Debate contribution: Rates (Exemption for Automatic Telling Machines in Rural Areas) Order (Northern Ireland) 2026
Debate contribution by Miss Áine Murphy on .
- MLA
- Miss Áine Murphy
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 10 March 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Executive Committee Business
- Heading
- Rates (Exemption for Automatic Telling Machines in Rural Areas) Order (Northern Ireland) 2026
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5436808
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I welcome the extension of the rural ATM rates exemption scheme for the 2026-27 rating year. I thank the Minister for bringing it to the Chamber. In recent years, we have seen the steady loss of local banking services across many rural communities. Bank branch closures have become an all-too-familiar story in towns and villages across the North. For many people, that loss has created real and practical difficulties. Older residents often rely on in-person banking, owners of small businesses still depend on cash and many households use cash in their day-to-day budgeting activities. While digital banking is becoming more common, it is not a realistic substitute for everyone in our community. People in many rural areas struggle with connectivity, and some simply do not have the confidence or ability to move entirely to the online system. Therefore, access to cash remains a vital part of everyday life in many rural communities. That is why such schemes matter. The rural ATM exemption may be modest in scale, but it plays an important role in helping to maintain access to cash that might otherwise disappear. It is important that policy reflects the reality of our rural life. Rural communities face unique challenges, such as longer travel distances, fewer services and fewer alternatives when services are withdrawn. That means that we often have to find targeted solutions and not take a one-size-fits-all approach. Measures like the exemption recognise those challenges and help to ensure that residents in rural areas are not left behind. Many of you will have heard me consistently wax lyrical in the Chamber about the need for a banking hub in Lisnaskea. A number of months ago, members of the Finance Committee and I met the Rural Community Network (RCN) in Cookstown to discuss the banking hub model. We all need to address the challenges that our rural towns and villages face, their unique circumstances and the criteria that LINK applies to those towns and villages, many of which find themselves out of the loop and unable to avail themselves of support. The cost of the scheme to the public purse is relatively small, but the benefits are clear. Supporting the retention of ATMs helps local people, supports small businesses that rely on cash transactions and helps to sustain economic activity in rural areas. I hope that we will see further work in that area as we continue to look at how best to protect essential services in our rural communities.
412 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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