Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

Like many Members of this House, I come from a credit union family. I have been a credit union member all my life and my dad was a founder member of Clonmel credit union. I know the value of the credit union movement throughout this country. It is a very important, volunteer-led social movement, a bottom-up, community-based, not-for-profit people's bank. It has a huge infrastructure right across the country, with 10,000 volunteers, 4,000 staff, 2.89 million members, 342 branches affiliated to the ILCU and €13 billion in assets. It is a support system for middle and low income families in every town and village.

The CP88 regulations, including the cap on savings, loan maturity limits and the regulatory reserve ratio, give rise to serious concerns for the credit union movement. The Government's one-size-fits-all approach has the potential to restrict, undermine and seriously damage confidence in the credit union movement and I appeal to the Minister not to commence these regulations but to defer their implementation into the future. To do anything else would seriously damage the credit union movement.

I also appeal to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, to accept a credit union offer of €8 billion to tackle the housing emergency. We have 1,500 children living in hotels and hostels and 130,000 families on local authority housing waiting lists. The credit union movement has offered €8 billion to provide off-balance sheet funding to the Government to build and provide social houses. That proposal was prepared by specialist consultants and it dovetails with the core community values of the credit union movement. It has the potential to make a significant contribution to solving the housing emergency and I plead with the Minister to take up the offer.

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