Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are a lot of tangible issues relating to the motion, and we do not have a lot of time. Rather than choosing to attack another party in order to score political points, there is plenty of work to do on this.

I also welcome Peter O’Donoghue from Kilworth in Cork, who is in the Visitors Gallery today and who has done huge work. He has actually stood up and been counted in venues which refuse to take cash.

I want to correct the Minister of State. I do not believe she is right when she says that where people put up a poster or a notice saying cash is not acceptable, they are legally covered. They are not. The European Commission issued a document saying that that has no bearing. We use Europe as cover when we want to and then we ignore it when we want to.

The motion is straightforward. Refusal to accept cash as payment is discriminatory.

It is totally discriminatory against people with intellectual disabilities, elderly people, na daoine óige, the poorest in society and indeed our newest arrivals, namely the refugees, who cannot open a bank account or anything else. We have all these lovely platitudes and we talk of the inclusive actions we take, but we are allowing our banks to do this. There is some kind of amnesia in this Government, as there was in the previous one and the one I was in when we had the bank crash. It is an amnesia we get when we deal with the banks. We start deferring to them. In the past bank managers had great respect in the community, and rightly so. People knew the managers and they in turn knew the people. There was trust there and the managers knew who to help out and who to trust with loans and everything else. All that connectivity is gone. You cannot find a manager or even a teller in a bank now. I always support the staff of the banks who are there under duress. They get the brunt of it because when you go in you meet machine, after machine, after machine. They are like robots. The banks do not want the customers. Look at the arrogance of what AIB did last year, in spite of the fact every man, woman and child, and children unborn, will be paying for the horrible mess they left us in and the blank cheque they got from us. This is the thanks we get, because Governments are not up to it.

That was proved this morning. I mean no disrespect to the present Minister of State or to the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, but cá bhfuil an tAire Airgeadais, an Teachta Micheál Mac Craith, agus an tAire, an Teachta Ó Donnchú? I thank every group here who spoke in support of our motion. The Labour Party Members missed their slot, but Deputy Nash approached me to say they support it also. The Government is supporting the motion as well, so we have unanimous support. However, the Government is doing what it always does with a motion when it does not find it palatable to vote it down, namely, it takes it, puts it into a folder and files it away. It puts more folders on top of it and more on top of that until there are ten years of files sitting on it. I want dates and timelines for legislation from the Minister of State.

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