature, scale and complexity of the Irish credit union sector. In doing this, they increased their resilience. There was also a range of matters overseen by the Central Bank and others. For example, we imposed a series of lending restrictions at the height of the crisis, the purpose of which was to contain excess losses. In 2015 and 2016 we undertook a programme to remove these restrictions where it was appropriate to do so. This helped to underpin the amount of losses that could potentially be taken.

There has been significant restructuring throughout the sector. Much of it has been voluntary and reflects the success of the restructuring board in working directly with the credit unions to ensure successful mergers. We welcome that so many of these were successfully undertaken and no members have lost any funds. There has also been a series of resolution or involuntary restructures undertaken, which have had the purpose of removing the most serious failings in the sector. Of these, five were resolution cases under legislation, directed transfers and two liquidations. We also had a series of resolutions without the usual legislation and court process where we drew on the funds of the saving protection scheme of the Irish League of Credit Unions and saved taxpayers' money to the extent of €25.5 million while ensuring those entities were safely merged with other more financially resilient credit unions. The fact there has not been a major bailout cost for the sector reflects significant actions by the sector itself and a number of authorities. They have set up the sector appropriately with better financial and operational resilience to deal with the challenges ahead. This does not take away the need now for regulatory standards to be met, which would best demonstrate that members' funds are adequately protected.