Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

I strongly commend Deputy Healy on initiating this motion on a crucial issue. I also commend those who have travelled from throughout the country to highlight the critical importance of the post office network in rural and urban areas.

Last night, the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources stated:

An Post is a commercial State company that earns its own keep and receives no Exchequer subsidy. My colleagues and I cannot arrange a hidden subsidy for it by dictating that all or even any Government business is automatically given to An Post.

He referenced EU laws that required the services delivered through An Post to be put out to tender. However, a little earlier in his speech he stated: "the post office network has evolved a social role, in the widest meaning of the term, which is highly valued by local communities". There is a significant contradiction between these two parts of the Minister's statement.

The cold-hearted bureaucrats in Brussels view everything through the logic of capitalism that is red in tooth and claw and do not at all care about the critical social aspects the post office serves in Irish society. Hence, the EU bureaucrats want to pit the small post offices, whether they be in rural areas or working class communities in Dublin, against King Kongs like Tesco and other multiples. What damn does Tesco give about the social role and the poor and the elderly who need to be facilitated by the special knowledge and expertise that those now serving in the post offices provide? Consider how the Tescos of this world short-change the small farmers and suppliers of food, driving down prices to the minimum while soaking shoppers for what they can get and walking away with incredible billions of euro in profit. That is what the logic of capitalism and competition and the EU bureaucrats are holding in store for our post office network if they are allowed to get away with it. If a social role is performed by the post offices, which they clearly do, it should be subsidised. There should be a social subsidy to take into account the unique role that post offices play in our society, both in rural and urban areas, and to recognise the service they deliver.

Of course the Minister will not enter the Chamber with a list of post offices to close. Rather, by allowing the capitalist marketplace to dictate to the benefit of the major multiples, the small post offices will wither on the vine while the large commercial sharks take the business.

Government Deputies have come to the Chamber in large numbers, elbowing one another aside to get the chance to speak. I challenge them. If they are serious, why will they not vote for a concrete action that would secure the future of post offices and the crucial services they provide?

Why do they not supportthat the Government should instruct each Department to implement, through the post office network, the business identified in the report by Grant Thornton and the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications that will underpin the sustainability of the network? Why will they not vote to commit that all tenders involving over-the-counter transactions will be decided on the basis of both social and economic policy? Why will they not vote to commit to implementing a new banking service that will be available to the post office network and operated by An Post? Why will they not commit to a once off capital investment fund for the further modernisation of the post office, to enable the widespread provision of banking facilities in rural and disadvantaged areas?

If the Government Deputies go along with this cop out from the Minister, they will be rubber-stamping the approach that is being taken to hand the business over to the big multiples such as Tesco, starve the local post office and therefore cause them to close. They should be serious and make up their minds about this.

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