Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak. In any debate it is important to try to be as honest as possible. We can all admit that we have a problem here. The Irish Postmasters' Union and all the staff working in post offices know there is a problem. We will not solve it tonight and this motion will not sort it out, regardless of the outcome of the vote on it. Tomorrow the problem will still be there and we need a mechanism to deal with the situation. We need a healthy interaction between the legislators, the IPU and An Post. At the moment there is a tension - not a healthy tension - between the IPU and An Post and there is a problem there. We need to find creative ways of engaging in the coming months, not years.

I do not want to repeat what other speakers have already said. There was a great opportunity in 2007 when a Belgian bank did a deal to set up banking through An Post. Unfortunately that closed down in February 2010. That was the first step in this problem becoming a bigger problem. I accept that AIB has come in, which is a help. However, we still have a difficulty. This is not a difficulty that arose this week or last week. Three years ago e-payments by the Department of Social Protection were mentioned for the first time. We need to offer some kind of current account facility through An Post. It has the counter service. The post office workers are doing more work through their counter services than any bank teller. We need to work towards that objective.

Other speakers have mentioned the social element. We could close down every post office in the country and locate them in the larger towns. While that would be an economically viable option, we need to have a socially viable option. We need to keep our post offices open in the villages and towns, in the heart of the community. We need to do that creatively. In fairness to the Minister, Deputy Rabbitte, he was very proactive when the Greencastle post office was under threat. He worked with the politicians, An Post and the IPU. That is the system we need in place for all the post offices and not when it becomes a political crisis and a motion is tabled.

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