Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome my very good personal friend, Deputy Canney, to the House. We served on committees together in the past. I have not had the opportunity to either welcome or congratulate him before now. It was a privilege to work with him in another capacity previously and it is great to see him here today as a Minister of State. I know he brings a lot of skill and dedication to the role.

I support my good friend and colleague, Senator Boyhan, on this important matter. It is a huge issue. We have had the banks close all over rural Ireland. Now we need an assurance by way of the inventory that Senator Boyhan talked about and we need a monitoring process to ensure we actually have a good spread of ATMs throughout the country. No place with a reasonable population or that is a centre of access should be without an ATM.

One of the great problems is that, at weekends, a lot of ATMs run out of cash. They are not properly stocked with money and they tend to run out on a Saturday afternoon and leave people stranded on a Sunday. It is quite a problem and is a real issue now that the banks have effectively deserted rural Ireland. We need ATMs and we need a network of them. I look forward to the Minister of State's response and I certainly support Senator Boyhan, whose important point was well made.