Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have no difficulty whatsoever with that.

It has already been said by a number of Members that the legislation is largely an exercise in tidying up and facilitation, which we obviously support. There are questions over proxy votes and such.

Deputies Doherty and Mairéad Farrell and others spoke about the fact that the Minister probably needs to look at a number of these matters and, possibly, some of the legislation and ensure that we have everything right and that we have the correct levels of accountability and probity.

Credit unions have been spectacular in the work they have done in many communities. In many places, they are the stopgaps that have facilitated people who did not necessarily have the ability to go to retail banks and get loans that were absolutely necessary, from the point of view of getting through periods of difficulty during normal times never mind this particular pandemic. What we have seen with regard to credit unions in recent years is a huge amount of rules and regulations that are absolutely necessary as regards accountability and financial probity.

As I have stated, this was obviously necessary. There was a certain element of professionalisation, and smaller community-based credit unions were subsumed into larger operations. This has happened in Dundalk. The capacity at the larger level is necessary to ensure that all due diligence is done. It also gives the ability of better bang for buck. We need to make sure that we do not lose the community connection. A number of local people were able to make a decision which, to be fair, was not always necessary on absolutely financial or fiscal reasoning but on the basis of somebody needing those funds to get through a particular gap, such as facing into Christmas. If we completely remove this facility will we leave the space open for money lenders? A number of speakers have mentioned the legislation coming through and the absolute necessity for it. We need caps on the annual percentage rates charged by a huge number of these outfits. We are all aware of them in every town and village throughout Ireland and they are advertising. This is a busy time for them to catch people.

We support the legislation but we need to have a mindset jump on the whole idea of credit unions and the way we deal with housing. People are speaking about the fact credit unions are not being facilitated to deal with mortgages. We need to look at how we deal with affordable and social housing to ensure we also have the clawbacks that are necessary. We need to facilitate all of these things. We have made a number of jumps in this pandemic and we need to do it in the context of credit unions and a number of other issues.

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