Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister might say that. Tonight I do not want to thank the Minister but to acknowledge the work done by the Public Banking Forum of Ireland, the Independent Postmasters Group and the International Small Business Alliance for their oral and written submissions to the Oireachtas committee on 4 September, their letters to Deputies and their letter of 27 June. I specifically mention it because all of that has been done on a voluntary basis. They have done it to educate us and what they have done, thankfully, has changed the narrative from the very limited debate of saving our post offices to one that envisages the transformation of our post offices into a network of thriving, profitable community banking services and multi-service providers. They have given us all of this language and all the statistics, and they have moved on to point out the intrinsic link between the future of the post office network and the future of Ireland's indigenous economy and indigenous companies, which are the backbone of our economy.

They have pointed to the crucial difference between funding the productive economy, which is very important, and the funding of speculative bubbles, and the role of the post office network in assisting the transformation of the Irish socioeconomy. They go on to give us examples from New Zealand and Germany. Indeed, the programme for Government committed to looking at a community banking model and I have read the report prepared for the Minister on local public banking in Ireland. Extraordinarily, it highlights exactly what those organisations have said. It points out the advantages and the returns to the community of these types of models but it goes on to say there is no case for rolling them out in Ireland because it would involve the spending of public money, and some €170 million is mentioned.

Coincidently, I am on the Committee of Public Accounts and tomorrow we will be examining the billions of euro paid to the banks with absolutely no return or pay-off to the economy. This is a model with huge pay-off on every level. It will keep our rural areas thriving and will be the backbone of indigenous industry, yet the Minister has rejected it. I ask him to review that.

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