Ms Anne Marie McKiernan:

We have a supervisory engagement model which is adapted to take account of risk as well as impact. From the beginning of 2016 all our supervisory engagements will be prioritised on a risk basis. We will look at all the risks that exist across the credit unions, including their risks relating to viability, their practices and their governance, and we will prioritise the frequency and scope of our engagements with those credit unions that exhibit the highest risk. In this way we will fulfil our mandate to protect the sector.

The Deputy mentioned the reserve base and our current ratio. The credit union sector in Ireland is generally of a very different level of complexity, size and model from what one finds in most other jurisdictions. We are often compared with credit unions in the US or Canada but those are, in general, far more complex, far more bank-like in their product base and significantly larger in scale. Comparing their base requirement to ours is not comparing like with like.