Finance (Provision of Access to Cash Infrastructure) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2025-05-13
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Joe O'Reilly (FG), Labour Panel

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.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2025-05-13/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:47+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-05-13