The little people are more hassle than they’re worth

A Different View with Dave O’Connell

At a rate of inflation that would leave Argentina looking like a stable economy, we have the Central Bank one week declaring that one and two cent coins are effectively worthless to the Bank of Ireland the next upping that worthless bar to anyone looking for less than €700 of their own money.

But at least we now know where we stand – you should not bother yourself with coppers in your pockets and don’t bother the bank if you’re one of the little people.

Best place for you is as part of a long queue waiting for a window in the busy life of the ATM, standing in the wind and rain like everyone who doesn’t know how to spend big.

If on the other hand, you’re looking for millions to buy up a small county and fill it with cardboard houses, then walk right on in, sit down, shoot the breeze and make an appointment with your friendly bank manager before you go, for a game of golf in the K Club.

None of this has anything to do, of course, with the announcement in the recent Budget that there will now be a twelve cent charge for each ATM transaction – although given the Central Bank initiative on small coins, if you could pay for this in cash, it should only be ten cent.

It’s not just on outgoing cash that this big bank is raising the bar however – they don’t want to know you either if you’re not earning enough to entitle you to an actual staff service.

The upshot is that if you’re running a small business and your lodgement is less than €3,000, then you should learn how to do this on your own with a machine as well – such a pittance doesn’t entitle you to human help.

So if you’re the owner of a small business and your daily or weekly takings are somewhere around €2,500, then you have a choice to either keep your cash on the premises – thereby running the risk of robbery – or take your chances with dropping your earnings into an automated bin.

And God help you if you have a sweetshop that still accepts copper coinage because you’re then screwed from both sides – you should be dealing in small change with customers or with your banker.

Chances are then very few of us will ever grace the inside of a bank again – I’ve never banked anything near €3,000 and I wish I had the facility to withdraw more than €700 at a pop, but I know I share both of those inadequacies with the great unwashed.

Unless you were a banker, for example, your pension is unlikely to entitle you to be throwing around three grand or even seven hundred quid – so that’s old people gone from the inside of the banks.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.