Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)

I accept what Deputies Coffey and Conway have stated on the social role and responsibility of An Post. We spent a good deal of time during the debate on the Bill discussing this very issue. The difficulty is that An Post is also a commercial State company and it must be viable; this is its mandate. It is this balance between the commercial mandate and the social responsibility that is sometimes difficult to get right.

I agree with Deputy Paudie Coffey that there is a need for the company to continue to reinvent itself. We should make no mistake: electronic substitution has caused the gravest of problems for An Post and there has been a dramatic decline in its revenue in recent years. There has been a drop in volume of more than 20%, which has caused very serious difficulties for An Post.

As regards the fact that Kill post office is closed, until Deputy Conway brought the matter to my attention yesterday, I was not aware of it. I do not know the circumstances surrounding the robbery that seems to have precipitated its closure, but I will undertake to raise the matter with the chairman of the company. I do not know whether it is the intention to reopen it. I accept it is not the most strategic approach to the retail infrastructure of An Post that, for whatever happenstance, that if a post office is closed, it will remain closed because it is one less. I will examine the prospects in the case of Kill post office in that context.

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