Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I strongly support the comments made by Deputies Doherty and Boyd Barrett regarding amendments Nos. 6 and 8, which are being discussed with related amendments Nos. 9 and 10 in my name. Amendment No. 9 reads as follows:

In page 10, between lines 45 and 46, to insert the following:

“(5) A credit union may lend to State guaranteed projects which are in keeping with the objects for which credit unions are formed as stated at section 6 of the

Credit Union Act 1997.”.”.

Amendment No. 10 reads as follows:

In page 10, between lines 45 and 46, to insert the following:

“(6) Nothing in the foregoing will prevent a credit union from providing certain services, to be prescribed by the Bank, to a credit union or a member of another credit union registered under this Act.”.”.

My colleagues went through some of the issues raised by this group of amendments before the sos. Clearly, both of my amendments are related to allowing service organisation development for credit unions and also allowing them to invest in State backed projects which have a social impact and payback. In my local area of greater Coolock, in what will soon be the Dublin North Bay constituency, a major credit union, the Coolock Artane Credit Union, CACU, operates successfully. There are also several development organisations such as Coolock Development Council, which I helped to found 25 years ago, the Northside Centre for the Unemployed and the Northside Partnership operating in the area. Many bootstrap projects in the community, particularly ones designed to help small businesses to get up and running, have been initiated by these groups. The CACU cannot directly invest in such projects at present and the only option open to it is to keep its money on deposit. It is a bit like the macro situation when we were striving to get national pension funds to invest in this country, including the National Pensions Reserve Fund or what is left of it after the disaster of the last four years, and in particular, in socially useful projects. As the banking sector continues to contract with the exodus of foreign banks from the Irish market and building societies are sidelined or taken over, the role of the credit union becomes more important, in the context of having local, voluntary organisations, controlled by their members being able to take up some of the slack. A representative of the credit union movement of the United States of America recently addressed a meeting of the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform. That is an incredibly impressive movement, whose membership is approaching 100 million. The representative detailed the kind of network and electronic banking that is open to credit union members across North America and the Canadian movement is similarly equipped.

I support amendments Nos. 6 and 8 and ask that amendments Nos. 9 and 10, which are closely related, be accepted so as to permit this development. The Minister of State will be aware of the issue of credit union service organisation. The Commission on Credit Unions expressed strong support for the development of linkages between credit unions to give them extra financial clout, connectivity and to provide local economic democracy as an alternative to the banks, which have failed us so badly.

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