Ms Anne Marie McKiernan:

When we carried out all our supervisory engagements across the sector and published our report on standards, we were disappointed to find there were significant weaknesses in the business model, credit risk standards and governance standards across credit unions. One would expect us to be conservative and not to loosen requirements until the basics were met to sufficiently protect members' funds and the stability of the sector. We are going through a period of significant transformation in the sector around restructuring. A large number of credit unions are still engaging with ReBo, acknowledging that a merger is probably in their best interests to provide the best service to their members into the future. That also provides an opportunity for credit unions, as they get more scale and capacity, to tackle their business model weaknesses and we believe that is the point at which we will revisit several of these rules and see in what way the regulatory framework can be adapted to give more flexibility while we still prudently manage the sector to ensure its stability.