Pearse Doherty (Donegal South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the reiteration of the Minister's commitment through the Minister of State. I appreciate that the Minister of State cannot accept my argument now and must consult the Minister. However, I will make my argument in any case to try to inform his approach. I appreciate that this matter must be dealt with before the end of the year.

It is not sustainable to have a board comprised solely of volunteers overseeing their own work. However, if there are but one or two volunteers on a board, it is the board that holds those volunteers to account, not the volunteers themselves. The Minister of State has indicated that he would deal with the issue of family members where conflicts of interest arise. If I were on the board of a credit union for which my wife, son or daughter worked as a volunteer, I would almost be in the same position as the one I would be in if I were to oversee my own work as a volunteer. The reason the Minister of State is accepting the point on family members is that there are sufficiently robust provisions in other areas that can be strengthened in terms of conflicts of interest.

The board oversees volunteers, and there are ways in which this can be dealt with. This happens in respect of boards of companies throughout society. I make this point because the circumstances I describe do not arise in any credit union throughout the world. They do not arise in banks but I acknowledge there are no volunteers working in banks. I ask the Minister of State to revisit this issue. If I wanted to be elected to the board of a small credit union in which it were known that my volunteering kept costs down, my election would be unlikely because there would be nobody to replace me in my voluntary position. Issues arise in this regard.

I have tabled an amendment stipulating the possibility of introducing a waiver. We will discuss this later. The best approach to volunteers is the one I have described. We are halfway there because conflict-of-interest rules exist and can be strengthened. The existing provisions make sense on paper but not in practice, particularly for small credit unions that have a small pool of staff. It would be great to have a perfect scenario in which volunteers were beating down the doors of credit unions to become involved in the movement. However, credit unions are competing with all other voluntary organisations. I appeal to the Minister of State to take some of my concerns on board.

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