Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

My aim with this package is to ensure that our existing network of post offices remain open. It is my aim and objective, as well as An Post's, to drive more business and to get more services into these post offices. That is why, as well as part of my call today, which is a very positive and historic day for post offices, that we are asking local people to start using their local post offices and to find out about their services.

We have two banks leaving the State now and there is great potential there for An Post and for the post office network to provide these services in local towns and villages across the country. This is giving the post offices and postmasters that breather to work with An Post through the extra services that can be provided. My objective since day one when I came into this Department was to get this over the line and it has involved a great deal of hard work, including by the officials within my Department which I cannot overstate. It is unprecedented because it is about saying that we value our post office network and want these services to remain in our rural and urban communities, but we also want them to build now and to drive business and extra services.

That off-line piece will be very important. This is an all-of-government piece where every single Department will be looking at what services it could provide in the off-line space. There is the digital strategy of Government which states that 90% of the services are to be provided online but that leaves 10% of our population who will want to use off-line services. This is the time and there is further work to happen in this space.