Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Okay. I raise the issue of the credit unions. The savings in credit unions went up by 2.8% in 2021.

At the end of last year there was a surplus of €17 billion in the credit unions. I am raising this in the context of the housing crisis. The credit union movement has indicated at different times that it would like to try to help with the housing problem because it has a co-operative ethos. We are unusual in European terms in that many other countries have community-owned banks and publicly owned banks, such as Germany, for example. Here, we have the credit union movement sitting beside the big players like AIB, Bank of Ireland, Permanent TSB, etc. Last year, 69% of new mortgages came from three banks, namely, AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB. The credit union is in a bind. It can only lend up to 3% of total mortgages and 10% of total SME borrowing. It is caught at 3% while the three pillar banks were at 69% last year. The banks' SME lending was 90% of all SME lending whereas the credit union was restricted to below 10%. What is happening there?

For nearly as long I have been around there has been talk of reforming the credit union to allow them to play more of a role in this area. It appears to me, and to some others who keep an eye on these things, that there is heavy lobbying from the banks in this regard. There may be some bias - perhaps "bias" is too strong a word - in that we look favourably on the banks and let them do all of it. After the past 12 or 14 years we have learned a thing or two about the banks and the things we took for granted. There was a saying when I was a bit younger that something was as good as money in the bank, but we know now that money in the bank is not always good. Why are we restricting the credit union movement? It wants to get involved here. Money is needed for affordable housing, there are people who cannot get mortgages and schemes that cannot be funded and there is €17 billion sitting there.