AIB comes under fire for branch closures

By Stephen McKinley

The Allied Irish Bank, Ireland’s largest banking and financial services group, has been closing many of its rural branches in Ireland since 1997.

A total of 42 branches have been shut, although in its defense, AIB says that it has opened 26 branches in the same period.

But the Sunday Business Post reports that many of the new branches have been opened in shopping malls and colleges, and not in the areas where closures have taken place.

In April, Fine Gail T.D. Charles Flanagan (County Laois) told the Dail that AIB’s practice amounted to "anti-social behavior." Attempts have been made across the country to keep branches in rural areas open, but often service hours have already been reduced to half a day a week or even less, according to T.D. Michael Cullen, from Limerick.

"Allied Irish Bank must be told in no uncertain terms of the importance of keeping this branch open," he said at a rally in June to keep the Kilfinane branch open.

"We have to do something. If it closes, we will have no bank in Kilfinane. People will have to go to Kilmallock, Charleville or Mitchelstown. We will go back to the situation where elderly people will start keeping their money at home. It will also mean the loss of six jobs in the town," said Pat Heffernan of the Kilfinane Development Association.

Direct action has worked in Cloughjordan, Co. Tipperary. The Cloughjordan branch of Allied Irish Banks, which had been scheduled to close on July 5, has been given a temporary reprieve. The two-days-a-week service will continue until the end of August.

The notice of intended closure given last week caused consternation and anger in the town. There has been a bank presence there through Allied Irish Banks and its predecessor Munster & Leinster for over seventy years.

There has not been a resident Manager since Pat O’Connor retired around 1988, and the service from Nenagh has been on two days a week basis since 1992.

A large number of people attended a public meeting on Monday night, convened by the Cloughjordan Development group. Clive Gillespie, chairman of the Development Group, presided at the meeting. The abruptness of the notice of closure, only a week away from the meeting, was a source of concern and anger. It was felt, too, that a rural community was being victimized, that profitability was being underlined at the expense of community needs.

In 2000, the AIB announced the closure of the only bank branch on Valentia island, which led to cries of outrage. At the time, AIB justified that closure by pointing to the increase in banking over the Internet.

In response, Seán O hArgáin, chairman of the Kerry South constituency of the Labor party, disagreed.

"It is very difficult to progress without banking," he said. "For an area of South West Kerry with an aging population, I don’t think it is realistic to change their banking via the internet as is proposed. It is too big a culture change, especially for older people."