Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to put one final question before calling Deputy Michael McGrath. I came across an issue on the Askaboutmoney.com website that looks at people's engagement with financial institutions and so forth. This would be a question for the Central Bank. One of the persons who put a notice on it referred to free banking on opening his or her account initially. Then the bank changed its position and introduced charges and put notices to that effect in the newspapers. People were invited to the bank and, as Mr. Fielding said earlier, one gets a bunch of flowers on entering. The whole system is automated and one might see one person when entering or leaving the bank. That is obviously a cost reduction exercise on the part of the bank. There has also been a presentation to show that if people move online, their banking costs will reduce or may be free, if I can use that term loosely. The issue I picked up on the Askaboutmoney.com website was that when the banks changed their charges they put notices to that effect in the newspapers. While it may be reasonable not to require a bank to write to all its customers advising of every change in charges - everyone here gets spam e-mails from financial institutions about one's account logon etc. - when dramatic changes are made which actually reduce what might be described as "free" banking, should they be required to engage with their customers in some context or other to inform them of a fee which was not in place previously?