Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have been following some of the debate virtually from the office but I am glad to be here with everyone now. I will make a few points at the outset. My neck of the woods, Broadford in County Clare, has faced the devastation of a post office closure since the new year. That is 190 years of history and service to the local community now shut, with Covid-19 used as an excuse. This has been a feature of Covid-19. We have vaccinations. We talk about how society is being shut down but agencies and bodies have used Covid-19 as an excuse to shut things down.

Particular to the Broadford case, and it is important to mention it with our stakeholders here today, there seemed to be some kind of flaw in the model of contracts used by An Post. It is very much the individual; it is not the community or to the overall service provided by the network. In the Broadford case, the contractor and his family decided to retire from the service they provided and An Post seized on that opportunity to shut down the post office entirely. Therefore, its contract is very much with an individual. That is fine; that is how contract law works. There is no chance of offering that contract to another individual, however. It just shows that if one uses An Post's metrics of viability, many more post offices in the country could close if someone else decides to retire from the service. An Post does not have a loyalty to the service overall.

I very much believe, and I have been pushing this within the Fianna Fáil channels, that a public service obligation is the way forward. I have been pointing to Dublin city where a grandiose vanity project - a €22 million white-water rafting facility - is being planned and budgeted for by Dublin City Council. It will cost €17 million to keep our national post office network buoyantvis-à-visa public service obligation.

In a moment, I would like Mr. O'Hara from the Irish Postmasters' Union to outline whether he envisages that figure has crept up because it was suggested approximately three years ago and, obviously, there is inflation and further pressures on the service. Has that figure crept up? Is that sustainable year-on-year? Does he believe that is likely to double, as some have suggested, or even treble within a decade?

I also believe there is a long-term need for other services to be provided in post offices. Some people go there to receive their pension or social welfare payment or to drop in a package to be sent elsewhere around the world. For most people, however, myself included, it is a case of going in for postage stamps, which in itself does not keep any post office afloat, alive or sustainable. It will need far more in that regard, and in the medium to long-term we need to look at considerations, such as those put forward by Mr. O'Callaghan, for a community banking system similar to Sparkassen in Germany or the Kiwibank model in New Zealand. I hope he will elaborate on that in a moment.

The bottom line is that a public service obligation will net an approximately twentyfold return for the Exchequer and the State. If €17 million is put in to keep it sustainable and buoyant then approximately €334 million or thereabouts comes back. It is a no-brainer.

I made the point to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, and it needs to be a key recommendation of this committee, that he needs to intervene in those cases of post offices that were closed by stealth during Covid-19, in particular, including Broadford in County Clare. We cannot use a magic wand and reopen every post office has been closed for decades. That is just not viable. It will never happen; it is fictional land. As a committee, however, a key recommendation that I asked to be noted today is that any post office closed by stealth during Covid-19, including Broadford in County Clare, would reopen.

I will conclude by asking Mr. O'Hara to outline the public service obligation. Where has it happened? Where has it worked? Is it likely to be higher? Mr. O'Callaghan may then come in on the whole idea of community banking and outline how it has worked successfully in other jurisdictions.