Ms Debbie Byrne:

The Senator mentioned three Government services that, over the years, we have campaigned around. We said earlier that anything that involved a payment to the Government can be facilitated through the network. The same is true for any licences.

We would have to put in new equipment for photo capture to do TV licences. We did an assessment on that previously and found that while we could not have offered it in 900 post offices, we could do so in the top 450. We looked at the business case previously with regard to putting in cameras and then seeing whether they could be used for something else.

We are speaking about post offices providing offline services for those less digitally literate. There is a seriously sophisticated IT system and equipment behind the post office network, which allows it to do the €14 billion in transactions it does every year, and that infrastructure is there to be scaled to do other Government services. I absolutely agree that we need to make it simpler for citizens to interact with the State so they do not have to go here, there and everywhere during hours that do not suit them. They could have an office of Government on their doorstep where they could come in to do their business with greater ease between 9 a.m. and 5.30 p.m. six days a week. A lot of offices are not open over these hours. I echo what Mr. Martin said in that we are the only State body that was open throughout Covid. Intreo offices closed and we picked up the slack. Bank branches closed and in the west of Ireland, even at a time when we did not have an arrangement with Bank of Ireland, we stepped in. We were there, as were the postmasters, to serve citizens. The network and technology are there to do more.