Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State back to the House. We have seen him a lot lately and perhaps we will be seeing much more of him in the future. As he will know, we will be supporting this Bill, which has been brought forward by the Government to dissolve the Credit Union Restructuring Board, or ReBo as it has been deemed, because it has fulfilled its purpose.

ReBo was established on a statutory basis in January 2013 as a body responsible for facilitating and overseeing the restructuring of credit unions to support their financial and long-term stability. The commission recommended that the restructuring be carried out on a voluntary, incentivised and timebound basis. In line with the commission's recommendation, the restructuring process has been carried out within a clear timeframe.

In its short lifetime, ReBo oversaw the facilitation of 82 restructuring projects, involving 156 credit unions with assets totalling €6 billion, across the Twenty-six Counties. It completed its restructuring work with a minimum call on the Exchequer resources. While €250 million of Exchequer funding was provided to facilitate ReBo's restructuring work, the cost to the Exchequer amounted to approximately €11.6 million, with the credit union movement providing much of the funding from its own resources, thus minimising the requirement for the Exchequer funding.

It is interesting to note that in 2011, it was indicated in this Chamber that the cost of resecuring the credit union sector would be up to €1 billion. Thankfully, that proved to be very wide of the mark. That is not to downplay the significant issues experienced by a small number of credit unions. The State had to rescue several credit unions and the representative bodies played a very important role in that regard. There were cases where standards lapsed and Government arrangements were not what they ought to be. Where serious lapses had taken place, they had not been dealt with. It is fair to say that the assumption that a significant number of bad loans had not been properly provided for within the movement did not prove to be the case. It should be acknowledged that the underlying health of the movement was far better than it had been assumed to be. As the Minister of State has indicated, a final review of the operation was carried out in June 2017. Following an indepth examination by departmental officials, this review concluded that ReBo had completed the performance of its function with positive results. That brings us to where we are tonight in finalising this process.

It would be wrong of us not to understand the major role the credit union movement has played in every rural town and village in the country. Many of us probably opened our first savings account with the credit union. As has been mentioned, the movement helps people to stay away from money laundering and lenders who should not be touched.They provide access to funding that many people would not be able to access due to their finances, especially at times like Christmas. I served on the housing committee in the previous Dáil. Equally, I am aware of the major role credit unions could possibly play in the delivery of social and affordable housing with the level of funding available on their books. We look forward to perhaps a public private partnership agreement to allow the State and credit unions to use the money to facilitate their members as well.

We welcome this very technical Bill and we will be supporting it. Equally, I put on the record my full support for the credit union movement and the role it has played in society. I hope it will have many success stories in the years to come.