Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend the Rural Independent Group for bringing this forward.

Often when we talk about cash and those people who access cash, we talk about older people. Personally, I far prefer to use cash because it is a far easier way to know how much you are spending, where your money is going etc. A lot of speakers before me have already detailed the impact that not having access to or being able to pay for goods in cash can and would have on a vast array of different people, especially older people who find online banking etc. a lot more difficult.

I want to make some wider points as well, I suppose to put this debate in a different context. Obviously we need to recognise that cash represents at present only 3% of the money supply in most developed countries and the overwhelming majority of it is digital. In recent times, certain types of notes have been phased out. Most ordinary people have never seen a €500 note. Such notes were mostly used in money-laundering and by those engaged in financial crime and hence high denomination notes were phased out.

It is also important to address the proposals for central bank digital currencies which often exercise people. There are various motivations for central bank digital currencies. There is the rise of crypto-currencies, the Chinese Central Bank's efforts to create its own digital yuan, the US Federal Reserve and ECB's fear of being left behind etc.

Of course, then there are the impacts of quantitative easing. During the last financial crisis, significant amounts of new digital currency were created. This was, in effect, given over to the commercial banking sector in the hope that it would lend to the real economy but that did not work out as planned. Banks largely sat on this new credit or used it to buy and sell existing assets, and hence the major price inflation in property assets and other financial assets over the past decade. It was stimulus for the banks but not for ordinary people. It contributed to growing wealth inequality but, unfortunately, we have not seen much focus on that.

There are a number of reasons I think cash is important. For most people, and me personally, it is good to have access to cash.

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