The financial regulator has moved in recent months to deepen its scrutiny of credit union lending patterns by requiring credit unions to make quarterly prudential reports available to it.
The new online reporting system was introduced last July but made public by the regulator only this week.
A recent report for the Irish League of Credit Unions warned that a large number of credit unions were ignoring the fact that their clients are not repaying their loans or are unaware of the problem.
Asked about this report, a spokesman for the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority said it would be "very concerned" if the board and management of any individual credit union did not maintain proper lending standards.
"Proper and robust lending standards must be in place in credit unions to protect member funds and to ensure that loans are repaid in accordance with their terms," he said.
"We have introduced quarterly prudential reporting in the last year. This monitoring system allows us to focus on up-to-date information and to identify areas of risk within credit unions. Previously this reporting was done on an annual basis."
The spokesman said a system was in place to follow up concerns where a credit union has high arrears and "we actively follow up on these issues as part of our routine oversight of credit unions".
The revised prudential reporting system has been rolled out on a phased basis, beginning with the 55 largest credit unions by asset size last July. By December, credit unions representing more than 80 per cent of credit union assets were operating the system.
The smallest 100 credit unions, which between them account for 3 per cent of the credit union assets, will report on a six-monthly basis.
The financial regulator said it continued to monitor the situation at Monaghan Credit Union, which in April was forced to deny it was insolvent after members turned up to withdraw their funds because they feared it was on the verge of going bust.
This followed confirmation from the union that it had bad debts of more than €11 million - a situation that led the registrar of credit unions, Brendan Logue, to withdraw permission for the credit union to pay out a dividend to members.
The regulator's spokesman said it was "very concerned" at any reports or evidence of a decline in credit quality. "Credit quality and standards of lending is an issue that is certainly high on our radar at the moment," he said.
The head of the Irish League of Credit Unions, Liam O'Dwyer, said member unions had been required to submit reports with key financial ratios on a quarterly basis for the last three or four years.
He said he welcomed the requirement for credit unions to submit quarterly reports to the State regulator. "From our point of view, it was in fact a good co-operation between us."
This development did not come about as a result of the situation in Monaghan, he said. "Indeed not. Monaghan was well before that," he said.
