Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 9 June 2021

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Transport, Tourism and Sport

The Viability of and Opportunities for the Post Office Network: An Post

Photo of Ruairi Ó MurchúRuairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is positive and allows for a period to deal with other issues.

It has been said to me that the two types of contracts are based on transactions and that is accepting that there was a mechanism for top-ups and whatever. To a degree, postmasters would claim that they have not secured great deals down the years and now their workload has increased. On a regular straightforward transaction when people pay their bill, postmasters get 10 cent. On the likes of an insurance referral, postmasters get the cost of a cup of tea. Like everybody, postmasters have increased costs. We can all talk about co-location but individual operators must ensure that they can cover their rates, pay, insurance and other costs. How can postmasters deal with that? A major part of this will be the fact that services will be online.

The individual postmasters are not going to get the detail on negotiations with the banks but those services are to be welcomed. Has An Post spoken to the Government about any other extra services? What is the likely pay-off for postmasters? I am just talking about ensuring sustainability because we have already talked about the closures that have happened. Mr. McRedmond said there have been 192 since July 2018. How many post offices does he foresee closing into the future? People are going to retire and so on. The witnesses are aware of the criteria and I assume they have been taken into account in the game plan. I am just afraid of what the outworkings are going to be.

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