Ms Debbie Byrne:

Several questions have been asked. One was on postmaster remuneration and another on the size of the network. I will deal with the size of the network first. For want of a better phrase, we have a two-tier network. We have approximately 300 postmasters on the old contract, which is where they have this triennial review. The rest of the offices are on the new contract, which came into effect in 2018 and was voted for by a 70:30 majority of Irish Postmasters Union members. The old contract reviews postmasters' income every three years. These postmasters have not been affected by the pandemic because their incomes are cushioned for three years. The plan with the pandemic recovery fund is that if somebody was up for review this year they would avail of the pandemic fund so that the hit to social welfare transactions would not reduce their income.

We then come to the new commercial contract, whereby postmasters are paid per transaction for the business they do every week and every month. No postmaster on this has seen his or her income reduced because the three-year deal had a top-up mechanism that guaranteed people's income to 2019 levels. It is true to say the top-up has reduced to 50%. During Covid, postmasters saw a bit of a drop off. The 50% top-up would have been fine because of the new services but the decrease in social welfare and foreign exchange transactions meant there was a Covid hit.

The idea is that from the end of June the pandemic fund will cushion postmasters for another 18 months. I would love to see the detail of this but we cannot get into individual post offices. There is no way an urban post office has seen a decline of €30,000 because they have been cushioned by the top-up mechanism, unless it was a very busy social welfare office that was badly hit last year because of the move to double payments. The idea with the pandemic fund is to normalise it for 18 months.

When postmasters in urban areas tender their resignations, for whatever reason, the posts are advertised and we tend to have two to three applications. In a minority of cases we may not get a suitable applicant because there is no Spar or Centra with the space. We work very hard to fill these vacancies. Having two, three or four applications for a post office shows people see a viable future in them. There are 110 postmasters on the new contract who were not in receipt of transformation payments because they came on after the agreement. They have been making a viable living.

Post offices vary from town to town based on the demographics of the area and the skill of the postmasters. It is our job to work with postmasters. Some are more commercial and are taking on and managing three or four post offices because they see it as a viable business but others are not and perhaps need more help. We help them to work on selling skills and on how to manage and run a business. We are there to give this support and local marketing tools. For example, with our new money mate accounts for children we give the post offices tools and flyers to use in their local communities to promote their business. We have also supplied them with direct mail so they can market to small businesses when they return to their offices. We enable them to sell labels at a discount to those with an advantage card and mail media with publicity posts. Postmasters can now offer a local clothes shop tools to promote the business and the post office gets a commission.