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

I move amendment No. 16:

In page 19, to delete lines 25 to 27 and substitute the following:“(a) an employee of the credit union;”.

These amendments go to the heart of the ethos of credit unions, which are voluntary, not-for-profit, locally controlled organisations. If we look at the history of the more than 400 credit unions in the country we can see that the key value of their ethos has been the role of volunteers. These are the people who, week after week, month after month, year after year, play a fundamental role in protecting and developing their credit unions. Every locality has been lucky to have had particularly gifted volunteers - people who may have had some accounts experience, worked in small businesses or trained in the public service, all in ways that proved valuable to the credit union.

My concern with certain aspects of the Bill - which I am trying to amend - is the way in which the Bill impinges on volunteering. Up to now, anybody could come forward at an annual general meeting and stand for election to the board of directors and be elected. That is covered here under section 15. The fear within the membership of the ILCU is that we are putting impediments in the way of that facility, telling members they can elect only certain people while there are others whose franchise is to be restricted to some extent. We are also introducing term limits in an area, although there are no similar limits in corporate governance in general, particularly in family-owned and developed businesses, where people can continue to be directors for a number of decades, often brilliantly so, while employing a number of workers during their period of office. We are introducing restrictions that we do not impose in the banking sector and are thereby putting up a higher hurdle for credit unions.

I refer briefly to amendment No. 16, which deals with exclusions from the board of directors. These include an employee or voluntary assistant of the credit union in question, or an employee or voluntary assistant of any other credit union. In the amendment I try to recast that, stating instead that employees of the credit union are excluded while volunteers are allowed to serve at all levels of the organisation.

Amendment No. 18 is in a similar vein and proposes that the words "or a member of the board oversight committee of any other credit union" be deleted. It relates to people who are members of vocational credit unions but who might also be members of their local credit unions in Monaghan, Carlow or wherever. They might have great experience in working for a large vocational credit union and under the Bill they will be excluded from serving on the boards of their local credit unions.

Amendment No. 19 proposes the deletion of the words "a director of any other credit union". This would encompass the same situations to which amendments Nos. 16 and 18 refer.

On amendment No. 20, in the past we have always encouraged those very talented men and women involved with the credit union movement. As stated, we owe a great deal to the women of Ireland because they were involved in founding the movement and have often been responsible at local level for running audit committees and taking on supervisory roles. They have kept the movement moving forward which has enabled people to literally put bread and other things on the table in their homesteads. We should reconsider excluding the persons to whom I refer from proceeding to serve on representative bodies such as the Irish League of Credit Unions, ICLU, or the Credit Union Development Association, CUDA, which has a smaller number of credit unions that are often highly developed.

Amendments Nos. 21 and 22 relate to the exclusion of persons in arrears for 90 consecutive days and voluntary assistants. In effect, all members of credit unions are under some debt obligation to them. Circumstances could arise where someone might have slipped into arrears, but surely he or she would have shares in his or her credit union, etc. I have made the case for such individuals not being excluded.

I was not present when the Select sub-Committee on Finance took Committee Stage of the Bill, but I did monitor the debate which took place. My three colleagues on the Opposition benches strongly supported the maintenance of the concept of voluntarism. Outside sport, the arts, politics and the church, this is one of the areas in which people are delighted and proud to serve their communities on a volunteer basis. I must question whether the exclusions provided for in the Bill in respect of directorships are appropriate. Those of us who have served as directors in companies know that there must be a very clear divide between employees and chief executives and the oversight boards and various committees which run such companies. In view of the nature of credit unions, excluding volunteers in this way is inappropriate. The Minister of State should, therefore, consider accepting the amendments.

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