Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will make two final points. I will pick up on the point made by Mr. Hayes on 70% plus of customers opening their accounts digitally. That is not accurate. I am sure he knows that as the CEO of Banking and Payments Federation Ireland. I will put on record, from the data Bank of Ireland, AIB and Permanent TSB have given us, that 36% of Bank of Ireland current accounts, or almost one in four, have been opened in their branches since the start of the year, which is more than 18,000. The figure for Permanent TSB customers who are opening their accounts in-branch is 51% and 65%, or nearly two out of three, of AIB customers are opening their current accounts in-branch. This leads me to the point that I genuinely and strongly believe the banks are not scaling up enough to deal with the serious pressure that will come at a later stage. People have put the letters to one side, but as more and more attention is paid to this matter there will be a major spike. I will make that point.

It will be disputed but there is nearly an attitude of the switching code having so many problems. I am not saying it is perfect. Obviously, the switching code is not in the best interests of the banks because it is labour-intensive. The receiving banks and withdrawing banks have to do quite a bit of work, which is staff-intensive, but there are benefits to it. Banking and Payments Federation Ireland has been engaged with the DDOs, and I agree 100% we cannot force them to engage, but some are engaging and are willing to do this. On customer awareness, why does Mr. Hayes's organisation not publish a full list - maybe it has and I have not seen it - of all the DDOs, including the most common, the top 20 and others, that are part of, and engaging with, the switching code and others who are not? If somebody wants to switch, it is a matter of the switching code being terrible and certain banks do not use it and all the rest. The alternative is that people do it all themselves, where they can use the switching code and also switch manually for the entities that do not use it, whether it is Spotify, gym membership or whatever. Why does the federation not publish that information so we know who is involved and who is not?