Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is not just community banking in terms of the post office networks. We must be careful on the banking side. It is an industry in flux. We have stopped using cash because of Covid-19. How many here have a Revolut card? How many of their relations are being queried on that? However, that is a separate issue. I kid you not, the questions my family have been asked on that are shocking. It is not going to go back to traditional banking. There is a role for financial services within that.

The Deputy's colleague, Michael Moriarty, has been pushing the case for an example similar in size and demography in respect of Broadford, Kishkeam and out beyond Newmarket in north-west Cork and to see if we could make it a local enterprise hub centre with several workplaces and a high-speed broadband connection. We should be thinking beyond the traditional in terms of new services or projects.

There was a post bus in the Loop Head Peninsula with the post van working as a local bus. It is similar to the system in Switzerland. We will we see many more parcels and the post offices are not making much money from the parcel business, although everyone else is. Those vans could go around places such as Kilrush. Rather than waiting four hours for the next bus, one could take the post van instead. The van could have parcels in the back and a half-dozen seats at the front. We need to think differently.