Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Like others, I congratulate the Minister of State on her appointment and I wish her well. This is a great start to her administration because this legislation seeks to empower what is a really powerful movement in our communities, with 400 branches nationwide and huge membership. Credit unions have €20 billion in assets at their disposal. That is the equivalent of €10,000 for every home in the country. At present, only 30% of those are lent out. There is, therefore, very substantial untapped capacity here.

The dilemma with a voluntary movement like this is always trying to straddle the two asks, that is, to be innovative within the community and, at the same time, be robust in applying standards of governance and protecting the money that is entrusted to them. This Bill seeks to walk that line very effectively.

We need to be ambitious to see that credit unions can become creative within our community and drive the capacity for greater self-sufficiency. As thinking around the circular economy takes hold, we will see an increasing need for social enterprises to emerge that do things that have not been done traditionally or that we have been forgotten about, such as how to repair and recover things or how we manage waste streams in an innovative way. There will be plenty of opportunities where we can see integrated communities supporting social enterprises and initiatives in this area.

What is also exciting about this Bill is that it recognises that some credit unions have great strength of governance and the capacity to manage more ambitious lending, and others do not. It creates this concept of being linked to another larger credit union that has greater strength so that people can access accounts and other possibilities. I welcome this. We need to work with the credit union movement to know the capacity that exists. There always has been this slightly uneasy relationship between the regulator, which is seen as heavy-handed and perhaps applies rules that apply to professionally managed paid financial operations, versus the culture and tradition of credit unions. However, we have to make sure we do not lose the financial sturdiness at the same time. This is a good first step. Like others, I think we need to be ambitious, but in a prudent way. I have faith that in seeking to amend this as we move along, the Minister of State will approach it with that sort of creative but rightly prudent approach in financial terms.

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