Marie Louise O'Donnell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In response to Senator Mullen, probably the greatest example of moral posturing is Diageo's posturing regarding its faith in not drinking. I never heard a contradiction like it.

I reiterate what Senator Heffernan said about the post offices and the general secretary and president of the Irish Postmasters Union. I spoke about this in the media last week and I call on the Minister for Social Protection to come in here and tell us how many of these letters are being sent out and who they are being sent to. They are being sent to pensioners to get them to transfer their pensions and social welfare payments to banks. Once I hear that word, I know we are once again capitulating to the banks. I know it might involve only a certain section of social welfare recipients because many people, including many single mothers, would not have a bank account. However, I thought the post offices were going to be the heartbeat of our villages and towns and that we were looking at ways of making them the heart beat of our villages and towns. Capitulating to the banks is not the way to go because most people who come into the post office to get their small pensions use the physicality of money to pay for their gas or electricity, buy their vegetables or go to the chemist so an element of community service is being offered by the post offices. Instead of capitulating to the banks to give them tranches of money they can then bet on the markets with, we were supposed to be developing the post offices electronically so that they would be able to receive money and put it into accounts or process motor taxation. This is very serious because it is a form of chipping away that happens under the radar. Senator Heffernan is right about this. Could the Minister come to the House to tell me the extent of this, who the letters are being sent to, who thought it up, who thinks it is a good idea, what banks will receive payments and why we are taking potshots at the very core of what we believe villages and towns to be, namely, the post office? The post office carries out community service that is unparalleled across our country. This is a very serious question so could the Minister come in here to answer it realistically?