Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will first respond to Deputy Martin Kenny. There has been an expansion of postal services in the past two years since my appointment as Minister. An Post vans can now be seen in rural communities on Saturdays, which never happened before other than at Christmas. That is because An Post now provides a parcel service to every townland in rural Ireland six days a week. There has been an expansion of foreign exchange service in post offices to include cash, which does not have to be pre-ordered but can be collected by customers walking in to post offices. Over the next six to eight months, there will be a significant expansion in the financial services that An Post will offer in every post office. That will be new business coming into the post offices. There will be an expansion of services relating to personal and small business loans and a credit card facility which will not only provide services that may have traditionally been available in the community through banks which have withdrawn them or that may never have been available in that community. These new services are going into rural Ireland and will support existing businesses, the development of new businesses in those communities and meet the needs of today, tomorrow and the days after. People are looking back at what the post office provided 20, 30 or 40 years ago, but we are looking at what the post office will provide in five, ten or 15 years and we need to plan for it now. I have taken the difficult decision.

I could have taken the easy decision, as my predecessors did, sat on my hands, ignored the issue, and allowed post office after post office to close and watched hundreds of post offices close, but I will not be disingenuous in this regard. I spent long enough arguing that we should develop new innovative services in the post offices. We are seeing that in the case of financial services currently and we will hopefully see it in the case of government services on foot of the decisions that we have made. One in seven people in Ireland has never used the Internet. With the digital assist programme, they will have an opportunity to benefit from the services on the Internet. For example, using my hat as Minister for energy, consumers can save between €200 and €300 each by using either bonkers.ieor Switcher.ieto move their electricity account from one operator to another. If they have not access to the Internet or cannot use the technology, they cannot avail of that currently. Through the digital assist programme, they will be able to avail of that through their local post office. This is an example of practical services that are going into the post offices today or that will go in next month and the months after that.