Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for my absence earlier. I had to attend a vote in the Seanad. If I ask questions that were already asked, I apologise in advance. I was tracking the meeting until I had to go off to vote. I thank Ms Byrne for her opening statement. I am conscious that this is our third engagement on the retail post office network in the past month or so. We had the IPU appear before the committee and also had the Minister of State in on foot of the announcement of the funding programme, and so on. There is probably some repetition of points we made previously but I want to hear An Post’s perspective on them.

Ms Byrne referred to an investment by An Post of more than €60 million to transform the post office network to build a sustainable business for postmasters. Where did that €60 million actually go and what did it do?

My next question may have already been touched on by the Chairman. What formula was used in each of the three years? The phrase used to describe this was the "dispersal" method or model.

It is to give it to those who need it most, not those who are already thriving without it and so on. Where does Ms Byrne see the cash versus digital scenario going? That genie is out of the bottle and people are now much more willing to tap than they ever were before. They are much more willing and less reluctant to embrace technology. There was this whole cash-only thing, which I would have seen happen in my own post office. People used to go in to collect their pension and then paid their bills with the cash they got from the pension. They would then walk across to the other side of the shop and spend the rest of it over the counter buying their groceries before they went home. The cash kind of moved around within the building but never actually went anywhere. That can now be done differently.

Obviously, broadband is part of this committee's remit as well. The unintended consequences of improved broadband may mean that people will be able to access some of the services online that they cannot get at the moment because they do not have broadband and they will stop going to the post office for them. Where does Ms Byrne see that going?

Has Ms Byrne an idea of the percentage of the population that engages with An Post on either a weekly or monthly basis? I remember that Postbank kind of came and went. There is another service available now, although I am not that familiar with the An Post current account. Ms Byrne might enlighten me on that.

Ms Byrne made a reference to making online shopping easier, including by means of out-of-hours collections. What is involved in that? Obviously, people can still presumably top up their Leap cards at DART stations and on Luas platforms, but it is welcome that An Post also offers this service. I was taken by Ms Byrne's phrase about the leaky bucket whereby stuff is coming in and going back out and we are always plugging holes. The An Post brand is really important. It is really trusted - possibly more than the pillar banks or the commercial financial services sector generally. An Post should build on that and provide more services. The in-person verification stuff is very useful. I do not really understand why we set up a whole load of driving licence offices when we could possibly have done them through the post offices - not all 920 offices but perhaps 200 or 300 could have done it.