A very tough decision faced the Cabinet when it met on Tuesday morning.
The Minister for Finance, who was presenting the legislation, must have been very worried about it getting the nod.
After all, it isn’t everyday a Government has to agonise over whether or not to approve something called the “Access to Cash Bill”.
And it wasn’t even budget week.
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Michael McGrath’s latest offering is designed to ensure that people will not be unduly restricted in their attempts to splash the spondulicks because they can’t get to an ATM machine.
“Cash: it’s here to stay” declared the Keeper of the National Purse at a press conference in his department to mark this milestone. Is there any chance he could make it stay a bit longer?
It took nine months of heavy lifting by McGrath’s team in the banking section to put together the scheme, for which he is very grateful.
And now, he is “putting the anchor on the issue of access to cash”, which can be a terrible drag when the long trek to find an ATM which hasn’t yet vanished ends up before a banjaxed machine over which somebody puked the night before.
Back at the Dáil’s third sitting of the new year and the Taoiseach’s first, Mary Lou McDonald was talking about vulture funds buying up houses again. It is the only issue Sinn Féin has raised during Leaders’ Questions since the term began, concentrating on the “latest scandal” of a fund recently buying 46 out of 54 new homes at Belcamp Manor in north Dublin.
Mary Lou upped her use of the word ‘vulture’ on this outing, quite outdoing herself and deputy leader Pearse Doherty’s ample use of it last week when she achieved a dozen mentions over two questions
So much for Government attempts to “clip the wings” of these funds when their wholesale buying activities came to light in 2021 because, according to her, they are “still snapping up homes” and “laughing all the way to the bank”.
They’ll be laughing all the way to the ATM as well now.
Mary Lou upped her use of the word “vulture” on this outing, quite outdoing herself and deputy leader Pearse Doherty’s ample use of it last week when she achieved a dozen mentions over two questions.
Despite bringing in measures to discourage the practice after a particularly egregious example in Maynooth caused uproar, she told Leo Varadkar the Government had “left the door open and the vultures swooped through”.
All is not lost, though, because Sinn Féin’s motion on culling them mid-swoop is up for a vote on Wednesday and she urged TDs from all sides to support it and “clip the wings of the vultures”.
Leo thinks Mary Lou is flying without wings on this one.
His response mirrored last week’s replies from Government stand-ins Heather Humphreys and Darragh O’Brien: the planning permission for the Belcamp Manor development was granted in 2019, predating the new law prohibiting bulk buying, so they could do nothing to prevent it.
The Taoiseach wasn’t surprised by what Deputy McDonald told him. “What you’ve represented in the Dáil today isn’t the full story; as is so often the case, you’ve engaged in a degree of misleading behaviour.”
While he wants to see bulk buying stopping completely, he accused the Sinn Féin leader of trying to create the impression that it is happening still in huge numbers, which is not accurate. Last year, it was “maybe 1,000 out of 10,000 transactions”.
He doesn’t have the full detail yet from Michael “Access for Cash” McGrath but expects when he sees it “I’ll find out that you haven’t told the full story. That you haven’t given the full story to the Irish people and that you’ve engaged in a degree of misrepresentation and misleading behaviour.”
Some consolation though for Mary Lou. Her party’s contention (echoed by all Opposition parties) that the original stamp duty imposed on entities buying en masse “was far too low” and must be increased has not been dismissed.
Of course, it will have to be considered carefully because “any change to tax can have unforeseen impacts and sometimes doesn’t work” but “we are not ruling out an increase in that”.
Mulch the Vulchs, Vol ll, is on the way.
Maybe they might even finish the job this time.
The Minister for Finance was like a child in a sweetshop. His parallel ‘national payment strategy’ should, indeed, make life easier for children in sweetshops turning out their pockets to buy essential gobstoppers
The news from the Department of Finance on clipping the wings of vulture banks swooping in and carrying off defenceless ATM machines was more encouraging.
Thanks to the Access for Cash Bill, the grannies and grandads and uncles and aunties of Ireland will be able to source First Holy Communion and Confirmation money with far less difficulty. This particularly applies to people living in rural areas who want to give somebody the few bob but can’t find a cash machine.
The legislation is also introducing protections for people who don’t tap or use plastic but pay cash for certain essential goods and services.
“It’s the other side of the coin, pardon the pun,” smiled McGrath, going mad and making a little joke.
The Minister for Finance was like a child in a sweetshop. His parallel “national payment strategy” should, indeed, make life easier for children in sweetshops turning out their pockets to buy essential gobstoppers.
It will fall to the three retail banks to ensure that there are enough machines installed nationwide in accordance with the legislation and that are adequately serviced and stocked.
The new laws will ensure the number of ATMs around the country stays at pre-pandemic levels. Banks will have to maintain a set amount of machines per 100,000 people and also ensure that nobody is more than 10km from their nearest drink-link.
If the banks are not doing what they are supposed to do, they will have to deal with the Central Bank, which will have powers to enforce compliance. That has worked out with mixed results in the past.
The Central Bank will be able to carry out a “local deficiency” test if there are complaints about rogue, wrecked or missing machines.
More ATMs, working more smoothly, dispensing different denominations of cash and open for longer hours? Can’t really complain with that. Maybe this is part of a cunning Government plan in advance of the next general election.
Roll out more cash machines. Stuff them with money. And roll out a giveaway budget so more people can use them.
Then roll out to the constituencies as quickly as possible for the Access to Cash campaign.
