Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Action 20 in the action plan for rural Ireland states,"Oversee and monitor the implementation of actions to support the Post Office Network". It lists the responsible bodies as the Department of Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, An Post and relevant Government Departments. We are beating around the bush too long on the whole post office issue. My question to the Minister is this: is he going to start making decisions? There are a fair number of people in post offices - the truth is told in rural Ireland - who are hanging on and wondering what the Minister is going to do. Let us be straight about it. Some of those would like to get a package and get out because they know there is not a living in it.

It is a favourite topic of people in Dublin that the only thing in rural Ireland is post offices. To be quite honest, for many people fibre broadband outscores the post office network. I hate to say it, but that is the reality and I live in the real rural Ireland and not in some leprechaun rural Ireland. When is the Minister going to start making decisions? Anybody who tells me that it would have been viable to keep every post office that was there for 20 years open is talking tommyrot.

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