Dáil debates

Wednesday, 8 March 2023

Protection of Cash as Legal Tender: Motion [Private Members]

 

10:52 am

Photo of Pádraig Mac LochlainnPádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Chief Medical Officer, in recent days, has talked about older people getting back to normal after the pandemic to regain their lives and part of that is this issue of being able to pay with cash. Not everybody is able to go online and operate like that with credit cards. There is a section of people who will be excluded if this is the way we proceed.

I am glad that Deputy Gould mentioned AIB because what it had proposed was outrageous. They were essentially to close access to cash facilities, including ATMs, at their banks in vast swathes of rural Ireland. In Donegal, it was to have a significant impact. The GAA clubs were to the fore in speaking out against that. Thankfully, AIB, with the public backlash and the fact that we have substantial State control of it, did what was right eventually, but it should not have taken all of that.

I am really disappointed with the cashless approach the GAA has taken. It needs to listen to the grassroots and in particular make sure that older people who have been the bedrock of their clubs for years can go along to the games. Anybody who follows the GAA and goes to those matches sees that historically there is a large number of older people for whom it is where they socially interact and have the craic every Sunday. That decision needs to be reversed. It needs to be accessible to all.

If you look at the National Driver Licence Service, in Donegal you cannot pay with cash if you go to avail of your driving licence. I am starting to see increasingly it creeping in that a section of people are excluded.

I thank the Rural Independent Group for this important motion because there has been a drift towards cash being rejected, and cash is legal tender. No citizen should be denied access, certainly to something that is a public service or a community service, if he or she has legal tender in his or her hands and is willing to pay. We need to stop this and we need to listen to our communities and our grassroots and confront those who are acting against those interests.

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