Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for attending. I also thank them for their leaflets. I receive their IPU updates every two months or whenever the case may be, and those are informative and helpful.

In his statement, Mr. O'Hara outlined that An Post, of which post offices are the customer-facing part, was one of the most trusted brands in the country. It is probably more trusted than any bank or other financial institution. There is a great deal that is positive about it. Equally, though, I just asked a couple of people in their 20s upstairs about when they were last in their post offices. One could not remember and another said it was last Christmas to buy stamps for Christmas cards. What is the age profile of the people who come in the door every day and every week and where is that going? I get the impression that it is mostly older people. My mother uses the post office regularly and thinks it is a fantastic service to have.

I could probably name seven or eight post offices within two miles of me in my area of Dublin, but two have closed. One had a bakery in the shop as well and probably achieved higher margins by making that part of the shop bigger and getting rid of the post office. The post office is much more essential in less densely populated areas because the next one is so much farther away.

I was listening to the earlier contributions from my office. The witnesses are asking for €12 million on the one hand and, on the other, saying that they do not want money for nothing and that they are looking for other services. What other services can we deliver? I do not understand why An Post's tender for the driver licence service included 300 facilities if the tender process was only seeking 30. I do not know why it did not compete on what the tender process was seeking. Nor do I know why we need to set up a driver licence system when the post office could have provided the service across the country.

What is the future of the business in terms of transactions? I worry about broadband, in that, as broadband becomes available across more of the country, more services will go online and people may use post offices less. Where is the area of expansion and what can we do, as a Government and as a committee lobbying the Government, to give post offices more services that they do not currently have? The customer profile is changing, as is the business profile. Since the pandemic, I presume that the number of cash transactions in post offices is down. What else can we give the post offices to improve the viability of their business and allow them to generate that €12 million through services as opposed to just giving each office a lump of cash?