The board of the Irish League of Credit Unions (ILCU) has projected spending €135,000 to send a delegation to a five-day conference in Australia next year.
Such expenditure was outlined in the league's proposed budget for 2003, which was rejected at a special meeting of delegates in Galway last month. When asked how many board members would be attending the World Council of Credit Unions event in Brisbane, a spokesman said that no decision had been taken.
"Decisions on the shape and size of the delegation will be made closer to the time when we've had a better opportunity to see what's on the agenda," he said.
It is thought the controversy prompted by the attendance of 130 Irish delegates at a world council event in Poland last summer will be discussed when the matter of the board's attendance is addressed. The movement - one of whose objectives is the promotion of thrift - has been riven with disaffection.
The spokesman said: "We will be attending the conference because it's the World Council of Credit Unions and because it has been very useful for credit unions in the past for the league to have an opportunity to see what's going on globally."
The €135,000 budget projection is more than twice the €56,000 spent this year when 11 board representatives and 10 of their companions attended the Polish conference. Expenses incurred by the other 109 Irish attendees were paid by individual credit unions.
The registration fee for the event in Brisbane is €1,099 per attendee and the fee for companions is €577. Options on the companion programme include tours of the Gold and Sunshine coasts. The world council is also marketing tours to the Great Barrier Reef.
Delegates were told at the Galway meeting that serious problems were still hampering the board's work, months after a separate consultant's study found it to be dysfunctional.
A review of the reform process said little if anything had changed, although one of its writers said the criticism was directed at a small minority of directors. The review said there was a "general difficulty" for certain directors "differentiating between strategy matters and their long-standing determination to control all aspects of the movement". But the league's president, Mr John O'Regan, said the movement had turned the corner.
The budget rejected last month said the league would also pay an affiliation fee of €75,000 to the world council. Also outlined in the proposed budget was expenditure of €27,000 on membership of an EU group of credit unions and travel to meetings.
