Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

By and large, those who do not have bank accounts tend to be those who are less well off or perhaps older people. Perhaps they include people who, wisely, learned not to trust banks too much. It is partly a cultural phenomenon.

In Africa, for instance, almost all banking is done by telephone. There has been an enormous change in how banking is carried out nowadays. If the basic bank account, as committed to by the Minister for Finance, is developed in conjunction with a countrywide operator such as An Post, the system will reach into every parish in the country. It affords an opportunity to be a social and economic vehicle in the way we just described. I hope the Minister for Finance takes this into account in the context of the deliberations of his Department. I do make my views known.

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