Bank of Ireland’s closure of 103 branches is another example of how unprepared we are for the enormous change being wrought by technology.
Much as we might dislike banks, they are commercial ventures, and it is necessary for them to make profits to survive. In the current environment of gross oversupply and sub-zero interest rates, making profit is becoming ever more difficult.
Apart from the inconvenience for customers of not having a local bank, the great quandary is how much the closures will impact on commerce and employment.
Employment is already in jeopardy and additional threats are speeding down the track. A recent “future of restaurants” survey indicates that 91% of eateries in the US plan to invest in kitchen automation.
A survey reported on Sky News suggested that 80% of firms in Europe, the US, and China intend to increase automation in the next decade.
An Israeli company, Tevel Aerobotics Technologies, is perfecting a flying, autonomous robot (drone) that can identify, pick, and secure the ripest fruit 24 hours per day.
Google suggests its Sycamore Quantum Computing system is capable of processing information more than a thousand times faster than conventional computing.
Virtual reality will increasingly bring tourism to people rather than people to tourism.
Yet, there is no considered discussion about the impact technology has in cutting jobs and how seriously employment will be diminished if action is not taken.
Industries and businesses are in denial, with no planning or proposals to sustain employment and secure income for those whose work is being rendered unnecessary, or obsolete.
Having a job is the most pressing issue for most people, so real solutions to the threat of technology must be found quickly, or government of the people, for the people, by the people, might perish.
Padraic Neary
Tubbercurry
Co Sligo
First no post offices, now no banks
The announced closure of 103 Bank of Ireland (BoI) branches adds to the death by a thousand cuts of rural Ireland. The Duhallow area will no longer have a BoI branch, if those in Kanturk and Millstreet close.
This follows on from last week’s announcement that Ulster Bank will be moving out of the Irish banking market.
Actual visits to bank branches were inevitably reduced in the last year, because we were in lockdown.
And while more people may have availed of online banking, older people are not among this cohort, and are again marginalised.
Small towns and villages will feel the worst effects of the closures, and are likely to have no banks or reduced options.
While Bank of Ireland have said they are working with An Post, for it to take over some of its services, in many towns or villages the local post office has already been shut, or been sidelined to a section of a local shop. The latter does not offer much privacy for people wishing to do their personal banking.
Also, for local businesses in these towns — especially shops, restaurants, coffee shops — that still make large cash transactions and need to keep coin and small notes, there will be security and time issues.
Irish Rural Link explored the local public banking system as an alternative for SMEs and micro enterprises and smaller communities. Perhaps the Government could revisit this model.
Janet Heeran
Clogheen
Co Cork
Economy can’t soar without airlines
Travel was the first industry to be hugely affected by the pandemic and it will be the last one to recover. But recover it must. Our economy depends on it — 140,000 jobs in Ireland depend on it.
On Friday, International Airlines Group (IAG), the parent company of Aer Lingus and British Airways, reported a loss for the year to December 31, 2020 of €7.4bn.
When you consider that IAG posted a profit of €1.7bn for the year ending December 31, 2019, it makes for eye-watering reading. Aer Lingus posted an operating loss of €563m last year and its revenue fell by 78%.
In 2019, Aer Lingus had an operating profit of €276m, and €305m for the previous year, demonstrating the scale of the crisis facing the airline industry.
Maintaining aircraft that are grounded is expensive, even as other costs are incurred, such as servicing loans, leases. There is a cash burn of nearly €1m each day for an airline. That is not sustainable. The same is true for ground-handling companies and airport authorities. T
he Government, for valid public health reasons, has put the Irish travel industry into an induced coma. The industry can only manage things that are within its direct control.
The Government now must ensure that Aer Lingus, and other companies, are offered life support and must also plan for taking the airline sector out of its vegetative state. Given that the aviation industry is a critical driver of the Irish economy, the former will be crucial to the latter’s recovery.
The Government needs to provide facilities at airports, whereby all inbound travellers are tested, in addition to the use of passenger-locator forms to chase down this virus.
A digital health pass, once the vaccine rollout is in progress, will also be critical to the recovery of international travel.
Killian Brennan
Clare Village
Malahide Road
Dublin 17
Funding horse racing is shameful
The images of a jockey laughing while sitting on a horse carcass have evoked widespread shock and awe, including among leading apologists for the racing industry.
It’s a major scandal and a PR headache for them as they tell us how much they love racehorses and how animal welfare is of paramount concern to them.
I’m sure they are upset by the grotesque images that that have gone viral on social media, but I don’t recall them voicing similar outrage when horses died on tracks, as they do every year here and in Britain.
Not to mention the many deaths and injuries sustained over the course of the foxhunting season when horses are forced to run across farmland, often becoming entangled in brambles and barbed wire in the process.
Nor have I heard them express any disquiet at the continuing use of the whip in racing. Perhaps they’ll tell us that one needs to be cruel to be kind to a horse by beating the animal vigorously…all in the name of gambling and the lure of big bucks.
But the biggest scandal is that taxpayers are subsidizing this industry, along with greyhound racing, another sport steeped in controversy.
Funding of the horse racing industry was increased in Budget 2021 to €76.8m from €67.2m the previous year — and at a time when the economy is on its knees.
The best way to discourage abuses in the industry is to withdraw state funding. We need to pull the plug now.
John Fitzgerald
Callan
Co Kilkenny
Horses have always been our friends
The image of a man sitting on a dead horse has provoked strong emotions in a country which has always taken great pride in its equine stock.
When Arkle scored his famous victory over Mill House in the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1964 a wave of national pride swept over the country. The Irish horse had dethroned the English champion.
It didn’t matter at all that Arkle was owned by Anne, Duchess of Westminster.
My grandfather always bred a few horses on his modest farm in east Galway. For my grandfather, as for so many Irish people, the horse has always been man’s best friend.
John Glennon
Hollywood
Co Wicklow
Factory farming a looming crisis
Industrial animal farming, more commonly known as factory farming, has, according to the UN, caused the majority of infectious diseases in humans in the past decade.
In Russia, scientists have detected the first case of transmission of the H5N8 strain of avian flu to humans and have alerted the WHO. Scientists isolated the strain’s genetic material from seven workers at a poultry farm.
The workers did not suffer any serious health consequences. While the highly contagious strain is lethal for birds, it has never before been reported to have spread to humans.
Humans can get infected with avian and swine influenza viruses, such as bird flu subtypes A(H5N1) and A(H7N9), and swine flu subtypes, A(H1N1).
The more widely known strain of avian influenza is H1N1, which is responsible for all the major flu outbreaks, like the 1918 Spanish flu and the 2009 swine-flu outbreak.
The H5N8 is a sub-type of the influenza A virus that causes flu-like symptoms in birds and mammals. In recent months, outbreaks of the H5N8 strain have been reported in Russia, Europe, China, the Middle East, and North Africa, but only in poultry, until, that is, this latest news from Russia.
There is a time bomb called climate change. There is another, less talked-about time bomb: Factory farming. Yet no government is acting on it.
Gerry Boland
Keadue
Roscommon
