Mr. David McRedmond:

-----because I do not want to prejudice the appeals process. The adjudicators are Mr. Paddy McGuinness and Mr. Tom Hobson who are both highly recognised in this field of doing these sorts of adjudications. The protocol is published and available on the An Post website. I do not know if there is a second post office in Littleton if there are 1,200 people there but I should not go into the particular case. We are keeping 100 post offices open where the population is under 500 because of the distance requirements and making sure they are available. As the criteria are complex, there could be a number of different reasons but it is worth taking a look at the appeals process and seeing if there is a possibility with it. I will point out that it is not fair to say that we have abandoned rural Ireland. After the consolidation there will be 35 post offices in Tipperary and that is considerable coverage compared with that in many other countries.

Deputy Lowry also mentioned two other things. On not implementing reports, I went through the Bobby Kerr report and, even though I disagree with some of the things in it, I discovered that we had implemented 17.5 of the 19 recommendations for An Post in that report - I said it was 18 earlier. We have taken action. I respect that Deputy Lowry has raised these issues before and we have gone back, looked at them and implemented. In respect of community banking, I do not believe there is anything in community banking that An Post is either not doing or not planning to do in the short term. I believe we are going to make the full range of services available. We are not likely to go for a banking licence but with the changes in banking regulation that is no longer a requirement to provide the services. It is indeed much better because services can be provided more quickly. I believe we can leapfrog many of the services of the traditional banks and that we can have an even better range of services. I completely share Deputy Lowry's ambition for financial services.