Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)

That is excellent.

There are several other issues. I have to say as Cathaoirleach that we will make recommendations as a committee. We will put forward our views on where this goes. With regard to the social element, as a country we are getting to a crunch point for the post office network. We will have to put some value on how we want to maintain it. Effectively, there will have to be a social subsidy. The Department and the Government are at a critical point with regard to how that will be manufactured and measured. A number of the witnesses have some influence on the Government and I encourage them to go there.

We need a mechanism to encourage the postmasters to provide this; it cannot be just ad hoc. It is not just about transactions. When it comes to the social element, and how the Government would effectively manage a social subsidy in some way that would be within the parameters of EU law and Irish law, the data to support it must be very clear on the potential volume of people who would use these new services. We need to do some work on a recommendation to cross it over to the Department and to An Post, or work with An Post on it. I believe that at €50 million An Post is selling itself short. I do not think that amount would get within an ass's roar of what is required, if I am being honest about what I have just said with regard to a social subsidy. We are at a juncture.

I am a regular visitor to Ballinskelligs in Kerry. My wife is from there. There is a post office in a shop. I presume it is cross-subsidised because it is in a shop. I do not think it would exist otherwise. There has to be a Gaeltacht speaker. The value of such an isolated area having access to the An Post network is immeasurable. My local post office is in Newtown, the next parish to me beside Portroe in Tipperary. It looked after my mother and father, who has just passed, so incredibly well over the past ten or 15 years. It is impossible to put a value on how the post office looked out for them as people in their 80s. We as a country, the Government and the Oireachtas, working with An Post, are at a juncture whereby we will have to have a step change in how we value this service in a changing Ireland, how the services can be elevated, changed and added to and how we can deliver a legal social subsidy, which will be immeasurable into the future. As a committee we will have to make these recommendations. I do not think there is any difference politically across the board on this. We are all more or less in the same category.

On that basis, I thank the witnesses for their time and for coming today. I thank them for their interactions, their honesty in their answers and the detail they have given us. They have given us an awful lot of food for thought and I thank them for it. I now ask them to withdraw as we will go into private session to deal with a range of issues.