Tom Fleming (Kerry South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegation here today. It is clear the post office network is the largest infrastructural organisation in the country. It comprises 1,100 postmasters in 1,100 post offices as well as thousands of jobs and many more from the spin-off of that valuable work. The inaction being displayed on this important matter reminds me of the Department of Health's policy some years ago, through the health boards, which closed down district hospitals. They are now known as community hospitals and we are fortunate that they survived. At the time, the government did a health policy U-turn. The current post office situation reminds me of the community aspect involved because we can now see how valuable our community hospitals are. They form the bedrock of the health service. Similarly, local post offices are the economic bedrock of the community. In addition, the one-stop-shop facility is socially important. My local post office, for example, is also a shop and filling station so all these services complement each other. It also acts as a visitor centre for finding information. We could roll out tourist information centres in such post offices which should be tied into all aspects of State and local authority services.

An Post is part of a consortium that will be in charge of the national lottery, so the Government should amend the regulations and allow all post office outlets to be national lottery agents. It is a glaring omission in the regulations, given An Post's involvement in the new lottery licence.

The activity of the Irish Postmasters Union is timely following the Grant Thornton report. I hope decisive action will be taken so that, hopefully, we will have a positive outcome. It is a complex situation but most of all we need to restore many of the services that are being outsourced to major corporate firms, which is totally wrong. We are getting away from the concept of support for our post offices.