Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 27 February 2024
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
General Scheme of the Access to Cash Bill 2024: Discussion
Mr. Oliver Gilvarry:
We also have to factor in that if we are looking further out on this with the decline in the use of cash, there is a commercial aspect. There are commercial aspects to ATMs being used and as we see a decline coming through, which is likely. It is not certain, but it is likely. In ten or 15 years, we have to have the ability to change to reflect the situation with the appropriate protections in place. Even if in 20 or 30 years cash use has dropped by 60% from our current levels, we will always need a certain level of infrastructure to allow people to have access. I do not see that we will get rid of cash in full. The Swedes went down that route to a certain degree and then had to pull back. We will always have a certain level of cash and that feeds into the national payments strategy, as Mr. Palmer said. Where is this going? We need to consider what is the appropriate level of infrastructure we need to have in place. We must have the flexibility in the legislation and we also have to keep an eye on it. Again, I come back to managing the cost side of it. If there is a decline in cash, we should have a managed decline in cash usage so that people are not forced not to use cash, that they have the ability to get cash. That is the intention of the legislation.
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