Credit unions need a radical overhaul

After more than 13 hours of talk in Limerick at the weekend, it is clear that, five years and £27 million later, the Irish League of Credit Unions is back where it started.

The movement is battered but it remains to be seen if it is wiser. During its weekend conference, from which the media was excluded, there was much talk of the structures which were in place for the ill-fated Isis project, and much of the consultation and debate which will take place over the coming weeks and months will focus on this aspect of the whole affair.

What is clear is that the board of the company set up to oversee the development of the project, Ilcutech Ltd, was not equipped for the task it set itself.

This in turn raises another question - whether the structures which exist for running the league of credit unions are themselves adequate for the job.

It is worth, for a moment, reviewing what happened with the Isis project. In 1995/ 1996, five individual credit unions got together to introduce the sort of technology it was felt members required.

A year or so later this project was merged with an initiative for the overall league, and Ilcutech was established. The board of the new company was made up of 10 directors, five coming from the league and five from credit unions contributing to the project.

The project was launched officially in April 1998. A firm of London consultants, OSI, had been engaged and a draft estimate for the technology system required was arrived at - £40 million.

The Ilcutech board comprises volunteers, teachers and retired workers, none of whom were best equipped with the sort of specialist project management, technological or financial skills required for what was a huge task. The dependence on OSI was extremely high.

By the time the project was abandoned, the estimated cost of completion was given as between £68 million and £100 million.

The spend had been £27 million, some £5.5 million of which had come from the £40 million special protection fund. This money was loaned to Ilcutech and is to be repaid, either by Ilcutech or the league.

At the weekend in Limerick there were complaints that the boards of Ilcutech and the league were not at all times kept adequately informed of developments by OSI. The consultants have insisted that this is not the case.

The credit union movement is a great success and has been built on the back of long hours put in by volunteers.

However, as the System Action report reviewed over the weekend in Limerick points out, if the league is to again involve itself in overseeing the delivery of a technology solution for its members, appropriate project management skills will have to be put in place.

The structures at league level will also have to be examined. The weekend conference at times resembled meetings of the British Labour Party in the 1970s, according to one delegate, with lengthy wrangles over procedures.

The Dublin headquarters of the league, in Lower Mount St, has 50 to 60 staff. The full-time general secretary, Mr Tony Smyth, is the de facto chief executive and runs the operation with an eight-member management team.

It is believed they work for salaries more akin to the public sector than the world of financial services.

The member unions of the league of credit unions now have £3.7 billion on deposit. They operate in an economy and society undergoing rapid change and will have to consider implementing structures which reflect that change.