Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The bulk of social welfare payments go to our pensioners and to families for payments like child benefit payment. I imagine Deputy Ó Snodaigh goes to the post office to collect his child benefit but, increasingly, many families, individuals and pensioners already have a bank account and they opt to use their bank account. Is Deputy Ó Snodaigh suggesting that we should force people not to use their bank account and to use the post office option? I do not believe that, as a Government, we can do that. What we can do and what the Kerr group has recently recommended - I strongly support the proposal - is that there should be a standard bank account.

As a result of the collapse of the banks the development of the standard bank account fell behind. As I have said on many occasions, if the post office system had a standard bank account then the post office would be able to provide a composite range of financial services. This applies in rural Ireland particularly and in urban areas, including in my constituency and the constituencies of Deputy Ó Snodaigh and Deputy O'Dea, where there are no banks on the local main street. I have conveyed this view to the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan.

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