Minutes of a meeting held in the Town Hall Cinema, 23 November 1970, sponsored by Club 70

Attendance was very good, despite the bad night. Mr Michael Ryan gave a lecture on the workings of the Credit Union and left himself open for questions all during the talk. He was in favour of forming a Study Group that night but some people were not in agreement. Mr Ryan then said if it was left standing it would not get off the ground for a few weeks, and if the Study Group were formed, he or some other members from any other CUs would came and help the Study Group during the three months in which it would be training. The meeting left it to Club 70 to make a decision, who in turn said that they only sponsored the meeting, and the rest was up to the people of the town. After some consideration it was decided to form the Study Group and the same are working independently from Club 70.

signed: (Fr) Tom Shaughnessy.

Kilcullen Credit Union: Reaching the Majority

April 1992

Most good things in a community begin as a dream, an idea, or simply as an offhand remark. Then somebody, or some group, picks up the concept and runs with it, and gives it a chance of life. Sometimes it dies young, sometimes it lasts until it is no longer needed, and sometimes it just keeps going and growing until it is a force that has its own unstoppable momentum.

Kilcullen Credit Union is one of those last, born 21 years ago from an idea which had been muttered here and there, was finally suggested on a public platform, and last year turned over £1 million in shares and loans. Some 70 per cent of the families in Kilcullen parish have a connection with the Credit Union, and the youngest member was two days old when an account was opened for him.

Even the most optimistic dreamer in 1970 couldn't have considered the baby being conceived at a Club 70-sponsored meeting in the Town Hall Cinema would reach its majority with such success.

"It nearly wasn't conceived at all," remembers Christy Sheridan, who failed to prevent himself from being elected chairman of a Study Group on that night of November 23. "There was a Kilcullen trader who vehemently opposed the proposal, saying it 'would arm people with cheques to go to Newbridge'. They were deadly words to my ears, because he was a man with great sway in the town, and I was afraid he could hold the sway against us."

But guest speaker Michael Ryan of Newbridge Credit Union urged the meeting - which had three-quarters filled the Cinema - to form a Study Group that night, promising his full support to get something started which few of those going on the group really understood. Christy Sheridan was elected first Chairman and subsequently served for three years on the Board of the Irish League of Credit Unions.

"I thought it was some kind of hire purchase set-up," recalls Timmy Lynch, today the longest-serving person in the Kilcullen Credit Union. Christy Sheridan admits to not having had a clue about the movement ... but he was willing to learn. "I was stationed in Newbridge at the time, so it became my regular beat to head down and see Michael Ryan any time we couldn't understand or interpret the rules of the organisation," he says. "He and his colleagues in Newbridge Credit Union gave us great support - they were really good tutors."

But then, they had good students, including local curate Fr Cathal Price, the late Mrs Mary Conroy, and schoolteacher Brian Keyes. From time to time in the next three months there were also visits from the local field officer of the League of Credit Unions, Pat Fay (now deputy general secretary of the League), to see how progress was going. Finally, everybody felt comfortable enough to get things going officially.

'We held our first collection among the members of the Study Group on February 15 of 1971, to practice with the system," says Timmy Lynch. "Then the establishing AGM was held on April 16. From then we kept it a fairly low-key operation, as we'd been advised to do by the League. Membership grew more by word-of-mouth recommendation than by any campaign on our part."

The offices were low-key, too - in the sitting-room of local community development stalwart Paddy Nugent, where the Study Group had held their own meetings. "After a while we moved briefly to O'Connell's Lounge, and then found ourselves a reasonably permanent home in the offices of Kildare Auctioneering," remembers Christy Sheridan.

Things grew slowly. The financial statement at the end of the first full month - May 1971 - showed 47 members, a share capital of £301.75, and £9.50 out in loans. By the end of September, membership had risen to 60, there was a share capital of £816.75, and £411.95 was out in loans.

"It took two or three years before it became an appreciable thing, because we needed to build up reserves," says Timmy Lynch. "We were giving loans, but they weren't big ones - £200 would have been a very big individual loan in those years."

There was also the matter of getting over the confidentiality barrier - it took quite some time before people in a community as small as Kilcullen were comfortable about coming in to tell their neighbours about their financial needs. Gradually that became less of a problem, but, as more people joined, the growing number of files with confidential information became a problem in itself. After five years "lodging' in Kildare Auctioneering, Kilcullen Credit Union needed its own space.

In 1976, a Premises Committee was formed. But the actual purchase of the building at Kilcullen bridge which is now the organisation's home was a classic Kilcullen story of opportunity grasped on the run.

"At a meeting of another organisation one night, I heard that the house was for sale," says Christy Sheridan, then back for a second term as chairman of the Credit Union. "It had come up a year earlier, but nobody from our crowd went to the auction and it had been taken by another bidder, who subsequently failed to get planning permission for an enterprise on the premises. This time, I didn't want us to lose the chance."

That same evening he got together with then Treasurer Sean O'Reilly, and Bank of Ireland assistant manager Sean Malone, in the bank official's home. "Because the Credit Union had no significant assets, the bank wasn't keen to give us the £12,500 needed to buy quickly," says Christy. "But Sean Malone agreed to cover me personally to buy the property, and I rang the auctioneer from Sean's home and did the deal on the spot."

There were subsequent rather late celebrations, and when Christy's phone rang early the next morning, he wasn't in the best of form. "It was the auctioneer, saying that a well-known building society had wanted the premises, and were prepared to give me £2,000 to forget the deal, or else to allow them to buy the house and they'd give us a 10-year free lease on part of it. But I was in the humour to say 'no' to all their offers. Besides, I knew we wouldn't get the chance of so suitable a property again for a long time."

This of course left Christy in a fairly bullish position when he and his colleagues began looking for some way to raise the money so that the Credit Union could buy the property from him, and regularise the position. "I knew I couldn't lose personally, no matter what happened."

But there were problems. "We were probably the first Credit Union of our size to aspire to a property of our own, and there was no money available to help us do it," says Timmy Lynch. "The League itself had no funds, and though there were many Credit Unions with plenty of spare cash, there was no method for them to loan us the money."

Eventually, Michael Woods of Navan Credit Union pointed them towards the Cooperative Services Society in Dublin, a sort of Credit Union for friendly societies. On Whit weekend, a delegation from COSS came down to a meeting in what was the back-kitchen of the house, and, after listening to a number of persuasive Kilcullen tongues, decided to advance a 100 per cent loan. Kilcullen Credit Union now officially had its own home.

"We had to spend another £12,500 in renovations to really get it right," recalls Christy Sheridan. "But we got a lot of help from AnCO, and eventually we had our official opening on December 6, 1977."

Getting their own premises was an immediate boost to the morale of the members and volunteer workers in the organisation. Now they could believe they were there to stay, and after that they felt confident enough to canvass every house in the parish for new members. It was a successful canvass, and introduced many people to a better way of paying for things they needed.

"At that time, about 80 per cent of the members were people who wouldn't normally have even considered having a bank account," says Timmy Lynch. "Most of them simply dealt in cash, or used hire purchase for buying things they couldn't pay for straight off."

HP was expensive ... buying a £45 fridge at the time would have involved people in repayments totalling £93. "We were able to show them that a Credit Union loan would give them cash in hand to get a few more pounds off the price, and they'd end up paying in total only around £50 for that same fridge," says Timmy. "It sometimes took time, but it was in the end an unbeatable argument."

A fair few of the town's businesspeople had by that time dropped any fears about Credit Unions, as was shown by the strong local advertising support they gave a Leinster Leader feature on the official opening and blessing of the Credit Union offices. And far from worrying about people being 'armed with cheques' to do their shopping in other towns, some of them were taking advantage of the strengthened buying power in town ... like the weIl-known motor dealer who would hold a car for a couple of weeks for a potential customer waiting to have a loan application processed in the Credit Union.

"We did give people the freedom to shop where they liked," says Timmy Lynch. "But we also believed in keeping as much money circulating in Kilcullen itself, because it's a well-established fact that this promotes growth in businesses and services in a community, and ultimately preserve and creates jobs."

With this in mind, Kilcullen Credit Union has promoted the idea of traders giving a discount to members, as an encouragement to keep more of the money in town. Their efforts have been a signal failure. "I don't think the local traders have followed it through enough," says Timmy Lynch. "There's £500,000 going into circulation through loans from our operation in the current year, and I don't think Kilcullen business is doing enough to get its maximum share of it."

It's substantial money: in the first five months of this 21st birthday year, £168,000 was loaned for home improvements, £122,000 for cars, and £70,000 for business ventures. Staying with statistics, 855 of the 1,367 members on the books are currently 'active' while the average loan is £2,000 and the average savings balance is £625. Within three years, the share capital in Kilcullen Credit Union will top £1 million.

At these levels, keeping track of transactions has long since gone beyond the efficient capabilities of index cards. Luckily, Kilcullen Credit Union computerised quite a number of years before they really had to. And it paid off within 18 months of the installation of the system in 1987.

"We had done an exercise in efficiency, and found that we were losing interest because of the time it took to process the transactions by hand," says Vinnie Halloran, another longserving member of the organisation. "By introducing computers we brought our interest take up from 10 per cent to 12.1 per cent, and the £6,500 cost of the system was paid for in a year-and-a-half."

Computerisation meant something more than saving money, it also meant people learning new skills, and learning new skills is something which is an unsung part of working for Credit Union. "Our volunteer tellers have over the years learned things which are of significant benefit," says Timmy Lynch. "They learn how to deal with people at the counter, they become good at handling money and book-keeping, and they learn a respect for accuracy. There's also a great camaraderie, which becomes addictive ... if anyone asks me to do anything else on a Friday night, I'll usually have to turn them down because as far as I'm concerned it is Credit Union night."

There's also a tremendous satisfaction in being in a position to help people get over financial problems of all kinds. "When you're working on credit committees you get an insight into how to help people in ways we'd otherwise know nothing about," says Christy Sheridan. "And when people get over the confidentiality worry, they get a great sense of belonging to a community, of having a common bond of saving and borrowing and meeting socially each week. As far as I'm concerned, it's been a human success story, never mind the financial one."

Timmy Lynch agrees: "In trying to help people solve their problems, you learn something about yourself. And hopefully you can teach those people something too ... and they find it's a great relief to be able to share their problems with somebody."

Credit Union is very much about people, and without the people who have unstintingly given their time over the years as tellers, directors, and administrators, it wouldn't exist in Kilcullen today. And those who become members, to put their savings into a community fund from which they and their neighbours can borrow when necessary, are the other equal partners without whom the enterprise would fail.

When Kilcullen Credit Union was born, the movement had been established in Ireland for 12 years. There were then 238,000 members nationwide and the total shareholding was £17 million. Today, there are over 500 Credit Unions in Ireland, with a membership of nearly 1.2 million and a shareholding value which will cross £1 billion this year. The organisation continues to grow under the careful attention and guarantee system of the League of Credit Unions, and its services have expanded to include home insurance (and car insurance will be available soon).

Looking to tomorrow, there'll probably be a cheque service, an expanded financial advice service, and probably a credit card system which will allow members to withdraw cash from any Credit Union in the country.

Kilcullen Credit Union has done its bit for its members and for the community of Kilcullen as a whole, and will continue to do so. Nationally, it has also made its mark in the Credit Union movement, pushing through a Financial Service development which allows the League to give loans to its constituent Credit Unions for purposes such as buying their own premises. And the Credit Union Calendar that is now used by more than a million members was also mooted first in Kilcullen.

Most good things in a community begin as a dream ...

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The foregoing is from a booklet which I wrote for the 21st anniversary celebrations of the Kilcullen Credit Union, in April 1992. Needless to say, there has been much more development since, and we reproduce this original history on the occasion of the official opening of the organisation's new building, on 3 July 2005.)