The combined loan book of Irish League of Credit Unions members surpassed €6 billion by the end of March.
The league said its affiliated credit unions - which make up 90% of active credit unions in Ireland - issued loans of €685m between January and March. That represents an 11% increase on the final three months of 2024, despite the number of new loans issued falling by 13% to 89,516.
It is the first time the ILCU loan book has passed the €6 billion mark since 2008 - just at the onset of the global financial crisis. However the organisation says the nature of its members' lending has changed significantly since then.
"Now we can see in the loan book that we have, still, our market-leading share of the personal lending unsecured market - 85% of our loan book is still in personal lending," said ILCU CEO David Malone.
"But now what we're seeing on top of that is an increasing diversification into mortgages," he said.
"We now have a mortgage loan book that's at €825m for the sector, and that's going to soon migrate, comfortably, up to €1 billion," he added.
Illustrating that growth is the fact that mortgages made up the vast majority of the value of lending in the quarter - with €632m of loans going towards home purchases.
That is a 5% increase in the quarter, with mortgage lending up 34% year-on-year.
The ILCU said mortgages now make up more than 10% of its members' loan book.
And while credit union lending is now at volumes last seen during the final years of the Celtic Tiger, Mr Malone says its members are now far more resilient in the face of any potential shocks.
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"Credit Unions are significantly regulated - intensely regulated and supervised," he said. "Our arrears are at historic near-term lows of less than 2.4%. That's lower than the financial services industry average of about 4%".
"That's because of credit worthiness assessments, vigilence, monitoring... and knowledge of our members - we know our members so well and that's put us in a very strong and resilient context," he stated.
The ILCU has ambitious growth plans for its mortgage offering.
While it anticipates such lending will reach €1 billion in the near future, it also hopes to see the enactment of proposals that would significantly increase its lending limit beyond that.
"The Central Bank have proposed new regulations for credit unions, and increasing significantly the level of mortgages they can provide," Mr Malone said.
"Under the new regulations, which we would like to see regulated as soon as possible, the mortgage-lending capacity of credit unions could increased their loan book, for mortgages, up to €5.9 billion," he said.
"That's effectively a potential tripling - but we'll do that in a safe, prudent and phased manner," he added.
However the ILCU's hope is that credit unions will eventually make up 10% of new mortgage loans being issued nationwide - making it a significant player in the market.
That comes at a time when other lenders are entering the market - while falling European Central Bank rates potentially allows existing banks to offer more competitive rates. But Mr Malone believes that credit unions would still have something to offer customers.
"Our funding model is about using member savings, so we recycle member savings and use that to support our mortgage offering," he said. "We don't depend on the ECB rates - we don't have that interest rate volatility or fluctuation. That's very important for the national interest, as well".
"Credit unions are staying in the market of mortgages for the long term, they won't exit the market like other non-bank lenders potentially because of interest rate volatility, and we can ensure there's competition in the market - and a market that has stability and liquidity throughout different economic cycles," he added.
