Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

I support Senator O'Toole. It has been interesting to listen to the debate over the last couple of days. When a person posts a letter, how will it arrive at its destination? We are used to a system under which the postman takes the parcel or letter from the outset and another postman delivers it to its destination, and we can follow how this happens. Perhaps the Minister will explain how this will work under a new system. This goes to the core of the issue. The Minister has said that the regulator will be able to adjudicate on the prices charged, and will have access to all of the costs and so on, but how can a regulator operate in such a system? We saw what happened with the ESB, when the regulator increased the price of electricity before competition was introduced so the companies coming in to provide competition would be able to make money and would not leave the market.

Senator O'Toole has quite rightly tabled this amendment so we can have a discussion on how post will go from point A to point B. I find it intriguing to contemplate how the regulator will give guidelines on the prices to be charged. We have an efficient service at the moment, and any other system would come at a cost to the ordinary person using the postal service. Prices would have to go up. This is a load of baloney, to be honest. The service we have at the moment by An Post should be benchmarked against another small country with a large rural base and the regulator should be able to tell the company to reduce its prices or point out inefficiencies. That is my view of what should happen, although it may be the wrong view. Senator O'Toole's amendment is most interesting.