Microcredit scheme - Here’s to the credit unions

OF all our financial institutions, none are more revered than the credit unions and it is not difficult to see why.

The announcement yesterday that a pilot microcredit scheme for people in receipt of social welfare payments is to be rolled out nationwide is in the best tradition of this not-for-profit movement of financial co-operatives which began in Germany in the 1860s and is now a worldwide phenomenon.

It was introduced in Ireland in the 1950s through the efforts of three pioneers, Nora Herlihy, from Ballydesmond, Co Cork, an aunt of RTÉ’s Marian Finucane; baker Sean Forde; and Séamus P MacEoin, from Kilkenny, a civil servant working in Dublin. We should have a statue to all three.