Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Born from a sense of community service, the credit union movement grew from its original three pioneers in the 1960s to the almost 2.9 million members it has today. When one considers that the UK credit union movement celebrated 1.6 million adult members yesterday, it shows the success of our credit unions. Through such growth in numbers the movement has maintained its sense of community service and it is still a vital social movement in Ireland many decades after its inception. Credit unions are vital financial networks but they can and want to do more for their members by expanding their remit to include a range of financial services and social needs such as micro credit lending, financing social housing and lending to small and micro businesses. With €13 billion in total assets, the movement's potential is huge and one would think the Government's approach to the sector would reflect this importance, but the Government is alarmingly complacent about the credit union sector's ambitions. The Government has barraged credit unions with a one-size-fits-all regulatory approach, hampering any efforts the movement is making to service its communities and members further. This fits in with Fine Gael's big finance policies which have prioritised a profit-driven financial sector over the not-for-profit community banking model credit unions provide. That is its policy and that is its ideology.

The CP88 consultation paper issued by the Central Bank sets out proposals for restrictive provisions to include a cap on savings, a 10% limit on credit unions' total loan book and a regulatory reserve ratio of not less than 10% of total assets. These are all very restrictive regulatory provisions that were not even the subject of consultation with the credit unions themselves before they were put out to public consultation. This is what the Minister and Fine Gael want - to limit credit unions' competitiveness with private sector financial providers. These regulations will keep credit unions in their place, under the Minister's thumb, and will keep them small and manageable. I urge the Minister to stop the implementation of CP88 and to meet credit unions to discuss their proposals to address the housing crisis. I also urge him to begin actively to encourage the sector to branch out into social needs while extending its remit to provide a range of financial services for its members.

The founders of the credit union movement recognised the root problem in society as lying in the scarce availability and poor management of money and resolved to identify a system that would allow people to gain more control over their finances. It is uncanny that, today, the Government's own poor management of money has led to a housing, health and jobs crisis, yet it is quick to restrict a movement that has proven time and again its own healthy management of money. The fact that there were fewer individual credit unions bailed out during the crisis than private banks should say enough about their value to society.

See this speech in context