Letter to the Irish Times

Madam

It strikes me as a voluntary unpaid director of a credit union that the financial regulators office can police small financial institutions such as credit unions with great rigour and efficiency, but it can not do the same to large commercial companies such as the banks.

As volunteers we work long and hard unpaid to comply with IFSRA regulations and we welcome the scrutinising that is involved to protect members interests, however as unpaid volunteers we would prefer not to have to do this extra work, but we do it in the interest of our members also our commitment to the ethos and principles the credit union movement in general.

As a director of a regulated company (a credit union) and also as a taxi driver to earn my living, it strikes me that compliance with regulations from the state are only for little people. As usual compliance for big companies is subject to their strength to avoid and manipulate the regulators.

As usual in Ireland, its one law for the rich, and a different one for the poor.

The admission today by the NRA, that their system will always only be 98% accurate, and with no means of independent appeal, is another example of the state protecting itself against the ordinary person.
As a taxi operator it amazes me that non civil / public servants can put taxi drivers out of business for fairly trivial reasons, but the IFSRA staff can’t put banks out of business even for serious breaches of regulations.


What we need now is a regulator of regulators.

Regards
John Fitzpatrick