Mr. Gerard McConville:

We are already doing it in that a top-up loan is a feature of credit union lending. People borrow for holidays, then for Christmas and then for a first communion. Our difficulty is that, as mentioned in our submission, 40% of our lending is under €1,000 but in value terms that amounts to 9% of our lending. The administrative costs and the direct costs are the same for a loan of over €1,000 as for a loan of any amount.

Much of our small lending is economically not viable and what we propose is that would be changed to allow us to do a line of credit, a running account or whatever name one wants to put on it. We broached this subject previously with the Central Bank, or the former IFSRA, and the understanding we got from it was that the wording of the credit union legislation prevented us from doing these things because the wording in the credit agreement specifies an expiry date and a number of repayments. As it would be a running account, one could not have an expiry date and a number of repayments. As far as we are concerned, it is just a matter of amending the credit union legislation to allow that type of account to be offered by credit unions.