Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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237. To ask the Minister for Finance if he will consider legislation to provide the right for people to pay for goods and services in cash; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [11170/23]

Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The Retail Banking Review, published in November 2022,recommended that the Department of Finance should develop Access to Cash legislation and prepare heads of a bill in 2023.

The Review also called on Department officials to prepare heads of a bill in 2023 to require ATM operators to be authorised and supervised by the Central Bank and to provide the Central Bank with responsibility and powers to protect the resilience of the cash system including the authorisation and supervision of cash-in-transit firms in respect of their cash handling activities and related financial services.

It is my intention to fully honour this commitment and this work is now underway by officials in my Department. It is intended that one piece of legislation will be drafted for all three recommendations on access to cash.

Following consultation with the Central Bank and other stakeholders, the Department will establish what the appropriate levels of access to cash are to ensure that any further evolution of the cash infrastructure will be managed in a fair, orderly, transparent and equitable manner for all stakeholders.

The Retail Banking Review also recommended that the Department should lead on the preparation of a new National Payments Strategy (NPS) to be ready in 2024. Preparatory work to implement this is now underway. The NPS will set out a roadmap for the future evolution of the entire payments system, taking account of developments in digital payments, cash usage and how future changes should be made to the legislative criteria relating to Access to Cash.

It will also consider if legislation should be introduced to require certain firms or sectors to accept, or facilitate the acceptance of, cash; and if it should be policy to require the public service to accept, or facilitate the acceptance of, cash.