Mr. Brian Hayes:

I appreciate the Deputy’s remarks. I do not want our statement to be in any way seen as indicating that we are against cash. We are concerned with a managed decline of the service. The reality, as the Department, the Central Bank and every other public authority has said, is that a decline in the use of cash has occurred. The Deputy is right to say that this was a trend long before the pandemic. It is also fair to say that during the pandemic, the trend escalated. It is worth saying that we were asked by the Government at the onset of the pandemic to make sure we could radically increase contactless payments because the Government and public authorities, from a public health perspective, wanted to take cash out of the system. A decision that probably would have taken the industry many months to come to a view on was done in a week. What happened during the pandemic was the escalation of an existing trend.

It is also fair to say that our customers were probably ahead of the banks on this issue. They were already tapping with their fingers and voting with their feet in terms of wanting contactless payments.