Online Banks Should be Super-Levied to Restore Rural Towns in County Carlow

Fine Gael Councillor and business man Peter Stapleton has said online banks should be super-levied for a fund to restore rural towns and villages. Stapleton said it was welcome that there is another new banking entrant to Ireland, the Spanish-based financial services group Bankinter, but the absence of physical branches from towns and villages was denuding communities.

Bank of Ireland shamefully closed branches in Carlow's Borris and Tullow and those towns could be beneficiaries of community gain in a re-structured bank levy.

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“Bankinter are very welcome and join a long line of online banks like Bunq, Revolut, N26 and others that find Ireland terribly attractive. But if online banks are only to take the upside of profit, it is ultimately bad for communities in Ireland. Banks were the heart of many towns. In the town where I live in Co Wicklow, Tinahely, the bank branch made a huge difference but once it was closed by Bank of Ireland, customers drifted to towns that still had bank branches to do their business, shopping and services.”

“The current bank levy raises €200 million a year for the Exchequer. Online banks should be super-levied and this money should be designated for a fund to revitalise rural towns and villages,” Stapleton says.

“We need to get back to where Irish market towns were once hubs of great activity. They had lots of different services, including banks and post offices. In my part of rural Ireland people have to drive vast distances to get to a physical bank branch that has cash and services. Our story in Wicklow is not any different to other counties but unless financial institutions have bases in towns, there is little hope of renewing more of them.”

“And yet there has never been more online banking services, many operating under EU and Irish banking licences that set no requirement to them to have any physical branches, hold cash or have any commitment to society. It is pure cherry-picking.

In my own experience working in corporate finance and financial services, only regulation ultimately works in ensuring what the institutions can and cannot do. I think the time has come for Government to be more prescriptive about what should happen in Ireland so that rural towns have the chance to renew. As another Budget looms, the Minister for Finance has the power to make positive change for rural towns and he should take it.”

"In each Budget there is a lot of discussion about banking levies, about increasing them or changing them in some way. In my view, the levy should be used as a positive force for communities by having two levels of it. The first rate should be for banks that offer physical branches, deliver normal banking services like having cash and offering mortgage, loan and other services locally. The more branches you have the less your levy should be. The second rate should be for those offering less services, if you have no physical branches, you should be paying a super levy and a high one at that.”

“Sucking up the banking levy into the State coffers where it goes into the general funding isn’t good practice. Levies should be used for a particular purpose. The banking ones, in my view, should be put back into communities. The bank levy could, with super levies on online banks, be hundreds of millions of euros for renewal of towns and communities, urban and rural. While rewarding the few banks with branches and spread, the remainder of the bank levies should be used for the regeneration of rural towns and villages, supporting the restoration of vacant properties, the development of tourism facilities and local services.”

"We cannot let online services harvest the nation without putting anything back in. We have seen the sorry state this has left broadcasting and journalism in, with online platforms destroying terrestrial television and leaving our state broadcaster and local radio and newspapers with gaping holes in its future. Our rural towns cannot afford any more gaping holes either so the Minister for Finance should not miss a chance to act in Budget 2025. It will be good for banking too, bringing in a level playing pitch for once.”