Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Ms Byrne for her presentation. It is good to see the witnesses again. I welcome that there has been some progress since we last met.

I will pick up on the last point Ms Byrne made about how An Post would like to see things unfold now in respect of engagement. There is a process to work its way out in respect of the potential government services and a one-stop shop and what that might look like. Are negotiations ongoing? At every committee meeting I attend there is call for a whole-of-government approach. The difficulty with whole-of-government approaches is that they are difficult. I ask the witnesses to give me a sense of where we are at and the type of progress that is being made or not being made. Do the witnesses feel there is a need for a different approach to the engagement in the first instance? From their perspective, is the potential that is there for identification? Is it less for social welfare or is it still for social welfare? I would like just a sense of the types of services the witnesses see as a potential.

Can the witnesses expand on the point about the Green Hub? I am my party's climate spokesperson. There is a huge budget to go with the retrofitting programme. SSE Airtricity, I think, is one of the five one-stop shops. On a practical basis, what is the working relationship between An Post and SSE Airtricity? How does that look, and what is the opportunity to penetrate into communities in a way in which online does not for the retrofitting programme?

I have a final question about the allocation of the new moneys. What is the formula for that? If there are postmasters around the country looking towards the end of this year, how do they ready themselves to be considered?