Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I accept the independence of An Post but for generations there has been an ongoing debate about the survival and maintenance of rural post offices. It is tied in with other issues such as rural isolation. We may have ghost estates but we also have ghost villages. Communities are losing their post offices not just in rural areas but in urban areas as was seen in Blackpool in Cork city recently. Since I was elected, every communications Minister has said they want to provide a network of commercially viable post offices. In his reply, the Minister stated An Post should seek further contracts. However, we do not see any urgency in this regard. We have heard at public meetings and so forth that An Post should go into providing different services such as county council bills, but there never seems to be an urgency for it to go after these contracts. There must be a drive to ensure the post office network becomes a provider of other services.

There must be an urgency because many of the smaller post offices rely almost exclusively on social welfare business at this stage and they need to become more than simply a traditional post office. Perhaps in his negotiations the Minister could encourage An Post to have a sense of urgency.

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