Mr. David McRedmond:

Deputy Stanley said that if An Post was his company, he would be taking corrective actions and he raised questions on what corrective actions we were taking. I genuinely think the issues in An Post are a result of global trends. There are issues on whether we should have known this earlier. Indeed the Department has written to us to identify better processes to ensure we could do that. I am quite clear that people in An Post are committed to ensuring the future viability and good management of the company. I think that sometimes forces can be very strong and we have discovered, particularly in the third quarter of 2016, that the acceleration in decline in mail was very notable. That happened to coincide with the time I took up the position and we could see the picture more clearly then. While it was a trend, the trend accelerated quite dramatically in that third quarter. On the question of whether financial services will be available in all post offices, yes, I hope so. On the question of whether the account will be available in all post offices, yes I hope so.

In response to questions on the Kerr plan and the ways in which it does not go far enough, I think I have covered most of these areas. It is really describing a four-year window and I think we need to see beyond that. There are some commercial elements and a contract needs to be negotiated with the postmasters and postmistresses. I think there is room. However, we have to bring this down to a really detailed level such as, for instance, the questions Deputy McLoughlin has asked of me. I will not be able to answer them now but I will be in contact with him this week on Ballygawley and Blacklion.

The consultative periods are very important. We get different levels of response. Sometimes one gets no response or a limited response and sometimes one gets a response that is negative or a response that is positive. The outcomes of the consultations are taken seriously and we look at them because they give us an indication as to whether there is an activity there in the future. It often can be an indication that we cannot find somebody willing to take up the contract and that can be indicative that there simply is not sufficient activity there. We have to understand what the community wants and how much the community will engage with it. Sometimes those answers are not always obvious and they can be surprising. I will revert to Deputy McLoughlin on the post offices.

Deputy Stanley stated that the increase in the price of the postage could be counterproductive. There will always be an element of that when there is a price increase. We have done as much due diligence as one reasonably can in terms of working out the elasticity. One difficulty with bulk mail is that some of our very biggest customers are switching to e-substitution quite rapidly. To be honest, whether the price they are paying is 57 cent, 67 cent or 80 cent, if they can see the opportunity to make a level of saving, which is not between 57 cent and whatever the higher price might be but actually is to save the whole amount through e-substitution, they will do that. One of the real difficulties when one looks at decline in mail is in questioning how much of the decline is due to price and how great the decline would be in any event. We forecast, even if we did not increase the price, there would be a very substantial decline. Indeed we are forecasting a 10% decline in mail even without an increase in price.

We have done the work to the best of our ability to say that the proposal will deliver a yield, the question is how much that yield will be and whether it gives us room to implement the changes we need to make.