Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, for statements on the credit union sector and the importance of community banking. We have all spoken about levels of trust. We see that in all of our towns and villages. As Senator Murphy said, there are significant challenges to access banking services in our smaller towns when our traditional banks are closing down. It is incredible. People have to travel further to access banking services.

I acknowledge our volunteers, particularly in my home town of Ballinasloe where the credit union started back in the 1960s. Volunteers with amazing expertise, perhaps from financial backgrounds, came together to provide a credit union for families in need. They recognised that there was a lot of poverty in our area. The same applied for every credit union that came together. Credit unions are a phenomenal example of communities coming together to support each other and families in need. So many families use credit unions for loans and savings.

The Minister of State spoke about recognising the role of credit unions, collaboration aspects, approved housing bodies and how every credit union can now invest in that, as well as agri-lending. He also mentioned supporting governance, member services and transparency of regulatory engagement. I note that he has had numerous engagements in the past while. It is testament to the programme for Government that we have a ministerial position with responsibility for the credit union sector. It is also important that we ensure that trust and reputation are maintained, and that our customers in the credit unions have access to full banking services. We need to support boards of management and credit union staff across the country. The Registry of Credit Unions at the Central Bank has issued a number of risk assessments recently.

If the Minister of State has time, I would be grateful if he would respond to a couple of questions. We have seen in the health sector that cybersecurity is a huge issue and the same is true for banking. Is there a way for us to support credit unions that are attempting to collaborate and also wish to have independence and autonomy? Could we have advisers in place at national level to support them with risk management during their annual general meetings, AGMs, and to provide full-time expertise to support them as they transition to providing full-time banking and community services? How are we supporting them in respect of cybersecurity to ensure they have adequate means to protect online banking from further attacks? This is a serious and shocking issue at a global level right now. There is going to be a higher level of cyberattacks across all areas, particularly banking.

On the statutory reserve, we have discussed in the House the cost to credit unions of lodging deposits with traditional banks. The Minister of State mentioned that there are other ways for them to invest such as through the affordable housing bodies and retrofitting. Could he expand on that? How do we support our credit unions to have the necessary guidance to go down that road? The savings caps are a serious issue. There have been a lot of household savings over the past two years in certain parts of our community.

In respect of education and apprenticeships, the Minister of State talked about retrofitting. We have courses now offering apprenticeships in banking and finance. It would be wonderful to see our community banks engaging with the apprenticeship programmes and supporting people to become qualified in cybersecurity, finance or whatever. Five new apprenticeship programmes were rolled out just today, one of which is in cybersecurity. Would it not be phenomenal if every credit union had access to someone who was being trained up in cybersecurity?