Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My time is shared. The time slots were submitted. The Minister has taken the wrong approach to this debate from the very start. He has taken the position of An Post and based the closure of post offices around viability. We know that 159 post offices, and a far greater number, are not profitable. We accept that. People have changed the way they live their lives. Some people do their transactions online. Some people email. They do not use the services of the post office, and the Minister thinks the solution is to embarrass more people into using the post office. There are more services that can be delivered but there is no guarantee that if the Minister follows this profit and loss approach he seems to have bought into, these locations will ever be financially viable, but their closure and their elimination go to the ruination of the communities they serve. The Minister should be looking at the viability of the communities and the services the people need.

Nowhere have I ever heard a Minister with responsibility for transport say that if a road is lightly trafficked and there is not enough traffic on it, we will not fill the potholes unless more people use it. They have never said it because it is an essential public service. Equally, the post office is an essential public service to elderly and vulnerable people who cannot make the ten or 15 km to the nearest service. That might make the neighbouring post office viable in that, with more transactions, it breaks even.

What about the people who have to make that trip? They have to pay for taxis, as Deputy Stanley said, or get relations to bring them to collect their social welfare payments. That is an unfair encumbrance on them. It is an intolerable burden. The hollowing out of the social welfare payments from that community will have a cascading negative effect. It will take money away from the local shops and other businesses and we will see a further denigration of services in those communities.

I accept that previous Governments allowed post offices to close. In many cases, the contract was re-offered and other businesses did not take them up because the demand had deteriorated.

See this speech in context