‘It is small towns that suffer’: Rural communities prepare for Ulster Bank pullout

“It is the little towns that will suffer over this,” taxi driver Stephen Smith says of the Ulster Bank decision to pull out of the Republic of Ireland.

He and other traders in Ballyjamesduff, Co Cavan, had hoped the presence of three big employers – Liffey Meats, Cavan Box and Modular Homes Ireland – along with Ballyjamesduff Mart, would ensure the last bank standing in the town would remain open.

“You can see the queue for the bank right down the street,” says Smith. “There are a lot of people from a 10km radius who come to this town to shop. They come from Cross Keys, Mount Nugent and Kilnaleck and visit the bank. If it closes, the nearest would be Cavan or Oldcastle.”

Bank of Ireland closed its branch in Kilnaleck “a few” years ago and the impact on the town was hard, he says. “It is all the small towns that suffer.”

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Smith’s brother Trevor, a local councillor, agrees: “Small towns are on a knife edge.”

The bank plays a pivotal role in the town, he says. “People come into town and they maybe pick up their pension and pay a few bills and spend a bit of money.”

The fear is that once they have to go somewhere else for a bank, they will get their other needs there too.

Hopes

While the town knew for some time that Ulster Bank was considering such a move, Cllr Smith says a decision to add a lodgement facility to the cash dispenser last year had given townspeople some hope that the branch had a future.

“Maybe somebody else will buy it. Ulster Bank may sell the branch network. There are a few big businesses here,” he says.

Ulster Bank previously rationalised its branch network in 2015, announcing the closure of branches in 14 locations, mainly rural. One of those was Ferbane in Co Offaly, where 1,000 people marched behind a coffin through the town in protest.

Pat O’Callaghan, who runs the Ferbane Centra store, says the community had negotiated “something” of a settlement with the bank.

“We wanted the building to be bought by a company who would run a business from there and we were lucky that it was sold to an accountancy firm with nine of 10 staff,” he says.

Adapting

Not having a bank in the village was a blow, he says, but they have worked around it. The local post office is still open and traders in the town can make bank lodgements there.

There is also a local credit union that provides electronic funds transfers and “they do commercial loans now too”, O’Callaghan says.

He says his store has a cash machine through which his shop can “recycle” cash – lodging takings which can then be withdrawn by others “and the money is in our bank the next day”.

Brian Flynn, who also took part in the protest, says younger people find it easier to manage online without a physical bank, but for some people, visiting the bank was “an opportunity to get out” and a “highlight” of the day. He says he feels sorry for staff who were told as late as Thursday night that no decision on the closure had been taken.

Séamus Boland of Irish Rural Link says the organisation had been in discussion with the Government “for about five years” and had brought forward two papers on opening community-owned banks, in line with German models.

“We looked at one model in particular that would involve the credit union movement, which has a lot of money on deposit and wants to actively lend.

“That would require legislation,” he says.