Credit Unions

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 15 May 2018.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 1:58, 15 May 2018

(Translated)

I mentioned the funding that’s available and I mentioned the meeting that will take place next week. Membership of credit unions has increased from 10,000 people at the beginning of the century to 75,000, as I said, currently. So, there has been a great growth. The next step for credit unions, I think, is for them to consider how much they want to grow and what capacity is needed for them to grow. I know that, in Ireland, they can have hundreds of thousands of euros-worth of loans, which is much greater than those available in Wales. So, we must consider how far some of these credit unions wish to go. Do they want to grow to become much bigger, like the Irish credit unions, or do they want to remain as local credit unions? I think some of them will choose the first route and some will choose the other, but we will continue to speak with them in order to identify the ways in which we can ultimately promote them.