Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have met with many representatives of the credit union movement in County Wexford. Like many Deputies, I admire the commitment of volunteers and workers in the credit unions. The support that members give to the credit unions is fantastic.

Deputies are under no illusion about where we were just before we came into government, when we almost had a total financial collapse of our economy. Significant concerns were raised then about the credit unions. When one considers whom the credit unions represent, one has to be careful about how we deal with this. We did not want to create a crisis in the credit unions, as they are vital to our local economies. They serve an acute need in our local economies, whether it is small loans for small businesses or educational loans for people going to third level. They serve a defined purpose within our communities.

It has been remiss of the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform not to have a more open discussion about credit unions and the role of the Registrar of Credit Unions in recent times. This should be corrected as soon as possible, even maybe as soon as September, with the committee hearing from the ILCU, the registrar and individual credit unions to go through some of the issues raised in this debate. Over the past several years, the committee has brought in representatives of the banks every six months. It might be time to focus particularly on credit unions and how they are managed and regulated.

As the Minister pointed out, not all of these issues are his responsibility. None of us wants to throw out the regulator or radically change the legislation governing the sector. However, we want to examine how credit unions operate in our communities. It is vital that we take the opportunity to examine this. From my recent meetings with credit unions, it is quite obvious that some of them are very well capitalised with significant assets available to them, and not just for the traditional lending that is associated with them. They have assets that could be pooled together and used on bigger projects. While the movement is keen on what it calls community and social lending, there are other sectors to which it can lend, such as the housing sector. However, we do not want to go back to a situation in which some credit unions ran into difficulties because they acted like banks for major developers. Large numbers of people have made regular savings with credit unions which have accumulated into significant assets that could be used for the betterment of society on a much greater scale.

The finance committee will have to deal with the smaller issues that have been raised tonight. While this Chamber can often be adversarial, we can trash it out better in the finance committee. Like Deputy Michael McGrath, I have concerns and would like to see them resolved.

See this speech in context