asked the Minister for Trade, Commerce and Tourism if he will consider introducing legislation to ensure that the full list of the membership of all building societies will be made available to all interested parties at present in the same manner as the full list of the membership of all limited companies; if he is aware that at present there is no way of ascertaining whether those voting at annual general meetings of building societies are members; and if he will make a statement on the matter.

Sections 10 and 73 of the Building Societies Act, 1976, would appear to contain adequate safeguards as regards the procedures to be adopted at meetings and communications between members. Any person who feels that his rights have been infringed would be entitled to seek the protection of the courts. Accordingly, I would not consider the introduction of any amending legislation to be necessary.

Would the Minister agree the question is not confined to the holding of an annual general meeting? I asked, and the Minister has not specified, why the same regulations should not apply to building societies as apply to limited companies in regard to the disclosure of the full list of membership, and is the Minister aware that under sections 16 and 119 of the Companies Act, 1963, this applies to limited companies and public companies but does not apply to building societies and would the Minister agree it should apply?

I do not think a comparison between companies and building societies is fair. Building societies are engaged in investment by a very large number of people and it would be unfair to apply a regulation to such societies which did not equally apply to other financial institutions engaged in the same type of operation. The practicability of disclosing membership would be fairly considerable. As I understand it, there are 583,000 members ranging from 200,000 in the largest to the smallest, 190 approximately. Full public disclosure would obviously be an intolerable burden on the operation of these societies. In addition, as I said, it would not be fair to compare them with companies. If regulations were to be introduced they would have to be across the board. In other words, they would have to apply to all institutions engaged in related types of activity.

I must ask a further question because I do not think that the Minister has applied himself to the original question.

Has the Deputy a question?

Would the Minister accept that the question refers to the information being available to all interested parties as distinct from being made available publicly? In the case of a building society, whether with a membership of 50 or of 50,000, would the Minister agree that the information should be made available to all those members but not necessarily made available publicly? In referring to other institutions in a similar line of business, is the Minister referring to the banks and to the question of special provisions being made available for them? I have asked simply about building societies.

We cannot have a debate on the matter.

Would the Minister not agree that what is justified in the case of building societies should be justified also in respect of banks and other institutions engaged in such business?

Under section 10 (1) of the Building Societies Act, 1976, the rules of every building society must specify the procedure to be observed at meetings. Therefore, each society are responsible for the proper conduct of their meetings. The Registrar of Building Societies is not aware of any significant abuse in the area of voting at general meetings of building societies. Should such abuse occur in the future, the Minister for the Environment has power, within the terms of section 10(3) of the Act, to prescribe rules in respect of any of the matters listed in subsection (1) of that section. These include the procedures to be observed at meetings as well as other matters of procedure concerning meetings such as notices, voting rights, proxies and the taking of polls. Regarding the question of communicating information to members, section 73 of the Act is relevant also to the extent that it established a new procedure whereby a member of a building society may communicate through the secretary of the society with the other members of the society on a subject relating to the affairs of the society.