Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Like others here, I welcome this very important legislation. Credit unions are the bedrock of all communities. I am still a member of the Irish National Teachers Organisation credit union, Comhar Linn. I would love to have got more money off it over the years but I suppose that is the way that credit unions work. They are fantastic. What credit unions can provide in moneylending facilities to any workplace or community is incredible. This legislation further enhances the governance structures of the credit union system and it enhances communities as well.

Last week I was invited to visit the Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS, facility in Ennis. It was my first time in the facility. I know that on a weekly basis it advises a huge number of people, currently around 140, who are in arrears with their mortgages and struggling. Each MABS office has a dedicated mortgage adviser, DMA. This is a really skilled person who gets the legalities, understands the whole realm of financial advice and knows how best to position someone who is in difficulty. There is also a very strong social dimension. They often sit across the desk from someone who is breaking down in tears as they watch their financial life crumbling. They give them the best possible advice. They very often steer these people beyond the repossession and court routes into a more friendly way of managing debt and so on. The problem is that the DMAs do not have permanent positions. Most of them are on roll-over contracts. The funding model that supports them expires at the end of November. Strictly speaking, this comes under the remit of the Minister for Social Protection. Nonetheless, I am asking the Minister of State, who is new in her role and in whom we put great value, to advocate for these people. It is not just those who struggle financially who benefit from their work. The courts system also really values the work of MABS and the DMAs in keeping the whole system unclogged and in dealing with people as people and not as someone in the dock in court talking about their financial woes. This is something in which we should invest more.

Finally, I pay tribute to an incredible guy from County Clare who has probably interacted with most Members of this House at one stage or another. His name is Tom O’Callaghan. He recently became a county councillor by virtue of co-option. Councillor O’Callaghan has been leading a crusade to transform and revolutionise our post office network and in particular to save rural post offices that are struggling. He has made a suggestion, which I have heard permeate into the debate of his House in recent weeks, that we would look at other forms of banking including the Kiwibank and Sparkasse banking systems. These are incredible banking models. Like the credit unions, they are rooted in the community. Profits are reinvested and the community is the main stakeholder in the bank. Previous Ministers for Finance have looked at this approach and while it has been warmly received, it has never even got onto the starting blocks. Strictly speaking, it is not part of today’s legislation but these debates allow us to broaden some of the discussions here. I want to put it on the Minister of State’s radar. It might be something she can champion or at least ask the officials in her Department to take a fresh look at. Tom O’Callaghan has been touting it for years and the idea has become a little more mainstream. We can see the successes of Kiwibank and Sparkasse. I think that kind of model can work in a country like Ireland which is small and very much community based when you get outside the capital and other cities. It is the kind of model that can work really well. I ask the Minister of State to keep up the good work.

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