Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I repeat the point I am trying to make to which the Minister does not respond. It is not just a question of a falling volume of mail; that is being compounded by the insistence of Departments to reduce Government transactions in post offices. Together, these are putting huge pressure on the viability of An Post, while at the same time the Government insists that all these services be outsourced and liberalised. That cannot be done.

The third thing that kicked in here is the commitment in the programme for Government to investigate new models of community banking. The speed with which the State was able to respond to the banking collapse that led to a bailout of €64 billion by the citizens of the State was extraordinary. Overnight the Government could pass legislation to save those banks. Since the Government has been formed, to my knowledge there has been one meeting of the committee chaired by the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, and since then nothing has been done about it. There has been no update on investigating a simple form of community banking and my guess is that is because the big banks will not tolerate it. That is the kind of move we need in order to sustain the viability of this company. The foot-dragging is doing nobody any good.

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