Most conversations about cash in Ireland get framed as a generational quirk, something older people cling to while everyone else taps a phone. But for a great many people in their seventies and eighties, notes and coins are not a preference. They are the working system: the way the weekly shop gets budgeted, the way a grandchild gets a fiver, the way a person with no smartphone and no broadband pays the window cleaner. When the nearest bank branch shuts and the ATM goes with it, what disappears is not nostalgia. It is a piece of somebody’s independence.
Ireland now has a law about this, and as of summer 2026 it has a route you can actually use.
TL;DR
- The Finance (Provision of Access to Cash Infrastructure) Act 2025 came into force at the end of November 2025. It obliges AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB to maintain cash infrastructure at roughly December 2022 levels.
- The criteria are regional: a minimum share of each region’s population must be within 10km of an ATM and of a cash service point, plus a minimum number of ATMs per 100,000 people.
- The Central Bank’s first quarterly report (February 2026) found six instances where the criteria were not met, in the Border, West and South West.
- Since 30 June 2026 there is a public Cash Access Map and an online form for reporting a local deficiency, even where the wider regional targets are being met.
- The law guarantees access to cash. It does not oblige shops to accept it, and that gap matters.
Why this is a health and independence question
Financial access sits quietly underneath almost everything else in later life. If you cannot get your money without a lift from a relative, your shopping, your social life and your sense of being in charge of your own affairs all become dependent on somebody else’s diary. That is a real loss, and it tends to arrive gradually enough that nobody names it.
The scale of the exposure is not small. CSO figures for 2025 show that 34% of people aged 75 and over have never used the internet. The picture is improving, 63% went online in the previous three months against 54% a year earlier, but a third of the oldest cohort in the country has no digital route to their own money at all. Age Action has estimated that around six in ten adults over 65 are digitally excluded in some form, whether through lack of access, lack of connectivity or lack of confidence. For those households, a branch counter and a nearby ATM are not a convenience. They are the entire infrastructure.
What the 2025 Act actually does
The Act was passed by the Oireachtas in May 2025, and the ministerial order that switched it on was signed at the end of that November. It works by naming AIB, Bank of Ireland and PTSB as designated entities and making them collectively responsible for maintaining cash infrastructure across each of the State’s eight statistical regions.
The criteria the Minister for Finance set are measurable rather than aspirational. In each region, a specified percentage of the population must be within 10km of an ATM, a specified percentage must be within 10km of a cash service point, and there must be a minimum number of ATMs per 100,000 people. A cash service point is defined as somewhere you can withdraw or lodge notes and coins with in-person assistance, which in practice means a bank branch or a post office. The whole framework is benchmarked to the coverage that existed in December 2022, after the departures of Ulster Bank and KBC had worked their way through. The Central Bank monitors compliance and publishes the numbers quarterly.
Where the gaps turned up
The first quarterly report, published on 24 February 2026, found just over 4,000 ATMs and just over 1,200 cash service points nationally, and concluded that the infrastructure “remains largely in line” with the criteria. But it also identified six instances where the standard was not met: too few ATMs in the Border, West and South West regions, and a shortfall in cash service points in the Border and West. The Central Bank described the shortfalls as small and wrote to the three banks asking them to address each one.
The regions that failed are precisely the ones with the longest travel distances and the oldest average populations. And a regional average can look respectable while a particular village has nothing within a half-hour bus journey.
The map, and the form that goes with it
On 30 June 2026 the Central Bank published three practical things: a Cash Access Map showing every ATM and cash service point in the country, a set of Local Deficiency Guidelines explaining how adequacy is judged, and an online notification form.
The form is the important one. Individuals, small businesses, community organisations and representative bodies can now tell the Central Bank directly that cash access in their locality is no longer meeting local needs, or is about to stop doing so, even when the broader regional criteria are technically being met. The Central Bank assesses each notification against factors including recent branch or ATM closures, population growth, travel distances, local geography, demographic profile and the impact on financial inclusion. Where it finds a genuine local deficiency, it can require the designated banks to put something back. Notifications and their status are published.
If your parish lost its ATM last year, that form is the route to say so. Both the map and the form are on the Central Bank’s website under Access to Cash.
What the law does not cover
Two limits are worth understanding, because they catch people out.
First, being able to withdraw cash is not the same as being able to spend it. Ireland cannot compel retailers to accept cash, because rules on the legal tender status of euro notes and coins are set at European Union level, and a proposed EU regulation on the subject is still working its way through. Under the National Payments Strategy, Government departments and public bodies were required to accept cash payments or arrange for a third party to facilitate them, but a card-only café is within its rights.
Second, the Act governs infrastructure, not service quality. It says nothing about queue lengths, opening hours or whether there is a person at the counter who has time for someone who needs a moment.
Practical steps worth taking
Most of this is easier to arrange before a closure than after one.
Know your notice period. Since 24 March 2026, the revised Consumer Protection Code requires a bank planning to close a branch to carry out a board-approved assessment of the impact on access to financial services, including specific plans for customers in vulnerable circumstances. Notice of that assessment must be published in the branch itself, in a local newspaper and on the bank’s website at least two months before closure. If you hear a rumour, ask for the report.
Use the post office. AIB and Bank of Ireland personal customers can lodge and withdraw cash at post offices nationwide, six days a week in most cases, and post offices often keep longer hours than the branch that closed. Bring the card.
Sort out an agent if collection is difficult. If you collect a social welfare payment at the post office and cannot get there for a while, a temporary agent can be nominated to collect on your behalf using a form available at the counter, for a maximum of five payments in any six months. Where the difficulty is longer term, a permanent agent can be appointed instead. This is a formal arrangement with identification requirements on both sides, which is exactly what makes it safer than handing your card to somebody informally.
Keep more than one route open. Cashback in a local shop, a credit union account, a second ATM you know the location of: redundancy is the whole point. Systems fail on bank holiday weekends.
A note for families and carers
If you are supporting a parent or relative, resist the urge to solve a cash problem by quietly taking over the banking. Informal arrangements, where somebody holds a card and a PIN “to help out”, are one of the most common shapes that financial abuse takes in Ireland, and they also leave the helper with no protection if questions are ever asked. The formal routes exist precisely so that help does not have to mean handover. Our guides to recognising financial abuse and to protecting yourself from scams go into this in more detail.
The better conversation is not “should we move you online”. It is “what happens if the branch goes”. Ireland now has a legal answer to that question and a form to lodge when the answer proves inadequate, and it only works if people use it.
At Críonna Health we write about the scaffolding that keeps independence intact in later life, from digital banking to the supports and entitlements you may be owed. Access to your own money belongs on that list.
This article is general information, not financial or legal advice. For guidance on your own circumstances, contact the Citizens Information Service or MABS.
📷 Photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash
