It is just the latest of more than a dozen such mergers this year as the \u00adlenders scale up to expand mortgage and business lending.<\/p>\n
The coming together of Core Credit Union and Greystones and District Credit Union will create an entity with 53,000 members and combined assets of \u20ac230m.<\/p>\n
Credit unions will have nearly \u20ac10bn available for property and business loans. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n
At the start of the year, members of Athlone and Castlerea Credit Union and those of St Jarlath\u2019s Credit Union in Tuam, Co Galway, agreed to merge.<\/p>\n
That entity will be called West Midlands Credit Union, and have assets of over \u20ac440m and 80,000 members, making it one of the biggest in the country.<\/p>\n
The merger of Core and Greystones was overwhelmingly backed by the members of both.<\/p>\n
\nWe can continue to deliver personal service locally while drawing on the strength of a larger organisation<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Officials said the decision paves the way for the creation of a \u00adstronger, larger and more resilient credit union. The new entity will have eight local branches.<\/p>\n
Core is the larger of the pair and covers areas including D\u00fan Laoghaire, Shankill, Sallynoggin, Ballybrack, Monkstown, Foxrock and Dalkey.<\/p>\n
Greystones and District additionally covers Newtownmountkennedy and Kilcoole.<\/p>\n
Final regulatory approval from the Central Bank is expected in the coming weeks, with completion by the end of next month.<\/p>\n
Greystones and District Credit Union chair John Kenna said: \u201cOur members have sent a clear message that they want a stronger, united credit union that keeps community banking at its heart.<\/p>\n
![\"Credit](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/4c889951-0383-4a9b-8132-d8503e446415.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Credit unions will have nearly \u20ac10bn available for property and business loans. Photo: Getty<\/p>\n
Today’s News in 90 Seconds – Thursday, August 28<\/p>\n
\u201cThis merger ensures we can continue to deliver personal service locally while drawing on the strength of a larger organisation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Core CEO Michael Byrne said the merger will mean the new entity will be in a position to invest in new services, enhance its digital offering and continue to support the local communities it serves.<\/p>\n
Core had explored a merger with north Dublin-based Progressive Credit Union earlier this year. A combination of the two would have created a \u201csuper\u201d credit union with assets of \u20ac370m and close to 100,000 members.<\/p>\n
\nChanges to regulations will allow credit unions to more than triple their mortgage and business lending<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
In 2017, a proposed merger between Greystones and District and its neighbour, Bray, was rejected by members over fears of the closure of branch offices.<\/p>\n
There have been 13 credit union mergers in the last year.<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, there were 339 credit unions in Ireland, but that is down to 187, according to Central Bank figures.<\/p>\n
Part of the rationale for credit unions to amalgamate to create larger units is so they can expand their mortgage and business lending.<\/p>\n
This summer, the Central Bank gave the go-ahead for changes to lending regulations that will allow credit unions to more than triple their current mortgage and business lending.<\/p>\n
The new rules apply from next month and will increase the total lending capa\u00adcity of the sector for mortgage and business loans from \u20ac2.9bn to \u20ac9.9bn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is just the latest of more than a dozen such mergers this year as the \u00adlenders scale…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,22767,2107,20617,18,19,17,2108,1267],"class_list":{"0":"post-28211","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-central-bank-of-ireland","10":"tag-charlie-weston","11":"tag-credit-unions","12":"tag-eire","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-money-experts","16":"tag-property-mortgages"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}