Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I engaged with Mr. O'Callaghan and Mr. Maye at a public meeting in Athleague so I will not take up a lot of time except to ask a few short questions. Before I ask those questions, I mention that we had a postal service and our first Minister for Posts and Telegraphs was in 1924. In this day and age if we cannot keep a service throughout the country to support all of our people who need it, it is a poor reflection on Irish society.

I want to put two things to Mr. Maye and Mr. Duddy and I do not care who answers. As they know, there are 7,500 people employed in the postal service. We had to come to the rescue a short time ago when we lifted the cap on the price of a stamp to ensure that significant numbers of people would not lose their jobs and that a five or six day postal service could continue. I have no doubt about the witnesses' passion, I know where they are coming from and they have said a lot of good things. I refer to the credit union. Can the witnesses see themselves coming behind the credit union, which has a network throughout the country, in terms of non-commercial banking? That is one area where the credit union has done a lot of work on this. It is something that could be supported rather than looking at a new sector of banking.

The witnesses spoke about other areas of business that An Post could go into but the one thing that amazes me in all of this is that nobody has mentioned the younger generation. What about a pilot scheme where post offices would be put into the campuses of universities and ITs to go after that business. There is huge business there. Could that be brought into future policies because that could be quite lucrative for the postal service? That would then mean that the postal service could be supported in parts of the country where it is not profitable but where there are vulnerable people who will be left behind if what is proposed now goes ahead.

I know we will not be able to keep all of those 159 post offices open but we need to keep some of them open and have the service for vulnerable people.