Banks are "becoming ever more detached" from the needs of their customers in rural Ireland, the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association (ICSA) has said.

ICSA president Dermot Kelleher was reacting to the news that AIB is to close a number of its banks, largely in Dublin and Cork.

While noting that the latest round of bank closures is predominantly urban based, the president said "it does not hide the fact that banks are becoming ever more detached" from their customers' needs, adding:

“It’s all very well saying that the typical customer is able to manage their banking needs online.

"However, this is not the case for self-employed people or people trying to run their own businesses, where there is an ongoing need to lodge cheques but also to use other banking services involving significant sums of money which are not necessarily available online."

Kelleher said that, while An Post offers cheque lodging facilities, this is only available in some branches and the list is "very hit and miss".

Banking online also depends on good broadband - which is "actually getting worse in some rural areas", he claimed, while on the fibre optic front "businesses in rural areas continues to be put on the long finger”.

Highlighting that banking is particularly important, Kelleher stressed that this can’t be an exclusively remote process "where rural areas are forgotten about".

On borrowing, the ICSA president said: "The reality is that many good and secure proposals for credit are turned down by distant bank credit systems based in Dublin and the autonomy of local bank officials has been decimated.

"All of this is part of an attitude that banking is a process for big cities, and this is not good for rural Ireland.”

"But more importantly, the government’s commitment to rural Ireland will be measured by how much they are willing to see banking services decimated in rural Ireland,” Kelleher concluded.