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

I thank Deputy Harkin for this necessary work and for the opportunity to speak about the necessity of our credit unions. It is in the public domain how hamstrung the credit unions are at this stage. We need Government to step up to the mark. We have heard about the multiple reports that have been done. We all know what needs to be done. We all accept the situation we are in. We know that there needs to be an increase in the products and financial services that credit unions are able to provide. We need that so we can further facilitate the community; our major private and public housing issue; and so that necessary action can be taken on the environment and retrofitting.

I requested a meeting with Dundalk credit union in the past while. In fairness, it is probably due to how busy I am that we have not had the meeting at this stage. I had a worry at one stage, particularly when governance difficulty levels meant that many smaller credit unions were subsumed into the larger ones. My fear is that local knowledge will be lost. Local credit unions would say, “We need to help this person out, because this will be a difficult Christmas and if we do not do that they will go straight to the moneylenders." That is where Government inaction has been an abject failure. That needs to be addressed.

Deputy Pearse Doherty spoke earlier about the APR of up to 288%. This is wildly wrong. Since Provident Financial left the Irish market, the credit unions have said that more people have come to them. They generally try to facilitate them, using whatever flexibility they can. There are mad situations where the money moneylenders are getting is literally drug money. The drug money is put back on the street. People then find themselves in really difficult situations, possibly having to pay a drug debt of a family member. That money ends up adding to this pot. This is a completely ridiculous situation. In most cases I generally advise people not to pay this money, because that opens the tap. However, it is easy for me to say that to them because I am not in that situation. This is where our credit unions have stepped up to the mark. We need to ensure that they are given a model in which they can survive into the future. They are a necessity. This is not to say, however, that we do not need to deal with the wider issues in relation to the issues I brought up. The Minister of State and his Government have the power to change things. We need action as soon as possible.

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