Mr. Kieran Mulvey:

The board has had a discussion over the years about selling some of the assets which we had, for which we got a good return on investment. We are at the end of that now. There are one or two potential strategic assets but they will not bring in more than €10 million. We need to have the borrowing cap lifted to the level I indicated if we are to go in as a strong character into any joint venture or any other arrangement. To build and extend the business, we need to be in a good financial position. If the Government gave us that facility, we have had a good arrangement with the banks over the years. We have been a good customer of the Government with regard to the loan it gave us. We repaid fully and on time. We managed the savings. There was the engagement with the NTMA. We started our money product almost de novo and have built it to the level it has been built. It is one of the more successful entities in An Post.

Without asking for subsidy from the Government, which our strong opinion is that we do not want, though I might add that we are not necessarily of the same opinion but that is for a future discussion of our board, our board is certainly very conscious through our audit and risk committee that we need some capacity above the profitability we have each year. That goes back into the business and is not at a level with the scale of our business. As I say, we will be a billion euro business by the end of next year.

I feel we can be trusted. I think we are a good public company. We are a company that has a significant and unique footfall. We provide a unique service and I think we provide it well. I am not aware of any controversies relating to us. Hopefully there are none. I will find out about any like those which Deputy Crowe raised with me and see how best we can manage to address those. We have proven ourselves to be a good company to invest in. Remember the investment in us goes back to the citizens, not a private entity, to deliver services to them. That is the image we need to have as a good public company. We do not want to have what happened across the channel or in other postal services. We are considered to be a very fine postal service within the European Union. We do it well but there are matters that would assist us considerably. They are areas for the Government decisions that I outlined about the borrowing cap and future assistance to the postmasters in the context of their requirements and requests.