David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

He should be here for all of the debate because he is the Minister with responsibility for this area. He should be listening to all of the contributions. I will just say this, because other speakers need to come in. We have put forward solutions, as have others in this House. Independent Members and others, including Fianna Fáil by the way, have put forward some solutions in respect of this issue. One of the obvious solutions is to continue to allow, and to in fact encourage, social welfare recipients to use the post office. The Minister of State's party and Government, however, forced many of them to use banks. The policy of the Government was not just to encourage them but to force them to use banks and to move away from post offices. Again the Minister talks about the fact they are not viable and how they need to be profitable and all the rest while the Government systematically runs them down. I do not have confidence in either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael to support rural Ireland. They have both failed it. There are towns and villages up and down this State that have lost post offices, Garda stations, schools and healthcare services because of the policies of both parties. I do not have faith in any of them, especially Fianna Fáil which, as I said, has an absolute brass neck to be talking about rural Ireland.

See this speech in context