Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There is much agreement across the House on what credit unions give to communities in every section of Irish society. In the past couple of weeks I have taken the opportunity to speak to members of Donnycarney Credit Union and members of the credit unions in my constituency in Fairview and Clontarf who have told me that the basic role of credit unions is now keeping the wolf from the door of many households which in previous generations might easily have turned to moneylenders. We should take the opportunity to give credit to the credit union movement for what it has done. It is a not-for-profit organisation that is community-based and oriented. Some of the sums of money credit unions deal with are very small, but they are a means of keeping a family on the straight and narrow and can make a huge difference in meeting the day-to-day expenditure of a family. Everybody who enters a credit union knows its ethos.

That said, everybody must accept that credit unions need regulation. When I asked people working within the credit union sector about the Bill and their concerns, they said the one thing they would like to change was section 15(10) which deals with the directors of a credit union. They have genuine concerns that the way in which credit unions operate will be severely undermined if this section is allowed to continue unamended. It states an employee or voluntary assistant of the credit union or an employee or voluntary assistant of any other credit union are not eligible to become a director of a credit union. This is overly prohibitive. Most credit unions operate on the basis of good will, yet the people who work in credit unions and volunteer to help in them selected this section of the Bill as a concern. When I asked them to select one area of the Bill in which they would like to see a change, this was the section they chose.

Section 15(14) is also a concern. It states a member of a credit union may not be appointed or elected to the board of directors if he or she has served for more than nine years, in aggregate, of the previous 15 on either the board of directors or the board oversight committee of the credit union. I understand this provision may be being made owing to significant bad practice in the past. Perhaps some individual credit unions operated in the manner of fiefdoms. However, as previous speakers said, we should not over-regulate the credit union system because of the sins of a few. Most credit unions have a long history of dedicated service in order to allow the credit union movement to survive. The nature of voluntarism and community activism has changed in Ireland and many of those working in the sector are looking at the next generation and concerned because most of their members are not young. Most credit union volunteer members are of a particular generation which had a different understanding of community interdependence.

While understanding the need for regulation of the credit union sector, I suggest that if one element of the Bill can be reexamined, it should be section 15(10) dealing with the board of directors. The Minister should also reconsider the length of time for which they may serve. The overall thrust behind what the Department is doing is laudable and important, but we should also remember that it is the credit unions that are keeping moneylenders out of business. It is not in our interests, therefore, to put credit unions out of business.

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