Michael Ring
Question:159. Deputy Michael Ring asked the Minister for Finance if he plans to introduce legislation pertaining to a cashless society; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40160/23]
View answerWednesday, 20 September 2023
Questions (159)
Written answers
In November 2022, the Retail Banking Review was published by my Department. It concluded that, despite this decline, cash remains an important element of the payments system and the broader economy and it is essential that cash remains readily available to customers through ATMs and other means across the country. It also concluded that there was still reasonable access to cash at the time of publishing but noted that neither the Minister for Finance, nor the Central Bank, had any powers to ensure this.
Accordingly, the Review recommended that the Department of Finance should develop Access to Cash legislation and prepare heads of a bill in 2023 with the initial objective of developing criteria that would secure access to cash at about the levels prevailing in December 2022 but also provide for such criteria to be amended appropriately in future as and when cash usage declines further. The key objective is to ensure that evolution of the access to cash infrastructure does not move ahead of society's needs and expectations and that this future evolution is handled in a fair, transparent, and equitable manner.
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 well 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, including the aspects on Independent ATM Deployers (IADs).
This is an important piece of legislation and Heads of the Bill will be brought to Government before the end of this year to seek approval to draft the Bill and to submit it for pre-legislative scrutiny to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform and the Taoiseach.
In relation to the acceptance of cash, the current position for businesses in Ireland is where a business places no restrictions on the means of payment it is prepared to accept, it must accept cash as legal tender when offered by a customer to settle a debt that has arisen. If a business specifies that payment must be in a form other than cash, for example through a sign stating, “cash not accepted” or “card payment only” at the store entrance or check out area, the customer cannot subsequently claim a legal right to pay in cash. The converse also applies if a business only accepts cash and will not accept payment by card.
As required by one of the recommendations in the Retail Banking Review, approved by Government and published in November 2022, the Department of Finance is preparing a new National Payments Strategy to be completed in 2024. One of the key objectives of the Strategy is to ensure “Access and Choice” in the form of promoting reasonable options for consumers and small business.
A key component of the strategy is a payments roadmap which will examine trends and developments in digital payments (including card) and consider how best to achieve the overarching objective of access and choice in the payment methods used in Ireland, be it cash, card, etc. I expect the Strategy to examine the relevant issues holistically and to make recommendations that will ensure the payments system enables consumers to have access to all the necessary payment means needed to fully participate in society and the economy.
The Deputy should also be aware that on 28 June the European Commission put forward two proposals within a ‘single currency package’ to ensure that individuals and businesses can continue to access and pay with euro banknotes and coins across the euro area, and to set out a framework for a possible new digital form of the euro that the European Central Bank could choose to issue in the future, as a complement to cash.