Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms McKiernan for her opening statement and her interaction thus far. I will develop Senator Paddy Burke's point on deposits. Ms McKiernan refers to self-imposed limits. At the moment, even if they were not imposing limits, the question is what they do with money that they take in that they are effectively being charged by the bank a cost to mind. That is what we were told on Tuesday. I do not know if Ms McKiernan had a chance to look at the interaction that we had with the various stakeholders on Tuesday. They did not just have the 10% reserve requirement. It is a significant handicap as far as they are concerned. Credit unions are treated differently from banks because their capital requirements are based on total funds rather than being risk-weighted.

The 10% reserve they require to back up their deposits is different from the way that banks are treated. What is Ms McKiernan's take on that? Does she regard that as necessary or important? It seems that they find it very difficult. We would all acknowledge that it is a very unusual situation for a financial institution to turn away deposits, which is what they appear to be having to do because they have no home for them, and nowhere to put them that they can justifiably get any kind of return. We acknowledged with the Department of Finance this morning that, unlike many of the banks during the last ten years, despite all the various individual cases where things happened, people like and trust their credit unions in the same way that many people trust the post office. It is a brand that people like and respect and feel is a safe place to put their funds. Now there is a situation where they are effectively being turned away.