It will be a long day before Charlie McCreevy meets the Irish League of Credit Unions again.

The Finance Minister told Fine Gael's North Kerry TD, Jimmy Deenihan, in the Dail last week that he was "fully conversant" with the views of the league.

And he was equally adamant when Mr Deenihan mischievously pushed him on the matter, suggesting that "there must be a reason" why he would not meet a group that represented about 2.2 million people in Ireland and 1.8 million of them in the Republic.

Mr McCreevy replied: "If I were as conversant with the views of my constituents in Co Kildare as I am with those of the Irish League of Credit Unions, I would get 99 per cent of the vote in a general election. "There is no other group in the country with whose views I am more conversant and I have the stabs in the back to prove it." Ouch!