Mr. John Hogan:

Ms Donnery mentioned the retail banking review conducted last year, the details of which were published in November. It is fair to say that, in the course of the banking review, one of the big issues that came through for us was access to cash and the importance to consumers of retaining access to cash. That was against the backdrop of our having just come through the pandemic, in which a lot of the behaviour in relation to the use of cash seemed to be moving in a different direction. We had a public consultation event in Tullamore. One of the issues that arose there was access to cash, and indeed support for the SME sector, financial literacy and so on. It allowed us, as part of the retail banking inquiry, to develop our thinking on all this, aided by the Central Bank. We are looking at bringing forward legislation on access to cash through the course of this year.