Mr. Kevin Johnson:

There is another dimension to this on which I wish to make a cautionary note. It will be seen from the comments of Mr. Farrell and Mr. Molan that the credit unions are of one voice on this and we are very supportive. If ever there were organisations that genuinely are of the people and for the people, it is the credit unions.

We would like to caution that with all of these bank branch and post office closures, we need to be careful that there are services available for people with savings. We would caution that we have much-needed regulations but these regulations are designed to protect members' funds. We need to be careful that there are not unintended consequences which could actually mean that because of the way they are currently structured, credit unions would not be able to step in and look after those people with savings because of the knock-on effect around capital requirements and so on. We definitely do not want to find ourselves in a situation where we cannot serve people. Both the credit and the saving sides are there so I wanted to point that out to the committee, as well as to say we will be working on this issue collectively. We could come back looking for the committee's assistance and support on that issue in the future.