Mr. Ed Farrell:

There would have been restrictions from the Central Bank at that time to exit commercial lending but they have got back into that. The credit unions are not a mini-version of the ICC or ACC banks that were mentioned. Ninety percent of credit union lending is personal lending with more of it in recent times being for mortgages within the same macro-prudential rules as apply to the banks. Mortgage lending to the set of people who are working is safe enough. The SME sector is a riskier set. As Mr. Johnson said, some credit unions are further down the road of making that offering. Some are probably not going down that road at all.

We met representatives of the Sparkasse foundation on a good few occasions when they were over here. The credit union movement in Ireland has a foundation that dates back to helping African countries and former Russian republics to build credit unions.

We asked the Sparkasse people if they could they help us with more SME lending and some current account debit cards. They have not done so as yet.