Mr. Kieran Mulvey:

I think it is vitally important. This nation is subject to a scam tsunami. There are scams on everything. There are even scams trying to use An Post. It is all over the place. People do not know whether opening their email accesses a link. One hears stories on certain radio programmes about how people are taken in. We have seen that in one or two of our post offices where we have alerts up. People withdrawing cash from their accounts wonder what is going on. Obviously we have to work with the Central Bank and others on this in our reporting. There is a tsunami of scams going on and people, particularly older citizens, do not know how best to proceed when they are paying for things. It is important that the State moves to online services but there is a risk in online services. Certain people in the community, for whatever reason, are not comfortable with going online or find the technology difficult. They would like to go into the post office and pay it in cash or withdraw the cash from their account and pay it over the counter. The Government has to balance that with offering online services. People will be the same as me. After about five minutes of waiting on the phone, I am fed up of the opera they are playing. I love opera but after five minutes I am fed up listening to it and being told "your custom is important to us”. If it is so important, why not answer the phone with a person? We have to be conscious that we can go too far with the technology line and forget the human interaction.

There is one thing that post offices are great for, which is human interaction. That cannot be said of all financial services, which I will not name.