Ms Annmarie O'Connor:

Deputy Sherlock mentioned minding the gap. Moving away from prudential and regulatory matters, the gap, as we perceive it, is between what the members need and what the credit unions can provide. That is the biggest and most important gap. As we are aware, nature abhors a vacuum, and when that gap exists, our concern is that others will enter the market, and others have been entering the market. As we perceive it from the outside, there are fewer constraints on those new entrants to the market than exist on the credit unions. We have a concern about section 35, which we have mentioned. We are all living longer and we all work longer. Long-term lending, therefore, needs to match these requirements. That is a big issue for us. We know there have been amalgamations in the credit union sector but the credit unions have long-lived relationships with their communities, and we are concerned that some of the new entrants do not have such long-lived relationships with borrowers. People are therefore experiencing a real gap day by day in what they need from credit unions.