Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact the Regional Group has brought such an important motion to the Dáil. The Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, will know as well as anybody else in this Chamber that we have seen Ireland grow into a city state. With regard to size, Dublin, and in comparison to the rest of the country, is an outlier in relation to any other capital city in Europe. Even in Britain, London does not have the dominance Dublin has here. That lopsided development is continuing apace. Right now we have an overheated capital, and a third of the country spending two or three hours per day commuting into Dublin. People are commuting from Galway, Cork and Cavan to Dublin every day to work. That lopsided development is phenomenally damaging for Dublin because of the fact that housing is not available, one cannot travel around the city and it is difficult to find places for children in schools. It is damaging to people in the commuter belt, because parents are separated from their families for long periods. We see regional and rural Ireland emptying of young people. There are many reasons for this.

The Government provides a number of sources of funding to try to stop this but in reality, it is only social welfare for rural Ireland. This is happening at the same time as services are being gutted in rural Ireland. In 2018 we saw well over 100 post offices close all over the country, including seven in my own county of Meath. Garda stations have also been closed and rural pubs and shops have closed. The fabric of rural communities is in big trouble at the moment. At present, there are 900 post offices around this State and they are the centre of business and human interaction in rural areas. If one takes those post offices away, a lot else falls. If pensions are not collected on particular days in small towns and villages, then that money is not spent in those places. The post office infrastructure is in serious trouble. If 2021 turns out as predicted, each post office will make an average loss of €19,500, which is startling. Posts offices are not currently economically viable. There is a hole in the funding for post offices at present of €17 million.

We have a choice here. One of the problems I have noted in my time in this House is that there are certain issues or topics for which every single Deputy will declare support, for the sake of the common good, with post offices and credit unions being two examples but when it comes to action and putting money where our mouths are, this Chamber has let down those organisations for generations. Rather than have everybody from all sides of the House saying nice things about the post office network, can we actually support this motion and make sure that there is money to pay for the continued existence of the network? The €17 million hole that exists must be filled. The Government is throwing helicopter money to many other areas of society at present and it would be absolutely wrong not to stand up for post offices. If we allow post offices to close in the near future, the trend towards lop-sided development will accelerate.

See this speech in context