Ms Carol Bolger:

I thank Deputy Crowe. On the first question about the radius, I will not pretend I know the specifics because I do not. I have a notes but I do not have with me. I will certainly revert to the Deputy on the matter.

The Deputy asked whether when one post office falls, another one is saved. Our objective is to have post offices that are viable. That is a big objective. If the very small post offices do not have the footfall or the business, they just cannot be a viable business with individual postmasters. If I may, I will come back to the Deputy on that point after the meeting and provide him with specific detail on the radius and his questions.

Our intention is to support postmasters. They are entrepreneurs and businesspeople who are running their own businesses. If I flip to the Deputy's final question about Bank of Ireland, the objective of that is to increase footfall and develop a suite of products and services. We are currently doing this so that when people come into a post office perhaps to use agency banking, they will then buy additional products because we are selling them and they are exactly what they need.

The Deputy said that PostPoints do not add real value. We must consider our consumers. What does the nation need and what do people need? How do people need to get their parcels delivered and how do they need to collect them? This is a very complex business we are running. Our objective is to deliver to our customers but also to make sure our postmasters can have a viable business. It is a challenging agenda but we believe our strategy will get us home. We have had a very difficult year in 2020 and 2021 with the pandemic. We have survived and we will survive the year. Next year we will, I believe, come back into very good stead with regard to our overall balance sheet and numbers. I hope that answers the Deputy's question. I will come back to him on his question on the 15 km radius because I do not want to give him the wrong information.