People aged 60 or older are disproportionately likely to experience digital and social exclusion as a result of society relying more on cashless payments, Age Action has said.
The Oireachtas Finance Committee has also heard that six in ten older people already experience digital exclusion, and benefit from using cash.
The charity’s policy specialist, Nat O’Connor, told politicians that the Access to Cash Bill is helpful, but not comprehensive enough to prevent financial exclusion.
Mr O’Connor called for robust infrastructure and regulations to guarantee easy access to and acceptance of cash for at least 20 years.
Cathaoirleach of the Joint Oireachtas Finance committee Rose Conway-Walsh said she agreed with Mr O’Connor, that public transport had to be taken into consideration with the placement of ATMs.
“If you don’t have transport, to get 10km, it might as well be 1,000km,” the Sinn Féin TD argued.
Legislation would be necessary to achieve this Mr O’Connor said.
“It will cost [the banks] money,” he said.
Mr O’Connor said the fact that ATMs often do not stock smaller bills pushes people to take out larger sums of money.
“We want people to have easy access to cash, or in smaller denominations,” said Mr O’Connor.
Fianna Gael’s Bernard Durkan said it was important that the system worked.
Ms Conway-Walsh said: “When we see the profits that are being reported … the banks will argue with us that this will make them uncompetitive … because obviously there are extra costs in ensuring that everyone has timely access to their cash.”
Mr O’Connor said banking is a social good and people cannot use something else.
“It’s part of the deal of providing banking, you can’t just hive off only the profitable aspects of banking.”
Cash is public money, Mr O’Connor quoted the ECB as saying.
One in five people are at risk of poverty, said Mr O’Connor who said that three in ten older people get 90% of their income from the State.
Part of the Access to Cash Bill is regulating ATMs for the first time, Mr O’Connor said, who added that ATMs could be brought under the remit of the Central Bank.
Mr O’Connor said that over 1,000 cash machines had been sold by the banks to third party operators for a three-year period, and that was coming to an end shortly.
