Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will begin by declaring an interest; I am a postmaster based in a stand-alone post office in Castletownbere in west Cork. Since I became a postmaster in 1992, I have been a member of the Irish Postmasters' Union and I compliment the union on bringing this campaign to the Dáil and to Government this evening along with the many postmasters and postmistresses throughout the country.

I recall a similar protest in 1997 when we carried a symbolic coffin through the streets of Dublin at that time calling for fair terms and conditions for our offices and our communities. My views remain the same and I still believe that if we are to serve the communities, villages, towns and larger urban areas, post offices will have to remain viable. The Fianna Fáil-led Government's response at that time was to establish an interdepartmental group of civil servants who concluded that the network was too big at 2,000 offices. It offered packages for post offices to close and we lost hundreds of post offices. In 2001 we had 2,000 offices and by 2005 we had 1,400. From 2004 to 2006 we lost one sub-office every two working days. There is not the response we need now.

I will be voting for a different approach outlined by the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, where the matter of the future of the post office network will go to a Cabinet subcommittee chaired by An Taoiseach, not to the civil servants where that matter went in 2001, and we will eventually explore new opportunities for the post office from central and local government and State agencies.

It is not widely understood by the public but postmasters depend entirely on the customers that use the post office to carry out their business. We are self-employed contractors who are constrained by many factors. Our business is An Post business. We cannot undertake any other. However, we see every day other corporate entities being offered this business. We are fighting with one hand effectively tied behind our back.

I thank Deputy Healy and his co-signatories for tabling this motion but I challenge Deputies, Senators and the public - I will not ask for a show of hands - that if they were asked do they use the post office to do their business-----

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