Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has claimed no one will be forced to go. However, they will be. When a post office closes and the postmaster or postmistress receives his or her rightful payment, the people who availed of their services will be forced to travel a further distance. The Minister gave an example of a post office with only 11 social welfare customers. There are others which make 100 and 200 social welfare payments a week, but the Minister did not refer to them. If the 11 payments were transferred to the local shop, local pub or other retailing business to give the owner of that business a couple of bob, from the experience I have had in talking to them up and down the country, they would do it. The Minister could do that more cheaply by giving the kind of contract that was in existence when a greater number of people used the service. Many of the shops in question would be delighted to have the business for less money. If the Minister removed some of the restrictions, they could handle it through the PostPoint system or a postal agency service. The key is retaining the making of social welfare payments within a village. The Minister knows full well that if that block of payments, whether it be 11 or 100, moves 15 km to the neighbouring village, it will shore up the post office in the neighbouring village, as well as the viability of its shops. However, when that money is taken out of a village when its post office closes, one is also effectively closing the shop. The Minister is buying into the viability model which has An Post working through this initiative. What about the viability of communities?

The Minister should follow what is being done in the UK and elsewhere in western Europe and provide a small amount of subvention to support those businesses in the individual villages that are happy to have the postal service delivered from their premises. They are not going to rob him. They do not want the type of contract that existed in the past. They are happy to provide payments to their community if the Minister is prepared to pay a reasonable amount of money and allow the service to be delivered across the PostPoint service.

See this speech in context