Feargal Quinn (Independent)

It is inevitable that such will happen as long as we insist on regarding the question in purely business terms. If one expects An Post to pay its way, the death of the post offices is inevitable. If one regards the post offices as performing an important social service that one wishes to preserve, the way to do it is clear, namely, one must support the post offices by a national subvention quite apart from the business revenue that An Post can raise from the network. As a nation, we can only preserve our post offices if we are prepared to pay for them. Are we prepared? We should focus our attention on answering this question.

Senator Brady touched on an issue. When I joined An Post, I was told that I could never change the aspects that were wrong because of people with bad habits, etc. That advice was incorrect. As soon as the shackles of Civil Service control were removed, those people became entrepreneurs. They became customer-minded and the very people who could make a financial and customer service success of An Post. We must find a way to ensure the rural post office network survives without necessarily expecting it to compete on business terms.