Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I wish to reply to the Minister of State to tease out the point. He is right with regard to the original provisions of the Act on providing an exclusive universal postal service. In a sense, the thinking behind it was that competition would develop and people would have choices. In truth when looking at the business there is effectively no real competition in the widespread range of postal services in a market of Ireland's size and given the nature of the postal services. It is not just in the universal postal service provision this effective monopoly takes place. There are sections of the processing system that may be contracted out but it is not an entire alternative service system. It was on this basis the argument was made on applying closed tariff requirements, recognising the reality there is not really effective competition in the vast majority of the market in which An Post operates.