Mr. Ed Farrell:

Senator Humphreys outlined a loans-to-shares ratio of 32%. I suppose the average is that one third of the €16 billion in credit unions is loaned out while €10 billion or €11 billion is not loaned out but is largely put into investments. However, these are investments in a very narrow sense of the word. They are really bank deposit accounts and Government bonds so they are very low-risk investments, hence the desire across the credit union movement to increase the amount of loans and the type of loans whether they be loans for SMEs, about which we are largely talking today, or home loans. There are a number of new types of loans the credit union movement and individual credit unions would like to get involved in offering.

The last question concerned Sparkassen and how it intended complementing the credit union movement. In respect of there being more banks and local banks, all of the problems with Trustee Savings Bank were probably related to Dublin and Leinster. A similar situation occurred in Munster. Building societies were another factor. Unfortunately, all of those entities disappeared during the financial crisis.