Banking Sector
Dail Éireann — 2026-09-29
============================================================

Martin Daly (FF), Roscommon-Galway

I thank the Minister of State for his answer and I am reassured by what he tells me. Cash is still a vital component of our economy, especially in rural areas. In my own town of Ballygar, County Galway, we lost the Bank of Ireland in 2021 and access to 24-hour cash. It took a considerable campaign by the Ballygar Regeneration Group to get the Athenry Credit Union to install an ATM in June of this year. Cash still remains a critical safety net for individual groups, especially elderly people, people who are living with disability or people who may have an intellectual disability. It is a tool for social inclusion. It allows for immediate settlement of bills and it is a fundamental safeguard for consumer privacy. It is also a real backup in cases where the digital infrastructure around money transfers may fail or in the case of a natural disaster.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-09-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:00:59+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-09-29