ILCU seeks public hearing

Maynooth Credit Union and the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) is trying to force the Central Bank to hold a hearing into its regulatory behaviour in public.

The ILCU sought leave from the High Court in July to mount a legal challenge to regulatory restrictions imposed by the Central Bank on the Credit Union movement.

The judicial review has been granted to Maynooth and the ILCU who claim they are “deeply concerned about the coherency and proportionality of the Central Bank’s decision-making in relation to regulatory directions”.

The Central Bank had applied to have the hearing heard in private but the ILCU is trying to have the case held openly.

A spokesperson for the ILCU said that the Central Bank were trying to “cloak”, proceedings by having them heard in private.

“At this juncture the Central Bank has brought a motion seeking inter alia to have the matter heard confidentially (in camera) and is thereby seeking to cloak the proceedings and the challenge to its decisions from public scrutiny in circumstances where the League sees no legitimate need to do so or any risk involved in an open deliberation. The Court fixed next Wednesday, Oct 16, 2013, for the hearing of this motion,” the spokesperson said.

The league claimed that there was a need for transparency and for the review to be carried out in the full view of the public. “It is important that state regulators operate openly, clearly and accountably. They should not seek to scare the public or exaggerate risk for the sake of achieving unarticulated policy objectives. We operate in an open society with an educated public capable of digesting contradicting views and the law will uphold this. If anything, the correct way to deal with these issues is with sunlight and transparency rather than to hide this dispute from the public eye.”