Mr. David McRedmond:

Absolutely, but 98.6% of people are unaffected by that. That is not saying we should not have to look after the 1.4% because we absolutely should, but it shows there is a measure around this and that we have very carefully looked at the network to try to make sure the services are available. I absolutely hear and accept what the Deputies are saying about west Cork and, as the Minister has said, there is an appeals process. I cannot get into discussing the individual offices.

Senator Marie-Louise O'Donnell has always been a great supporter of post offices. In response to her question, the adjudicators are Paddy McGuinness and Tom Hobson. Paddy McGuinness is ex-Western Development Commission and Tom Hobson is an adviser and consultant who has worked in many groups, including Údarás na Gaeltachta. They are upstanding people to be adjudicators. They are experts and have been carefully selected, not to serve An Post but to get to the right answer and implement the protocol.

On the 231 post offices that did not take the package, they are the ones that will benefit most from consolidation from the post offices that are closing. Not all of them will do so because it is spread geographically. They will get additional business and that is the whole purpose, to extend their viability. They are kept on their existing contract because if they switched to the new contract they would have less money as the number of transactions is very low. They are better off on the existing contract. They will get all the new services that go through. We were talking about foreign exchange, for example. That is extended into those offices which did not have it before. There are opportunities for co-location, which is another part of the strategy. If a post office shares its premises with a local Spar, Centra or whatever, that can bring a benefit in terms of footfall. We have quite a detailed plan for how to do that.

In respect of financial services, we do agency banking. We are agnostic about that. If someone has an account with AIB it is useful but the financial services are driven through our own regulatory infrastructure, particularly through Post Insurance. By the way, just last week we launched a whole extended range of life insurance products throughout the network. We are launching travel insurance within the next week. We are extending the services all the time. The financial services we are looking at are services that could come from other operators. We are not particularly considering the Irish banks to provide them. We do believe in the whole notion of ethical-----