Irish Examiner view: Need for EU bank option undeniable

Bank of Ireland signage on College Green, Dublin. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

The reaction of a Bank of Ireland shareholder or maybe someone whose pension fund has invested in the bank, to yesterday’s announcement that the bank is to close 103 branches will be different to someone trying to run a business in one of the towns about to lose its last bank. Once again, conventional community needs and market forces collide and the outcome is predictable. That yesterday’s announcement came after Ulster Bank revealed that it will quit Ireland to explore more profitable markets rubs salt into that wound too.

Investors will applaud Bank of Ireland’s pragmatism but the shopkeeper without a local bank will wonder how many more challenges this world will bring them, their employees, or their customers. Nobody can answer that question but one thing is certain. Ever-evolving technology will constantly change our world. Sometimes in ways that seem, at first, marginalising. That marginalisation, in swathes of rural Ireland and not so rural Ireland too, is amplified because far too many Irish people are unfortunately still at the get-to-know-you stages of their relationship with information technology. This, tragically, is another consequence of our utterly botched broadband rollout.