Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I hope this Bill will pass the Dáil and the Seanad this week without too much ado. It is a very important Bill. It deals with a whole level of grassroots banking, that is, the model of the credit union, which for many generations has served Ireland and its people so well. There are three core objectives to the Bill. The first is to amend the Credit Union Act to allow for general meetings, which are prohibited under current health regulations, to proceed. Some of the amendments brought in will be permanent, and that is a good development. Second, the Fiscal Responsibility Act will be amended to allow for a longer term limit for a member of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council. Finally, the third measure would concern the Credit Institutions (Stabilisation) Act 2010 and would include the European Union as a facility lender, which would allow the State to comply with certain provisions contained in the SURE loan agreement. This is therefore very positive legislation. It allows credit unions to function normally at a very abnormal time, and anything this House can do to allow grassroots organisations that are so positive in our community to function should be welcomed by the House and supported wholeheartedly.

The credit union model has worked so well for many years in Ireland but it should also give us an opportunity to look at how we might expand community-level banking. New Zealand has developed what is called the Kiwibank system, whereby banking and post offices work in tandem in communities providing another very successful level of community banking. As we look to find a workable and sustainable future for our post offices in Ireland, the Kiwibank model is one we should consider again. It has been debated in the Dáil a number of times, but it is now time we had some deep analysis of it. Covid is a perfect time, when we are at a very low starting point with everything. We are talking about reopening the country properly only in the springtime. Now is the time to look at sectors such as our post offices, credit unions etc. to see whether they can have a more expansionary role in the community.

Banking has become rather unfriendly. Post offices and credit unions are the friendly face of banking. The experience people had for many decades of going into their bank, going up to the cashier, transacting with them and talking to them is gone. Banking is now digital. It is online. It involves pin codes and remembering the fourth or fifth digit of a code in order to log in. That is fine for some people, but people of my father's generation - I am not being ageist, I am being honest - cannot do this. Banking has become unfriendly and inaccessible to them to the point that some people are back putting wads of cash into the back of the wardrobe, stuffing them into socks and so on. That is happening in rural Ireland. When I canvassed my county in February, there were a small handful of houses where, as I chatted to someone at the front door I could see in beyond the hall table where he or she had money left insecurely around the house. That needs to change. In my county, Clare, Bank of Ireland at the outset of the Covid pandemic identified three branches at which it was to scale down operations, namely Tulla, Miltown Malbay and Kilkee. They now operate only up to lunchtime every day. They are totally unfriendly from the point of view of trying to do business in them. The staff there are excellent, but we need a decision made on high that these banks will be open according to normal business hours, as they were in all the years heretofore. I have been in touch with Bank of Ireland about the Tulla branch specifically because there is no facility whatsoever to make lodgments there. For any businesses in that vicinity, when it takes in a lot of cash or has money in its safe that it needs to deposit, there is no facility in Tulla, only an internal ATM withdrawal system inside the building. It does not help. It does not support businesses in the way it should.

This is a very positive Bill. I do not imagine there will be too much disquiet about it. I hope there will not be. It supports credit unions, something we should all get behind. I implore the Minister of State to consider other ways of supporting community banking. I have given the example of the Kiwibank system. I know the banks say "hands off" quite often, but they should, where possible, be more user-friendly to people who are perhaps not IT-literate and to people in rural Ireland who may need to do weekend and out-of-hours lodgments.

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