Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 3:

In page 29, to delete lines 24 to 28 and substitute the following:

"28.---(1) A postal service provider has the right to enter into negotiations with a universal service provider with a view to concluding an agreement with that provider to access the postal network of the universal service provider up to the inward mail centre and may serve notice.".

The legislation places no specific limit on where network access should begin. The current postal network is built around four mail centres, with Government support over the years. As I have said previously on Second and Committee Stages, €100 million of taxpayers' money has been spent on automation in those four centres. An Post is now ranked as the seventh most efficient postal operator out of 27 EU countries.

The purpose of this amendment is to ensure that access should not be permitted below the mail centre level. This protects the collection and delivery model that aims to serve all addresses at all locations, maximises the efficiencies provided by hi-tech equipment and ensures adequate volumes in the system. In other words its objective is to ensure that an independent or private service provide cannot enter the marketplace at a lower level than the four automated centres so as to ensure a level playing pitch for An Post and guard against cherrypicking.

A competitor might negotiate a price lower than An Post, put it into a town and have it delivered at that level. We are trying to prevent it going in at the lower level. Everything we are doing in this legislation with these amendments is aimed at protecting the universal postal service and its quality along with the 2,000 jobs that are at stake, which must now be at a premium. This is a reasonable amendment, which allows for the directive to be implemented, along with free trade and competition, while not allowing the structure of An Post as it has been built up over the years to become an unfair victim of competition.

I shall not be argumentative as regards the wording. If the Minister of State proposes to change it, that will not be an issue. The objective is to achieve the principle of fair play and to maintain the integrity and quality of An Post. We have a great national service and workforce. At ground level our post men and women throughout Ireland are exemplary, providing a great social service and facilitating crucial human contact at local level. These are great people of whom we are proud, and I include the sorters and personnel within the offices. I want to preserve those people in situ while at the same time achieving the objectives of the directive.

Our attitude towards every EU directive should not be too cap in hand, and we should not take them too literally. We have this tendency in that we almost have to go beyond the terms of a directive in effecting its implementation. We can be nearly more penal than what is intended in the directive, and therefore I ask the Minister of State to see reason on this. I am totally open to the manner in which she does it.