John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes. He spoke about the €1 billion and about the other issues in the credit union. He spoke about having to streamline them and amalgamate some of them, but they were willing to do that anyway. It was not as if they were being forced into doing it. There is not an institution or individual in the State that has not been affected by the financial crash, but one that has been least affected by the crash is the credit union movement. Here we are, in the House, paying lip service to the credit union movement and telling it how great it is, yet we are unwilling to interfere or intervene with a Central Bank that seems to be unwilling to assist a credit union by making fast, efficient decisions to allow a business, that is supported by the people who vote for us, to grow and prosper.

They vote with their feet. They do not go to the main banks. They go to the credit union, where they find a sympathetic ear and someone to whom they can explain their personal issues and get a loan to get out of the problem they might have. I refer to loans for cars, to return to education, to make improvements to a house or to get over a debt or a death. The Government is saying it will not to deal with the bureaucracy and the issues in this report in a positive way so as to give a greater effect to the ethos of the credit union movement. It is disgraceful that we pay lip-service in debates like this, but the action does not match our words. It is a shame on the Government that we would find ourselves in this position: a cross-party Oireachtas committee presented this report in good faith and now finds itself at odds with a Government-----

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