Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of People Before Profit, I commend Deputy Barry and Solidarity on tabling this motion. I pledge our complete support for the campaign of workers in the Cork mail centre to fight against the disgraceful decision to close the centre and eliminate these jobs. The Minister should bear in mind that An Post does not have a good record on making strategic decisions about its own future. It closed its special delivery service, SDS, which was a parcel delivery service, in 2003 when the boom in parcel delivery was about to start. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy in that the management of An Post is almost wishing for its decline and making that prophecy come true with these sorts of decisions. The management has a history of this. It completely misunderstood what was happening and a boom in parcel delivery ensued after it made a decision to abandon An Post's special parcel delivery wing. It cannot be trusted to make these strategic decisions and has made a big mistake here.

How many times have we heard both the Government and Fianna Fáil refer to dramatic plans for population expansion in Cork? They even talk of the population doubling. Why are we taking away a crucial hub and piece of infrastructure when the population of Cork is set to double? The planned roll-out of rural broadband will increase parcel delivery as people buy online and so on. That would be facilitated by this centre in Cork, yet we are closing it down. At a time when we are discussing climate action, we are planning for these parcels to chug their way up the road to Athlone, Portlaoise or Dublin, pumping CO2 emissions into the air. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

This is a consequence of moving away from understanding that An Post, like many other State-owned companies, is part of a vital infrastructure that should not be based on narrow short-term commercial considerations, but should be about maintaining a critical infrastructure for both the country and the Cork region. That slide towards deregulation and privatisation ends with stupid decisions that impact on workers and the infrastructure and services available to people, in this case people in Cork. It is worth noting that this is also part of the push towards deregulation of services of general economic interest by the European Union. The process of commercialisation and backdoor privatisation leads to the undermining of key public services. This comes on the back of a terrible history of closure of rural post offices and the damage that is doing to rural Ireland, all because of commercial considerations. A vital public service having to run on narrow, short-term, purely commercial considerations leads to the destruction of rural infrastructure and services, with devastating consequences for rural Ireland. The Government should not allow this to happen. It should ensure those jobs are saved and this hub and service are maintained for the expansion of parcel services in the Cork region.

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