Three teacher credit unions are in talks to merge to form the seventh-largest such organisation in the Republic, with more than \u20ac450 million of assets. <\/p>\n
The TUI Credit Union, Comhar Linn INTO Credit Union and Education Credit Union, who have 48,000 members between them, said negotiations were at an \u201cadvanced stage\u201d, according to a statement issued to members of the three lenders in recent days. <\/p>\n
A tie-up would create \u201ca single, stronger financial co-operative proudly dedicated to serving the entire education sector across Ireland, from primary, post-primary, third level and support staff\u201d, it said. <\/p>\n
The three currently have a total of \u20ac217 million of loans and hold \u20ac365 million of customer savings combined, according to a spokesman responsible for communications on the plan. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis proposal stems from a position of strength. All three credit unions are financially robust, share the same member-focused ethos, co-operative values, and commitment to excellence in service,\u201d the statement said. \u201cThe merger represents a proactive, strategic step to ensure we remain resilient and well-positioned to meet the evolving needs of our members in a dynamic financial landscape.\u201d <\/p>\n
If a formal merger proposal emerges from the talks, it will have to be approved by members of all three credit unions. <\/p>\n
Consolidation<\/p>\n
The number of credit unions in the Republic has fallen to about 180 from more than 400 in 2007 amid a wave of mergers, encouraged by the Central Bank of Ireland, the sector\u2019s regulator. <\/p>\n
Consolidation was initially driven by efforts to stabilise smaller players as they grappled with a slump in lending and income pressures. However, a number of more recent tie-ups have been aimed at credit unions seeking to best position themselves for growth, against the backdrop of regulatory and legislative tweaks in the past five years, aimed at improving the viability of the credit union sector. <\/p>\n
The Central Bank eased previously highly restrictive limits on long-term lending in 2020.<\/p>\n
Laws introduced in 2023 allow credit unions to refer members to peers for services for the first time. They also enable them to club together to provide loans. And they introduced the concept of a corporate credit union \u2013 a credit union for credit unions \u2013 to support collaboration and pool certain resources.<\/p>\n
Last year, the Central Bank gave the credit union movement additional lending flexibility, which, it estimates, would treble the sector\u2019s capacity for mortgage and business lending to about \u20ac9.9 billion.<\/p>\n
Effective from last September, credit unions, regardless of size, can lend up to the equivalent of 30 per cent of their total assets by way of home mortgages. Business lending can reach as much as 15 per cent of assets.<\/p>\n
The Irish League of Credit Unions (ICLU), which represents 90 per cent of active credit unions in the country, said outstanding loans among its members grew by 10 per cent to a record high of \u20ac6.54 billion \u2013 breaching the previous peak of \u20ac6.21 billion set in 2008 as the Celtic Tiger economy collapsed. They had 3.36 million customers at the end of the period \u2013 up 85,511 on the year.<\/p>\n
The mortgage books of its members surged 26 per cent last year to a combined \u20ac754 million. However, the league estimates that the wider sector ended 2025 with a home loans portfolio of \u20ac992 million and is \u201cclosing fast on the \u20ac1 billion milestone\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three teacher credit unions are in talks to merge to form the seventh-largest such organisation in the Republic,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,25745,61,60,100065,55234],"class_list":["post-370969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-credit-unions","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-irish-national-teachers-organisation","tag-teachers-union-of-ireland-tui"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}