David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his response and his candidness. I think he is getting the same response I got. "None of your business," is what they say, in so many words. They are getting a lot of money. An Post is a great organisation and I agree it is doing great things. It has done great things with e-cards and so on and was marvellous during Covid. This, however, is the one area I think it may not be interested in. It was probably devised during the time of the stagecoaches. If the Minister looks at the maps to see where the areas are, he will see they do not make any sense at all. They are huge, unwieldy areas in some cases. They should be more targeted. What really frustrates me is that An Post told me, in emails I have here from June 2021, that it was going to include a change in the next service enhancement release. I have contacted An Post since, and it did not tell me why it was not going to do it or make the change it said it would. My real interest is that businesses, particularly small businesses, would like to let their customers know what services and products they might want to sell, especially retailers which are under pressure at the moment. They cannot use the service locally because it is so unwieldy, out of date and archaic. An Post has obviously said it is as a result of operational considerations. These operational considerations have not changed in an awful long time. They are still the same as they were going way back. I am not sure what else we can do here. Maybe some of the board of An Post are listening this evening. Maybe it will be brought to their attention. Maybe they will bring it up at the next board meeting and ask the chief executive why he has not made the changes he told me he would in 2021. It would be a positive if they did and there is no reason why they should not do it. Maybe an Oireachtas committee can invite them in to ask why they will not do this. An Post is getting a lot of money from the State and should have given the Minister more information than he was able to tell the House this evening but it has not done so. Operational considerations could mean anything. I will not speculate as to what they could mean except to say that perhaps An Post just cannot be bothered.

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