This is an area very much outside of the Bank’s direct influence and it is pleasing to note that the Government, through its District Treasury Rollout Program is attempting to address this issue at the moment through the provision of banking services via the postal service network and District Treasury offices.
But then one cannot repeat often enough that the impact of the exchange rate on the domestic European economy is much less than we were used to in the fragmented markets when we were still eleven different markets with ten different exchange rate regimes.