Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Senator Whelan referred to critical mass and how services are provided. Ireland has suffered from bad planning for a long time. The death of rural towns is a serious problem. I have travelled the country for the past six months engaging with people and I have seen the empty shop units in small rural villages. I am proud that the Government has taken this issue seriously and that is why a Minister of State, Deputy Ann Phelan, has been appointed with responsibilities in this regard ranging across Departments to ensure joined-up thinking to tackle this serious problem. It is such a serious problem because of lack of proper spatial planning or appropriate planning and, in some cases, because of corrupt planning which has crucified the country. There has been poor planning in this country for decades.

I thank Senator Mooney for his contribution. He raised the issue of the social welfare payments returned by the post offices to the Department. I am sure, like me, he has dealt with many queries in his clinic from people who spent the previous two months in hospital and did not receive their payment. The money was returned to the Department and they want to know how they can get their payments. If the money had been paid directly into their bank account, it would not have been returned to the Department. I do not say this is the reason in every case of returned money but it is an example of how money is returned. The payments are time limited and, therefore, if the money is not collected in the post office, the money is automatically returned to the Department. Every Member has probably has dealt with this issue where a person fell ill or was delayed returning from a holiday and their money was returned to the Department.

I have read the letter at the centre of the debate a number of times and, unless I am missing something, I do not see any threat in it. However, the Department must learn how to communicate well with its customers and this was an effort to do that. A small sample size was used. I like to think of myself as an open and accessible Minister of State. I try to respond immediately to everyone who contacts me, whether they are a councillor, Senator or Deputy.

With regard to Senator Heffernan's comments, this was an opportunity or a trial to communicate with our customers. He touched on the very reason we need to learn how to do that well, which is to put systems in place for future changes. As he said, one of the future changes could be the transaction account for customers. If that is introduced, we need to know the best way to communicate that to customers such as whether we need to write to everyone or set up call centres. The best way to do that is to take a small sample size of customers, communicate with them and monitor the reaction. The transaction account would be a positive development if it were introduced because it would help the customer base in many ways that Members have probably not even thought of. If it is introduced, how will we notify our customers? How many calls will that generate? We wrote to 0.3% of customers in this case and we can scale up based on the interaction generated.It is annoying that, for their own reasons, people have reacted in a certain way. Senator Paschal Mooney touched on this matter. They are scaremongering. There was nothing frightening in the letter sent, but there has been a great deal of scaremongering in press releases, as well as in the letters and e-mails I have received. I find it funny - actually, it is not funny since it is serious in many ways - that the people who were upset and antagonised sent their complaints by e-mail. They want to maintain An Post's services, but they used e-mails instead of going to their post offices and buying stamps. A number were post office employees. In some cases, they were the postmaster or postmistress.

I was given something to send to all Government Deputies. Senator Paschal Mooney might also have received it. We received copies of letters and so on. I hope the Irish Postmasters Union sought permission from the person in question to have his or her PPS number included before sending the blanked-out letters to us. If the Department of Social Protection sent someone's PPS number to more than 200 people, we would be up before the Data Protection Commissioner for committing a serious data protection breach.