Mr. David McRedmond:

Yes, I will do so.

On the issue of the credit union partnership, there have been some discussions. What I will say on the issue of financial services overall, which also relates to the question on the pillar banks, is that our main financial services are driven by Avantcard and we use a FinTech company to deliver some of our other services. Most importantly, we are just completing our financial strategy which will see us launch a request for proposal, RfP. Under that RfP it will be open to anybody to apply to provide services. As already stated, the nature of EU banking regulation is changing quite dramatically and this means that banking data is open and one does not need to have a licence. An RfP will be issued and it will be on that basis that we will decide on the best services for citizens.

Senator Mulherin referred to the lack of announcements on new services and that is a reasonable criticism. We must ask if we are publicising the new services sufficiently well. We certainly have been announcing them. We have been putting up notices in post offices telling customers that agency banking is available. We have been advertising the roll-out of foreign exchange services this summer. We have undertaken a lot of advertising in respect of foreign exchange cards. We have been doing all of that but it might be the case that we are not doing it enough to make sure that all communities are aware. We will certainly look at that again. When we undertook advertising last week we made sure to include all regional as well as national newspapers but I absolutely accept the Senator's point in that regard.

I was asked why the closures announcement was made when the Dáil was in recess. Everything was driven by doing the deal with the Irish Postmasters Union but I did not expect that to take three to four months. I expected it to take a month, in which case the announcement would have been made far sooner and would have been during the Dáil term. These businesses are not our businesses. These post offices do not belong to An Post. We cannot force any of them to stay open. We tell them that a package is available and that they can take it and exit from their contract. If someone is going to take over a post office, I would imagine that he or she will take over the entire premises and everything else involved. As I said at the start, the main reason people are taking up these packages is that their post offices are unviable in those locations. That is the reason we did it when we did. The Senator has suggested that the way it was done was cynical but there was no intent in terms of doing it when the Dáil was closed. Our intent is to get on with the business. There is a real drive on in An Post, because of the financial difficulties we were in 18 months ago and we are now back into a position of growth and profit and are delivering extended services and improving our parcel services. There is a real drive to get on with the work and that is what we are doing. If anything, haste was driving it and we certainly had no intention of doing it in a way that was not entirely open and visible. We have issued press releases at every stage, including to Deputies. We have done everything we could to try to keep people as informed as possible along the way.

Deputy Harty spoke about the possibility of more post offices closing and referred to the approximately 230 postmasters that did not take up the package. This is a scheme that we agreed with the postmasters and it has taken a year to put it in place. It took months to negotiate and we are not doing another one. Our aim now, as I have said previously, is to make sure that the remaining post offices are viable, with new services, with the plans for co-location and with all of these other pieces. That is very much at the heart of this. In terms of the services, I very much appreciate any support we get in that regard. It is up to members of this committee to support the delivery of Government services through the post office network. There was a debate regarding the television licence, which I understand, but a recommendation came from this committee that the licence fee be collected by the Revenue Commissioners, even though An Post is doing a very good job with television licences. That is an example of a service should be available in post offices.

The Deputy was asked if the selection was random. It was not random. The Deputy is correct that out of those selected as potential takers, there is a degree to which one office took it and another did not. However, the fact that the package was offered to that particular cohort of post offices was carefully designed.