Mr. Sean Martin:

I thank the Chair and Deputy Lowry, who is dead right. The post office withers while the Government dithers, and that is the difficulty with the post office network and our ability to be able to sustain ourselves. The Government's e-payment strategy and its digital first strategy have exacerbated the problems throughout the network. I do not have a problem with digital first. We all know people are getting more and more enabled with technology. However, I do have a problem with digital first, digital second and digital third. Invariably what the Government is doing is taking the local service out of local communities and divesting itself of the delivery of the services to local people and local communities that want them.

With regard to the banking, the Deputy is dead right. We would all love a community bank but we must realise a community bank will take quite a while to get off the ground, and by the time it gets off the ground, I do not think we will have any post office. There might be 100 or 200 post offices left. Community banking also needs physical infrastructure and physical time to be able to deliver the service at a counter. As it stands at present, the post office does not have this expertise. It does not have the time needed to be able to deliver that expertise on the financial side.

An Post took the strategy, and in our view it was the right strategy, of trying to deliver more agency banking because it involves quick transactions that can give postmasters some sort of a return in the short term. In the long term, what we are looking for is the Government to deliver retainer earnings for postmasters that will enable them to survive over the coming three, four or five years. Our general secretary has already stated we are not looking for money to be put into a black hole. We are quite prepared to look at a review in two years' time on how the new government services have fitted with the post office network, how they have been implemented and how they have fitted with the communities. If it has not worked then, we may need to do something else. In the meantime, we do not need to get distracted with a community bank because if we do get distracted with that community bank, the delivery of a public service obligation, PSO, or retained earnings will be lost very quickly.