Difficulties faced by credit unions are grossly exaggerated and confused with toxicity in the banking sector, the president of the Irish League of Credit Unions has said.

Speaking to The Irish Times, Martin Sisk said issues faced by a small number of credit unions were broadly misconstrued as affecting the whole sector.

“There were things said that suggested that credit unions had a much bigger problem than they actually had and a lot of issues got exaggerated at the time, but I’m glad to say that in more recent times there is more clear [media] coverage of the issue,” he said.

“The big problems were in the banking sector. There were a very small number of credit unions who ran into some difficulties, which were resolved. They were misconstrued as being widespread across all the credit unions.

“Unfortunately I feel that they [the media and general public] didn’t fully understand the picture and as a result of that there was a lot of hype, and there were statements being wildly attributed to people which gave the false impression that there was a much bigger problem in credit unions than there really was,” he added.

He said the negative coverage in recent years “wasn’t helpful” for the hundreds of credit unions attempting to navigate the challenging economic climate.

“Credit unions have now progressed to a situation where any of them that had difficulties have now turned the corner, and the outlook for credit unions is very positive. I think the resilience of the credit unions and the credit union movement has been shown.”