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

If we are discussing the 2011 Government, I note that in the Fianna Fáil manifesto of 2011 there was no mention of post offices at all, good, bad or indifferent. I want to move away from that. Deputy Lawless makes a fair point. Sean Fogarty in Ballymore Eustace has been looking at innovative ways to bring footfall into his post office and expand it. His is one of the ten pilot areas where we are expanding this digital assist initiative to look at how we can provide online services to people who are offline or who have never used the Internet for one reason or another. That is just one of those post offices where that has happened. That will be expanded across the country. We have been developing parcel services which allow businesses in the most isolated rural community to have exactly the same e-commerce services Dublin city centre. As I said earlier, to the best of my knowledge - I am open to contradiction - this is the only postal service in the word that is actually expanding its services at the moment. It is expanding its services to the most isolated rural communities and bringing banking services into the local post office network. These services have been withdrawn by other operators. Yes, a critical mass is needed. No one here can justify a situation where a post office that has 12 transactions a week is kept open. That is not sustainable. We all know examples of post offices which the local community bypasses, going instead to the next post office. The community has voted with its feet. We are trying to put a sustainable network in place. This will still be the biggest retail network in the country by far. I am now confident that this niche retail network is sustainable in the medium and long terms. None of us, if we are to be genuine, believed that until now.