The future of financial services should be shaped so all sectors of society can benefit from affordable products, it was claimed today.
The credit union movement marked its 50th anniversary in Ireland by calling on Government to recognise the contribution it has made to residents all over the country.
President Uel Adair told around 1,500 delegates at annual general meeting of the Irish League of Credit Unions in the University of Limerick Concert Hall, that the Irish movement has the highest membership in the world, with almost half of the population of the Republic and Northern Ireland holding an account.
He said rom its tiny beginnings in 1958, it now boasts almost three million members who have savings of €13.4 billion in 521 branches across the whole island.
“The challenge now is for Irish credit unions to help shape the future of financial services in Ireland so that all sectors of society have available to them the key financial services they require at an affordable cost and in an easily-accessible and timely manner,” said Mr Adair.
“Everyone concerned to see the progress of Irish society and the development and preservation of vital social capital must act positively.
“This includes Government which must recognise the unique and unparalleled contribution that credit unions make to society and ensure that legislation enables their planned future development of the new products and services currently under way for members," Mr Adair added.
“How credit unions do business in the future will change but why we do it will not. Member-owned, not-for-profit and run for the benefit of members and their community, credit unions are strongly positioned to expand and prosper for the next 50 years as we have done in our first 50 years.”
Mr Adair said that from the start, the credit union movement empowered ordinary people, most from very marginalised communities in the Ireland of the 1950s suffering the effects of high unemployment: sickness, malnutrition, money lending, hunger, poor clothing, poor housing, and inevitably, emigration of one parent or of the whole family.