Meet our Advocate of the Year

ACCA’s advocacy awards celebrate members who make a difference in their communities and workplaces, and who support the next generation of talent in the profession.

Grainne Murphy FCCA, ACCA Ireland’s 2023 Advocate of the Year, has a long track record of delivering on all fronts. Since she first became a member of the financial services network (FSN) panel in 2014, Murphy has been an important voice for the credit union sector and was instrumental in setting up the now annual ACCA Credit Union Conference.

As panel chair Stephen Kenny FCCA noted when handing over the award, that event has become ‘a mainstay of both the ACCA and credit union calendars, resulting in ACCA becoming more widely known and recognised in a key sector as the premier accounting qualification’.

Passion for community

For Murphy, who is CEO of Ballinasloe Credit Union, the ongoing success of the conference is testament to the ‘many links between the core philosophies of credit unions and ACCA. Credit unions are built on a solid foundation of ethics in service delivery and always putting the member first. ACCA members have ethics in their DNA, which is why, I believe, they contribute so positively to the sector.’

Underlying this is a passion for the community and a belief in ‘people helping people’, an ethos that Murphy says ‘brings a real sense of purpose and pride in what I do’, and which she acknowledges has become more pertinent than ever in the current environment. ‘The ongoing cost-of-living increases present many challenges, and credit unions are working every day to find workable solutions for members who find themselves in difficulty.’

A member of ACCA since 2006, Murphy says the qualification empowers her in her everyday professional life by giving her ‘a really solid understanding of not only finance and accounting but also risk and investment management, and business model development’.

Her ‘people-helping-people’ ethos also finds expression beyond financial decision-making and is reflected, for example, in her support of the ACCA Schools Initiative. Murphy regularly acts as a mentor to students interested in a career in accounting or financial services.

Active encouragement

As 2023 sees nine years’ service to the FSN panel concluded, the Advocate of the Year award is a fitting tribute to a member who, over a decade, was instrumental in making ACCA a trusted partner to the credit union sector.

Murphy’s active encouragement of fellow ACCA members to join the boards of their local credit unions will provide a further dividend to the sector in years to come.

In 2022, she worked with ACCA, the Irish League of Credit Unions and the Credit Union Development Association to create a sustainability reporting template based on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. That work continues in the development of a framework for sustainability reporting for the sector.

On receiving the award, Murphy says that she felt ‘truly honoured. I was amazed at the level of goodwill I received from my ACCA and credit union colleagues, and am so grateful for their support.

‘I am really proud to be an ACCA member. It is an organisation that reflects the values and ethics that I believe in, and which I apply to my life both professionally and personally.’