Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

That is not a curveball at all. We can forget Switzerland and instead talk about the west coast of County Clare. There was a working example of this in the past around Loop Head. It might have been ten or 15-years ago, where An Post also doubled its service by taking some passengers. I still firmly believe that has real potential. I would argue even more so now, and the Acting Chair will be aware of this while representing a rural constituency, that we have a real issue around hackneys and taxi services in rural Ireland.

It is very difficult to get drivers. We have seen huge improvements with the likes of Local Link and Connecting Ireland services. However, we need to go beyond that. There could be an opportunity for An Post to raise revenues as part of a diversification of income. I am still very interested in that hybrid option. It is particularly suitable for parcel deliveries where vans are covering the country on a regular basis. How to integrate it is very challenging.

We introduced a new innovative hackney scheme in small villages but it did not prove as successful as we had hoped. It was hard to get drivers. That is probably the biggest obstacle at the moment. Therefore, if an existing van and driver are on the road, it would make sense to make the most use of that asset. Both as Minister for Transport and as Minister for communications, I am still very much encouraging the company. We need to see if we can take those examples that existed in Clare as I said, not just in Switzerland, and see if we can bring them back.