Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not see any conflict of interest. It is important that the Senator take cognisance of that and correct the record when next he has the opportunity to speak. We depend to a very large extent on removing politics from our Civil Service. We depend on civil servants regardless of who is in power, and to impugn the name or office of any one of them would be a retrograde step.

An independent report compiled by Grant Thornton has been published today. It was commissioned by the Irish Postmasters Union, IPU, and it predicts the collapse of the post office network in a short period if drastic action is not taken. The independent report clearly sets out the need for Government intervention to the tune of about €17 million. It identifies that by way of the public service obligation methodology that is used in an array of countries, including Spain, Belgium, Italy, France and Poland. It has been approved by the EU Commission as a methodology to fund and support a service like the post office. There have been changes to the way the post office operates and the demands and expectations of communities. The State has been lethargic, to put it mildly, in terms of putting services into post offices that would meet the needs of citizens. I do not need to lecture anyone in this House but if we look at what has happened during the pandemic, we see people retreating to their communities, being more dependent on the services that are there and moving away from large centres of population. In light of that, there is a clear demand and need for us to take seriously this independent report. I ask the Leader to try to organise a debate on this matter with the Minister at the earliest opportunity. The specific objective of that debate should be fashioning a response that would protect, to the greatest extent possible, the post office network's ability to deliver for our communities. It is not just about rural areas anymore. This report states that large and small post offices in urban and rural areas are under threat.