Sir, – I wish to congratulate The Irish Times for publicising an announcement which went largely unnoticed and unreported by other media outlets. Eoin Burke Kennedy's report "State to avoid €230 million spend on credit unions" (October 22nd) stated that Minister for Finance Michael Noonan has acknowledged that the amount required to fund the overall restructuring of credit unions will be funded mostly from within the credit union movement itself.
Despite the Government’s scaremongering that €1 billion of taxpayers’ money would be required to bail out troubled credit unions, this situation never materialised. The hard work and prudent model of the credit union movement has withstood all of the battles in relation to reduced members’ income and a raft of onerous regulations imposed by the Central Bank.
The Minister and his officials were wrong about those figures required to support the movement and he is taking the wrong position in relation to imposing even more absurd regulations that are due to come in to effect later this year.
With the combination of overly restrictive regulations and scaremongering about bailouts and mergers, one might be forgiven for thinking this Government simply wanted to close credit unions down, or worse, turn them into banks. – Yours, etc,
SEAMUS KILGANNON,
Board Member,
Irish League
of Credit Unions,
Dublin 2.