Irish Examiner view: Critics unite against plans to ditch cash
The covid tracking app is expected to be discontinued this summer.
Farewell, then, to Ireland’s €1m covid tracking app which is likely to be decommissioned this summer with the end of EU regulations requiring countries to issue vaccine certificates.
The app, which was downloaded a million times by smartphone users within the first 36 hours of its launch in July 2020, was an early example in this country of mass persuasion by technocrats in response to the pandemic.
While this was, thankfully, a time limited regulation, there are other major and intrusive pressures for consumers to change their behaviours which came sliding into place under the guise of a public health justification.
Principal among those has been the incessant demand from banks and telecoms companies to accelerate moves away from cash handling in our society, and to make the ownership of a mobile phone almost a concomitant to citizenship and participation in the public weal.
Already there are some interest rates which can only be accessed through the use of an app, and it is highly likely that further “incentives” to achieve this insidious transition will confront us.
While we have long been complaining about this trend, this week it was the turn of members of the Dáil to give detailed vent in a debate ushered in by the Rural Independent Group and moved by Cork South West TD Michael Collins.
The campaign for a cashless society was, he said, discriminatory and a consequence of Government strategy to make us a “leader in digital payments” by 2023. It is undermining access to cash, directly hollowing-out banking services across rural Ireland, and leaving behind many citizens. Even the GAA was strongly rebuked for its “card-only” policy.
Among those disadvantaged by fintech and government interests are “many senior citizens, people with intellectual disabilities, teenagers, children, people on low incomes, homeless people, and the general public, who may not have a bank account or access to a smartphone or credit/debit card for their own private and personal reasons”.
Mr Collins listed all the other downsides to digital-only commerce including the ever-present and increasing risk of fraud and data theft; the reliance on 100% network availability; the lack of transaction anonymity; the comprehensive tracking of individual purchasing patterns and the creation of different classes of customer because of differing levels of technological familiarity.
He and his colleagues tabled an impressive list of demands and preconditions to ensure that access to cash is maintained within the Republic, and it is difficult to find fault with any of them, but in particular the guarantee that use of digital payment methods is voluntary, not mandatory, and that clear and accurate information is given about the cost, risk and benefit of different options.
Taking a stand on this is overdue because it is an area which has been subject to galloping mission creep.
It is worth noting that those restaurants who are digital payment zealots are also among the keenest advocates of forcing customers to use QR codes to order their food rather than providing an old-fashioned menu; entertainment and art venues which were happy to send you their barcode as an alternative ticket now say they will no longer accept a paper print-out.
It’s not a condition of life on Earth and civic society to own a mobile phone and the sooner that politicians, financial institutions, public services, retail and entertainment corporations stop behaving as if it is, then the more quickly will they regain public loyalty and confidence.
As Mr Collins and the rural independents said: “Choice is key, and everyone has the right to spend and bank on their own terms.”
They are on the correct side of public opinion in this, and their expectation is that Government will move quickly to ensure that people who wish to use cash to settle their debts are not discriminated against to serve the transient and changing interests of business.
Ministers may be tempted to kick for touch on this subject, but they should be assured that it is not going to go away any time soon or, indeed, at all.
As another TD said, cash is the only form of money that people can hold without the involvement of third parties or access to broadband, electricity, or equipment.
That is something worth fighting to maintain.
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