Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Looking at the staff members behind the glass panels in this room, I think they will be dreaming about post offices for a long time to come. They have had a lot of it today.

The Minister, Deputy Naughten, is a constituency colleague of mine. I acknowledge he has clarified a number of issues for me and has been in contact with me. I cannot disagree with virtually everything that has been said by fellow Oireachtas Members. I accept that a lot of this has built up for years and that during our time there were issues with post offices. Deputy Martin Kenny knows my part of County Roscommon very well. I point out to him and to Senator Mac Lochlainn that 15 or 18 years ago, within a radius of 7 miles we had eight post offices. Two of them were a mile and a half apart and three more were 2 miles apart. In reality they could not all survive. We are now at a different juncture and because of that we are concerned.

In acknowledgement of An Post in the past, when rural areas had no transport apart from walking or cycling, An Post gave a tremendous service virtually in every parish. The first Minister for Post and Telegraphs was appointed in 1924 and we were able to put in place a service which, I accept, came from the old British system. In 2018 we must be able to give a service that tries to look after all the people.

The Minister, Deputy Naughten, has clarified a number of issues affecting Roscommon-Galway. I know people in the affected areas who are prepared to take on the service. They have approached me in a confidential manner. I will not say any more about it. We need clarity on the issue of needing a population of 500. I think An Post goes out to the point where the driving speed limit changes, but the catchment area takes in many more people. I seek clarification on that.

I have a problem with Mr. McRedmond's figures. He said that only 1.98% of people in County Cork were affected and 3.9% overall. In the counties of Donegal, Roscommon, Leitrim, Longford, Mayo, Sligo, Galway, Clare, Kerry, Offaly, Cavan and Monaghan, almost 54% of the people are affected. Many of those closures are in one regional part. Mr. McRedmond's figure of 3.8% of people being affected is not a true reflection of my part of the country, in the west and north west. We need to take that into account. While the overall figure is correct, if one breaks it down to how it is affecting my part of the country, the figure is 55% to 60%.

I acknowledge the Minister has a very difficult portfolio. As the Minister knows, the national roll-out of broadband affects 50% or more of the people of County Roscommon - he is doing his best on it. In talking about Internet facilities, many areas will not be able to buy into that in counties like Roscommon and parts of Galway.

The credit unions were mentioned. When representatives from the Public Banking Forum of Ireland appeared earlier, I made the point the Minister made. I would be very wary. We should develop the credit unions more as they do a lot of work in providing a service and surely, a banking model should be based on that.

I will reiterate something I mentioned previously. An Post is looking for new ideas and we all have a responsibility in this regard. Has An Post ever considered the possibility of trying to encourage students to use the post office service? About two years I did a survey of 80 students in a local school attended by my daughter. Of 80 students, only one used the post office service and actually walked into a post office, which indicates there is a problem there. The Minister, Deputy Naughten, can be very good on issues like this. Why not look at a pilot scheme of setting up post offices on our university and IT campuses? Let us be radical here and sell it to the students. There is a lot of business there and a lot of banking can be done there. We should study that to see if it could be effective.