Mr. John O'Connell:

When changes such as branch closures are considered, we would wish for an environmental assessment of the impact of what is being proposed so that before any decision was taken, its impact on communities and staff would be assessed and that would guide the next steps. The future of the branch network has to be weighed up in the round, including the social impact of removing the branch and issues such as whether it is the last branch in town and so forth. Different factors would then come in to play such as what options were being put to customers or whether they were in an area with broadband or a rural area with very limited opinions. The first point of any proposal would be to assess the impact on the community of what was being proposed and then it would go from there. If closure was an option, there would have to be a lead-in time to give communities to come up with alternatives. Were it the last bank in town, that would require very serious consideration before such a closure was authorised.

We have submitted freedom of information requests to the Central Bank on branch closures and all the banks have closed branches. It is astonishing and breathtaking to see that it is effectively a tick-box exercise in that the bank alerts the Central Bank of its intention to close a branch and the Central Bank notes this intention. There does not appear to be further interaction on the withdrawal of services from communities. We were very surprised. We thought there would be a robust debate with the Central Bank before a service would be reduced or eliminated but that is not the case according to the evidence we have seen through freedom of information requests.