Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

In the short time available to me this evening, I will deal with only one aspect of the Bill before returning to its main provisions tomorrow. This is, in the main, innocuous legislation. Its only urgent provision is in section 16, which deals with an EU directive from 2010 and, therefore, addresses an outstanding matter that was not addressed when other parts of the directive were adopted previously.

I propose to discuss an issue to which Deputy O'Dea alluded and to which neither the Bill nor the explanatory memorandum explicitly refers, namely, An Post or, for that matter, post offices. According to the explanatory memorandum: "Section 3provides for changes to enable functions relating to payment of benefit or assistance and related payment services to be provided under arrangements with selected payment service providers." When one trawls through social welfare and pensions legislation, including the principal Act of 2005, one finds that the purpose of this section is to delete all references to "An Post". The removal of references to An Post as the named service provider for social welfare payments could have devastating implications for the survival of local post offices. The Department has explained that this deletion is being made to remove the privileged position - those are the words it uses - of An Post in the consideration of service providers in future. This measure does not feature in any of the documents before us. There is nothing privileged about hanging on by one's fingertips, as many of our post offices are doing.

An Post should have a principal position to reflect the important role local post offices play in the community. The post office network is crucial to the social fabric, especially in rural areas, but also in urban neighbourhoods. Post offices have played a key role in the anti-fraud measures of the Department and could probably play a greater role in this regard if all payments made by the Department were facilitated by An Post and its services. The removal of An Post's status creates the possibility of a multinational company, bank or other entity with no connection to our communities swooping in and acquiring the contract for social welfare payments. The manner in which the Minister has acted in this Bill opens up this possibility, which would not be in the best interests of those who receive payments, post office workers or the wider community. There is no reason we should not retain An Post as a preferred bidder, if one wishes, rather than removing all references to "An Post" and placing it on the same level as all other financial institutions and all that would entail.

See this speech in context