Mr. Ed Farrell:

I would like to respond to Deputy Michael Collins's point. To be fair to him, he raised the Drimoleague closure with us approximately one month ago. We contacted the credit union in Skibbereen, which is the anchor credit union, and we are still engaging with it.

The credit union movement has prided itself on closing almost no branches. While the banks have all but departed the country towns and villages, we would prefer if we could say none of the credit unions has closed. Drimoleague is one of a handful but, from the Deputy's point of view, it is the wrong location for a closure. Skibbereen has kept its Bandon office open, while Bantry has re-opened and allowed the Castletownbere office to remain open, which was also under pressure. I commit to the Deputy that we will engage with the Drimoleague and Bantry credit unions to see if there is any triangular solution. There are security and technical communication issues with the broadband, as we have discussed, as well as the old-fashioned viability issues. Credit unions are not for profit but they must still take in enough income to pay for the low level of costs. They are run by volunteers but there are also staff members in most of the branches who must be paid.

Deputy Michael Collins and some of his colleagues brought the whole cross-Border issue to our attention approximately a year ago. Credit unions were happy to step in and help those people make those long-distance journeys, which in his case were from west Cork and Kerry to one particular hospital in Belfast. Many people have had operations which would not have happened as quickly without the Deputy and his colleagues, and without the credit unions giving those modest short-term loans, although they are not modest if they are needed to have a long-awaited operation done.

We might engage offline on the other matter.