It’s a habit that friends from abroad find curious, but when you grow up with it you just take for granted. A small town might be just bricks and mortar, but the people give it a beating heart, and the heart of Croom is a very friendly one.

Therefore, I found it odd the other day when I was driving through the town and a queue of people were standing on the stone pavement in the drizzle. All of them had their heads bowed down and shoulders hunched against the wind. None of them looked up. The usual wave or nod was missing.

They were all a good distance apart, like it was back in the time of Covid social distancing. If I hadn’t known better, it looked like a photograph of a dole queue from the 1960s with everyone hunched, shivering and depressed in the cold.

They were waiting in the rain to be let into the mobile bank. For anyone not familiar with the mobile bank, it is basically a large van operated by one of the pillar banks that comes to a town at set days and times to allow people one at a time to do their banking.

It usually operates in small rural towns to provide people with access to a bank service.

Once upon a time, Croom had two banks: an Ulster Bank and an AIB. The AIB building in particular was a grand, Georgian affair where I remember going as child, hand-in-hand with my father, to set up my Junior Saver account.

It had counters with real, helpful people behind each one and a shiny copper rail for people to queue behind. Back then people waited in a well heated, large, bright room to be served. At this stage I might be fantasising, but I also seem to recall music being played.

Now that beautiful building is a derelict eyesore, and the people of Croom, who have actually seen a rise in their population over recent years, stand outside in the rain to be served. You have to wonder if there is any other system where a paying customer is treated with so little respect?

A few months ago, AIB got into hot water for trying to remove cash services from 70 branches. Due to customer outrage, they backtracked on this but they’re still gradually pulling back in-person services.

Last year, I set up an account with our local, very friendly and efficient bank manager in a day for the new dairy partnership. This year, I tried to set up an account for another sole trader business and it took nearly three weeks because I was told it had to be done online.

This process required online forms, a phone call from AIB and then ultimately — to add insult to injury — a trip back to my nearest branch to sign a mandate form and provide ID to a staff member.

If one of these banks was a restaurant, you wouldn’t go back to it. Yet with the closure of Ulster Bank, there is very little competition and banks seem to have decided to cut their cloth to suit themselves.

This seems to mean that people in cities and big towns keep their bank services while people in the countryside get the bargain basement, meals on wheels approach.

Treating rural people like a poor relation isn’t fair when it comes to the value that they bring to the banking system.

How many farmers have loans with their local bank? If the average dairy farmer debt of €100,000 is held against a farmer’s land and the farmer defaults, then a bank stands to gain an awful lot.

​Farmers and rural people offer a lot more than a standard customer in a city, yet there is zero comparison between the quality in service that they get.

The most galling thing for many people will be the fact that it was the Irish people who got the banks out of trouble when the Celtic Tiger was stripped of its stripes. It seems that none of that has translated into an appreciation of the customer base that saved them.

The people of Croom and all the people of rural Ireland are paying customers and deserve better than being left out in the cold by their banks.

​Hannah Quinn-Mulligan is a journalist and an organic beef and dairy farmer; templeroedairy.ie