Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the witnesses for taking time out from their busy schedules to be here. It is very important they are all here today. I would like to tell the representatives from the banks how important it is for them to support people in the community, whether families, business people or people in the farming community and to continue giving out loans.

People are not looking for enormous loans from the banks in the current economic climate but when they - young couples, farmers or business people - seek funding, I ask that the banks ensure that their applications are looked upon sympathetically and that they try to help them.

I thank the credit unions for being very credible and for doing a great deal for their members. The credit unions are probably sick of being praised but they deserve it. I would like to publicly compliment them on their work.

I wish to devote the remainder of my time to posing questions regarding our post office network. I want to declare a vested interest in that I am a postmaster. What is An Post's financial strategy for the next five years? Is it operating a sustainable model? Will rural post offices be closed? Will there be reductions in incomes for existing post offices, thereby making them unviable? Have the representatives found that the Government has implemented any changes to date far in light of the promises made in A Programme for a Partnership Government, particularly the commitment to community banking, which can be found on page 48 of the document? Does the post office network development group foresee post office closures such as those as predicted in the Grant Thornton report of 2014? How many contract post offices have had their incomes reduced since 2014 and, in particular, this year? Can that be broken down year by year for the period 2014 to 2016? That is a very important question. After rents, rates and insurance costs are taken into account, are some rural and urban post office staff being paid at or below the national minimum wage? The relevant post offices in this regard will not be closed by An Post or the Government, they will simply cease to operate because of a lack of funding.

What is the strategy to replace the income from Government through the social welfare contract, which currently stands at €75 million? Are there specific plans and figures for contracts with Government to replace that money, without which the rural network would obviously collapse? With regard to when the new social welfare contract will be up for renewal, has the post office network development group ensured - by means of its current report - that there will be both a social and economic element to the contract, which might help to regenerate and sustain all communities, urban and rural? Will the group make a recommendation in its final report in respect of the introduction of community banking - something that was promised in the programme for Government - along the lines of the New Zealand or Sparkasse models? New Zealand has a population of 4 million and Kiwibank now has an income of over €100 million and 860,000 customers. This means that almost one in four people in New Zealand uses the services of Kiwibank. Are we to continue to support the commercial banking sector, which, unfortunately, vanished from disadvantaged rural areas and thereby helped to bring about the destruction of small communities?

The Government talks about the new e-payment bank account but it is not a full banking service and will only have a minor impact on the incomes of individual post offices. Will there be a significant financial shortfall that will threaten the sustainability of the current 1,100 post offices if it is implemented?

Regarding mail consolidation, local post offices sorted mail in the past to be delivered by postmen and postwomen in rural areas but that element was removed and replaced by mail being sorted at larger central locations. Has this process been a financial success? What has been the financial effect of this on the incomes of local post offices? Will the removal of this service accelerate the closure of more post offices, as predicted in the Grant Thornton report? What will be the predicted size of the network in three years' time? There are currently approximately 1,100 post offices. How many post offices does the post office network development group envisage being in operation in 2019?

Has the Irish Postmasters Union, IPU, done everything possible to protect the income and viability of its members or is it more interested in negotiating redundancy-style packages rather than trying to secure the viability of our post offices? Has the rural membership lost faith in the IPU? As I am addressing the IPU, I would like to say - because I am entitled to do so - that I am very disappointed, considering my work rate in supporting post offices over the years, that senior members of the union have been very critical of me, both personally and publicly, in a very vehement way. All I can see as being the cause of that is the fact that I was doing what its members are paid to do, namely, stand up for rural post offices. While they were talking about redundancy packages, I was talking about keeping post offices open. That is why, both publicly and privately, senior people in the IPU have criticised me, said bad things about me-----