Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I would like to raise what I regard as an appalling decision, on which I have communicated with Ms McDonagh and in fairness, she has responded to that communication. It concerns the appalling decision to close down one third of the branch network right across the State. I want to put on the record again that the Bank of Ireland exists today because of the taxpayers of this State, who bailed it out at a time when it collapsed because of the reckless behaviours of bankers before Ms McDonagh's time. It exists today because of that sacrifice the Irish people made and now, in the time of a pandemic as we have just discussed, the response from Bank of Ireland is to withdraw those services in the communities.

Ms McDonagh will be aware that the Financial Conduct Authority in Britain has asked banks not to close branches during the pandemic for a most important reason, namely, because those who might want to move to digital access may not be in a position to get that support in-branch because they are cocooning. However, the Bank of Ireland group has decided to ignore that. It is closing 15 branches in the North and 88 branches in the South. There are vulnerable people who are cocooning and who will not be able to leave their houses to go to the branch to get help to go online. My view is that the group used Covid as a dummy run for this process, when during the first wave a similar number of branches were closed under the guise of the pandemic. In recent weeks, the bank has announced that basically, the same number of branches and most of the same branches will be closed. Is there anything that the Minister for Finance, as the major shareholder in the Bank, could say to encourage the group to at least delay this until after the pandemic is over?