Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The amendments are fine. The thrust of this is to try to free-up board members' time to focus on strategy as well as involve the officers a lot more. That makes total sense to me.

The general thrust of this Bill is around trying to strengthen the work of the credit unions, strengthen the roles they have and the services they provide but also making it somewhat more encouraging for new additional board members.

There is a lot of work involved in being a board member of a credit union. We have seen over the past ten to 15 years that there is a lot of commitment, work and training involved, and a lot of continuing professional development, which is fine. If we can refocus things slightly so that board members can put more time into direction, strategy, developing services and reaching out to the community, that will be beneficial. Overall, these changes are welcome and I agree with most of them. Some of them are technical in nature. The Minister of State has my full support.