Robert Dowds (Dublin Mid West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----will give a full account to the Minister because there is much frustration in the credit union movement about this issue. As the Minister for Finance knows, credit unions are a major pillar of towns and cities in this country, providing a very important service for people through saving and lending facilities.

There is very considerable frustration about the restrictions through regulations being applied to credit unions, and I will focus on two of those. The new regulations will restrict members from saving more than €100,000 in total, compared with the current system, which allows members save up to €100,000 in shares and a further €100,000 in deposits. I appreciate that this is probably not an important matter for newer members but it is important for older members. They do not want to have to change their banking institution later in life but such people are being told that they must remove savings over €100,000 and move the money to another financial institution. It is a further insult that these people will have to deal with banking institutions that really got this country into trouble. Most of the credit unions exhibited exemplary behaviour and where they had to be bailed out, the figure was approximately €20 million.

As another example, under regulation 16 there are very considerable issues relating to the definition of a house loan. As the Minister of State, Deputy Harris, and undoubtedly the Minister, Deputy Noonan, realise, credit unions very much know their people.

They know what is safe to lend people and what is not safe to lend people and they should not be unnecessarily restricted in their lending. As a measure of what credit unions can be and how they are viewed elsewhere, I understand that some time ago a delegation from Latvia came. They were really impressed with the whole idea of credit unions and, as far as I know, they are trying to roll out something like that in Latvia. I am asking that the Minister would go into discussion with credit unions and, whatever else he does, avoid signing this most recent regulation, Consultation Paper 88, CP88. Can we have proper discussion between both sides on this?

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