Sir, – I note the article “Madness for Central Bank to allow credit unions increase their exposure to housing market” (John McManus, Business, Opinion, August 21st).
By any objective measure, the credit union sector has been Ireland’s outstanding performer in retail banking. In retail banking, the credit union sector is consistently ranked the best for customer service and most trusted by customers. All other retails banks have long been, and still remain, light years behind.
While virtually every other retail banking institution in the country failed catastrophically, the overwhelming majority of credit unions weathered the global financial crisis without requiring massive government bailouts.
The utter failure of the “banking establishment”, including the Central Bank and pillar banks, caused damage to this country that defy adjectives and superlatives. Almost two decades later, the fallout from their failure still manifests itself today in our housing crisis and in the hundreds of thousands who left the country and remain abroad.
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And yet, throughout that period, and still today, there is a banking establishment view that credit unions who demonstrated prudence, remained financially viable, and retained the trust of public are “too risky” to trust with mortgage business.
In the middle of the last decade, I had the honour to serve on the board of a credit union. My most extraordinary experience of that time was hearing the view, from Central Bank officials, that credit unions could not be trusted, or were too risky, for mortgages and other expansions of credit union business. The lack of objective analysis and critical thinking was breathtaking, considering the failure of their own organisation to oversee the retail banking system.
I never heard any official reflect upon why credit unions survived in an environment where our Central Bank and pillar banks failed catastrophically. If they were more thoughtful, Ireland’s retail banking system might be so much better today and our credit unions could be delivering so much more to the Irish public. – Yours, etc,
ALAN MacNEICE,
Kiltoom,
Co Roscommon.