Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It was interesting to hear the issue Deputy O’Callaghan raised of the renewed concerns on the tracker mortgages. We saw in June the concerns around the question of compound versus simple interest. It is worth noting that those concerns were raised in this committee in June 2021. Yet, they were still having to be unpacked going into the summer of 2022. This is a question of what is listened to. We talk about what was not recognised. These things have been flagged widely and issues have even been flagged in this committee.

I will raise the issue of the other decision, which is the one on which I will probably focus because I think the other ruling has already been unpacked quite substantially, and that is the question of that decision process leading to the proposal for the closure of a number of banks and the shift to digital services.

In June 2021, when the committee met AIB, I and other members asked whether excessive emphasis was being placed on the figures for digital transactions taking place during the Covid-19 pandemic and whether there had been a proper estimate of the extent to which those transactions were taking place digitally not as a matter of preference but of medical necessity. In addition, a large number of financial activities relating to banks had been placed in suspension. We specifically highlighted the need for AIB to recalculate what it was framing as the preference of customers and to give a proper weighting to Covid. What mechanisms will AIB have in place to respond at an earlier point to questions, issues and concerns that are flagged by customers, trade unions or Oireachtas Members? Since that meeting in June 2021, it seems there was no shift in how AIB acted and made decisions in the six to eight months thereafter on the basis of concerns that had been well flagged a year previously.

Dr. Hunt stated the necessary transition would still happen. I am a little concerned that this matter is being viewed as a public relations failure, rather than a failure to meaningfully consider the needs of Irish society. In that context, 42% of people in Ireland have below average digital skills and more than half of those aged between 65 and 74 have never used the Internet. Those figures are a reality check.

Financial abuse affects older people and people with disabilities in particular. The idea of not being able to directly access a local bank branch or cash payments affects and exacerbates vulnerability to financial abuse.

What is happening with regard to AIB's internal mechanisms for listening better and assessing specific issues of financial vulnerability that have been exposed? The digital transition is simply not happening at pace. It is not simply a matter that it needed to be promoted quicker. It is that it is not where a large section of the population is at.

I attended a briefing by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, IHREC, today and one of the issues it spoke about was banking and related equality issues. In that context, given that the State is the largest shareholder in AIB, it strikes me that if this decision had been equality-proofed, it certainly would have highlighted issues such as the digital divide, the vulnerability of particular persons to economic abuse and its implications for financial independence. Is there equality screening in place? Has AIB looked at some of the tools that have been developed under the public duty for equality and human rights to see how it could apply them to its major policy decisions? Will that be taken on board going forward?