Is "the decimation of rural Ireland" overhyped

You are missing the point but started to make it yourself its death by a thousand cuts.

Post offices closing, cashless banks, and you want us all to behave like automatons behaving exactly the way you want.

Me I'll continue to wipe my arse with 50's got from doing cash jobs.

Tis a fool who thinks cash isn't an important aspect of a functioning economy.

But yeah, closing the post office, banks etc. in rural areas does impact on the social life of many elderly people. My mother is 79 and while it takes about 2 mins to get her pension, she usually spends an hour yapping to other auld wans in the shop. And more power to them.

On a longer term note, once cash has been gotten rid of, what's to stop banks etc. from putting a €1 charge on every transaction. Or €2. They'll have a monopoly at that stage and you'll have fcukall choice but to put up with it. It's a big mistake to get rid of cash.

I couldn't log in to my bank account yesterday, yeah its a great idea to go cashless, not. People are too lazy to use ATMS and think they are cool tapping their cards. They are all helping move us to a cashless world. The banks are loving it.

Cash is the great equalizer, it puts the power of trade in the hands of the people. Cuts out the middle man, I can just give cash to whoever for whatever and its all hunky dory.

Having everything done cashless means relying on a bank, payment processor, internet service provider, etc. They have the power over your money, can decide to stop letting you buy things. Look at what happened with the protests in Canada, banks freezing bank accounts of protestors at the governments request.

Soon we'll all have personal carbon budgets, and the banks will cut you off from spending if you exceed your carbon budget for the month. Or maybe they'll tax you more based on your spending.

I wonder would the OP have supported the government's "1GC" proposal during the pandemic - that was the proposal to engage EY to track credit card transactions to monitor compliance with social distancing and travel regulations. Described by Tony Holohan himself as a load of horsesh*te.

The issue is not one individual thing but the continued closure of services in rural locations which is ruining the community interaction. When I was young in our village, there were 5 pubs, 2 shops, a petrol statiom, creamery, post office, 3 x weekend masses, a 5 teacher primary school. In the next (larger) village, there were two full service banks, another larger post office, another creamery, multiple pubs, shops etc. Virtually all of these have closed and it has ripped the soul out of the community. There is no place to meet people or no services available. Pension day used to be huge for example and gave great business to the local area. The closure of the post offices and banks caused the shops to close because people were going to town to do everything.

The rural Ireland I grew up, and particularly my local village is dead. If it wasn't for the local GAA club now, there would be literally nothing happening at all in the area to keep the community going.

I hate the notion of cashless even if I'm not doing any tax evasion. Everything tracked by the government/megacorps is very Orwellian indeed. Also with nearly every cashless system you are "paying to pay" in some way with a FinTech company reaping the rewards. It might be very low or even free for now but they are using your data and will start charging per transaction some point down the line

No we are still here, but you stay exactly where you are because you're exactly the kind of townie we don't want to see coming to rural Ireland.

Well you're welcome to Dublin any time, although I know it's probably in your blood to absolutely despise the place.

It always strikes me as strange how rural Ireland complain about the demise of their towns and villages. The farmers stopped using as many people to do the work and became mechanised. Less people needed in rural location so the people left, less people less need for shops and anything else.

We went from 90% of our economy being agricultural to being 2% now. The work force of course dropped in line with this so there were literally no jobs to stay for.

People harking back to 30 years ago don't seem to realise they were watching their town dying then. Blaming Dublin based decisions for the death of the towns/villages ignores the part they played in their own demise.

Ireland is very reliant on cash and cheques so I understand the dismay by older people. I worked on an IT project for a very well known company who's parent company came over to install a new system. The bosses from the UK decided that there was no need for cheque acceptance as they did away with it in the UK and it was no big deal. They ignored people saying we needed cheque processing until it was pointed out 40% of payments came from cheques.

The rural population has been rising, not falling.

Rural Ireland is responsible for its own "decimation" because of people's obsession with living in one off housing in the middle of nowhere and then wonder why their towns and villages become hollowed because nobody wants to live in them, but hey, its easier to blame it all on them Dublin folk.

Well the counter example is the difference between waiting behind someone who taps their card and walks away compared to being behind some ould wan fishing in her purse for exact change.

And now we have the planners obsession with herding us all into houses in towns, because they don't like one off housing. Fcuking planners with their dublin university degrees.

At least the auld wan rooting through her change may be slow but she'll be able to pay. Even if she drops it, she can pick it up and it will still work.

That person at the drive thru where the technology failed was foooked if they didn't have cash to pay for what they had ordered.

When I see places that don't take cash I really despise them and vow never to use them again....

And in fairness I've seen small shops in those ghastly rural places like Gorey etc. Do cashless, so if they can everyone else should.

And yeh, close the post offices and make the banks cashless etc. etc.

Never saw somebody lose their money from it rolling under something while at the till? If I was them I would just go to a place that had a working till system.

Sure what would educated people know

It is not an obsession to want to live on your own land and to be near the animals / land in your charge . Neither is it an obsession to want a meagre level of services / interaction that make living there bearable .

Like Catherine Martin saving the planet - one business class flight at a time.

There was some other one with an article in the paper the other day about why farmers needed to reduce emissions for the sake of the planet. Big into helping the climate she was ..... one of her more recent stories was from a junket on location to somewhere in East Africa to write a story she could have written from Dublin.............I doubt she went there on a bike!

BTW, why do you think people in rural areas aren't educated. I'm from a rural area and I would bet the house that you that you don't have a higher level of education than I do.

Is Catherine Martin not one of these "educated" folk that can magically see what others could do to contribute, but don't appear to actually contribute anything themselves?

Same as that journalist one.

See three posts above. I mentioned her name. You immediately responded about "Green Politicians". I never used the phrase "Green Politicians" so it seems you might actually have an idea who she is

Inspector Clouseau eat your heart out. Banged to rights.

So you're happy to accept that living on your "own land" as you put it means providing retail and utility services is next to impossible.

For those calling for the scrapping of cash payments, it's pretty clear that Ireland isn't quite ready for that just yet.

I'm actually delighted because my nearest small town would have been left with no bank and no 24 hour ATM service.