The Butts Community Savings Bank has had a record savings year with the bank handing out a six-figure sum to savers who were wise enough to put a little away each week for Christmas time.
There are now more than two hundred local families using the bank with children accounting for almost half of the membership. Chairperson Pat McAuley and voluntary teller at the weekly bank which runs for 48 weeks each year, thanked his fellow volunteers for their commitment to the Community Bank each week throughout the year and he thanked the local members who had made the local savings initiative such a runaway success.
He said, “from the beginning of the year as the economic news got worse for the country we saw a big rise in local families putting away a little each week for rainy days. Our membership and weekly savings increased about 30 per cent from early last year as more people responded to the uncertainty of employment in 2009 and also from people who had lost their jobs and needed to put something aside to pay for special family events during the year.”
Teasie Brennan, current chairperson of St Canice’s Credit Union and founding member and voluntary teller with the Butts Community Bank said, “the success of the community initiative that runs from the Fr McGrath Centre each week is due to the convenience and accessibility of the service to local families.” She especially thanked local volunteers Anne Marie Clifford, Michelle McEvoy, Trish King, Joe O’Grady, Dave Barry, Carmel Joyce and Pat McAuley who ran the service every week from the first Thursday in January to the last Thursday in November.
St Canice’s Credit Union and former Credit Union Board members, along with the Butts and Newpark Close community centres originally established the community savings project three years ago in response to growing numbers of families falling into debt. The Community Banks aim to train children in the savings habit from their earliest years and to make saving easy and accessible for local families. It has since thrived at the Fr McGrath and Newpark Close Family Resource Centres where they started as a pilot scheme.
Now Community Banks are also thriving in Hebron estate and O’Loughlin/Millennium Court, Freshford and at the Bagenalstown Family Centre in Carlow and plans are afoot for a new bank in Bishop Birch community in January.
