Mr. Liam O'Sullivan:

Deputy Éamon Ó Cuív commented on what work can be brought back by the various parties here and put back into rural Ireland. Apart from the post offices, we have approximately 7,500 staff engaged in mail activities and outside the major urban areas of Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford - I had better not leave any out - we have several thousand people embedded in rural Ireland. In the next couple of weeks, An Post will launch an export freight service, which will be available equally throughout the island. We have particularly identified small and medium enterprises in rural areas which have found it difficult to access export markets in the UK and, most particularly, in Europe. While this is not creating new jobs in An Post, we are launching this new business to assist other businesses in rural areas to grow their businesses through export and it should encourage other businesses to locate in rural areas, given that they can access a European network via An Post.