Mr. Ed Farrell:

This is not sudden. The CP88 document has been published for almost a year. It was published before Christmas. Even before that, there was a particularly difficult relationship between the movement and the Central Bank of Ireland. I suppose this has built to something of a climax now. The CP88 document has been out for a year. There was a three-month window during which over 100 submissions were made by the end of March.

At the end of July the final CP88 version came out. It took on board practically nothing from the 100 submissions. It has not proved to be in any way a two-way dialogue. In the coming five years we see credit unions being micro-managed by the same rules that have been in place for the past 20 years. Indeed, the rules seem to stretch backward in the area of savings and so on. It is keeping or even pushing credit unions backwards rather than allowing them to develop. This is not sudden. There has been a hardening of the relationship for quite some time. We do not seem to have a regulatory process that has the understanding of the details of credit unions.