Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is very seamless between ourselves and the Social Democrats. We work nicely together.

I welcome and support at the motion. The Grant Thornton report is actually a good report and well worth reading. I am glad it was commissioned. I am particularly impressed with the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, SWOT, analysis element of it. The report refers to the strengths of the post office with its premium brand recognition and positive public perception, being at the heart of the community, supporting local economic growth and social vibrancy in those communities, a proven track record of service delivery, a loyal customer base, being community and social centred, having the capacity to handle additional business, as well as being Ireland's largest retail network with an unrivalled geographical reach and local knowledge of the network. The weaknesses are the structural decline in letter post volumes, growing digitalisation and e-substitution, dependence on social welfare contracts, increased competition and the failure to grow profitable service lines, and uncommercial post office branches.

It is a report which looks inward and is honest about what the post office's failings and weaknesses are. The opportunities are a key element of the SWOT analysis. They include assuming responsibility for additional Government services - "the State on your doorstep"- capability and infrastructure, the ability to extend business, available capacity to grow service offerings for public and private sector organisations, opening up the financial services market, e-commerce and parcel growth, capture new customers and increase market share through to provision of complimentary services and products.

I could go through the threats but they have been well itemised.

The executive summary of the report states "[t]he Post Office Network consisting of 899 post offices, as operated by independent contractors serving local communities across Ireland, faces significant levels of unrestrained closures by the end of 2021 without urgent Government intervention". That is the key sentence. Year in, year out we all stand up in the Dáil and speak about the importance of postal service provision in this country. We hear platitudes spoken on the issue. At the end of the day, as the report highlights, the cost of operating the post office network is €70 million. The revenue generated by the retail element associated with postmasters is €53 million. Therefore, the funding shortfall which must be made good to prevent unrestrained closures of post offices is €17 million.

What can the Government do to bridge that gap? As I have already noted, the report is very good at identifying the network's strengths. How can we build the business base and expand the business model to give post offices a fighting chance, whether they are located in a rural setting or a city like Cork, Galway or Limerick? Post offices everywhere face the same types of challenges.

It is important that as consumers we make the conscious decision to use post offices. The volume of customers is an issue. The demise of letter-writing has obviously had a knock-on effect. One could argue that the growth of the parcel service will be relatively short-lived because companies like Amazon are building their own parallel networks. I wonder about the medium-term or long-term sustainability of that contract with An Post. I have my doubts about whether it will turn out to be a profit centre for An Post after all.

We need to move beyond platitudes. This is a very good report. The Government must examine and interrogate it further with an ethic of ensuring that post offices are planted firmly and sustainably in communities. There is a template in this report. If it is given a fighting chance, the imbalance in those figures can be addressed.

One of the proposals involves a public service obligation. This should be seriously considered by the Government. As the report highlights, it is already in place. This is an excellent report because it is written for politicians like ourselves, who probably do not have time to go through reports of this nature line by line. The executive summary provides a very good synopsis of what is needed. Countries with approval from the European Commission to operate a post office network through a PSO include France, Italy, Germany, Poland, Finland, Spain and the recently departed but still significant United Kingdom. We do not have one but I think it should be considered. Interestingly, the report also highlights that other industries that previously operated under a PSO in Ireland include agriculture, aviation, rail, finance, bus transport, radio, housing and energy. That is particularly significant. As politicians we are all given to the odd platitude. If we can move beyond rhetoric, embrace the report and think differently about what a PSO can look like, we will have an opportunity to build a sustainable future for the post office network. We will support the motion on that basis.

We cannot look at post offices in a rural setting without looking at the whole area of rural development. It is a tangential point, but it is worth highlighting the report of the Irish Local Development Network on budget 2021. The report outlined three core concerns, namely, that no funding has been provided for new Leader projects in 2021; no funding has been identified for the delivery and administration of the Leader programme in 2021; and no interim national rural development programme has been announced for the period from 2021 to 2023, as committed to in the programme for Government. One might say this has nothing to do with post offices. However, post offices have everything to do with the rural economy, how money can be spent to sustain it and the multiplier effect of money flowing into it. We need to be more expansive in our thinking about the rural economy and rural society. The post office network must be the fulcrum through which rural society survives and thrives.

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