Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If I look at the credit union movement, and I had the opportunity to meet my local credit union on Friday, I see increasing signs of it trying to move into providing new forms of lending to meet both commercial and, increasingly, mortgage needs. The loan book for the overall Irish credit union movement now stands at €5.4 billion. It has grown by 6% versus the previous year. Their mortgage lending stood in June 2022 at €301 million, which is a 22% increase versus where they were the previous year.

We are now involved in making some legislative changes, which are being led by the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Fleming, who will be bringing the legislation to the Oireachtas later in the year. It will look at how we can give a little more flexibility to the credit union movement and to allow credit unions to collaborate more with other credit unions to provide more products and more effective products. Therefore, there are some positive signs of change on the way.

I recognise the great leadership and ownership that exists in so many of our credit unions at present. We are in a situation where we have 22 credit unions now providing Strategic Banking Corporation of Ireland loan products. A number of years ago, that was not happening at all. We now have 47 of them involved in lending to the agricultural sector. No doubt more can be done. They want to do more but there are positive signs on the way regarding the kind of lending that they are doing.