Pauline O'Reilly (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. It is great to see another Galwegian in the House. I know she is very committed to and made a recent announcement on the post office in Eglington Street, which is to be welcomed. I will mention that again later.

The establishment of an interdepartmental committee is to be welcomed, as are the commitments in the programme for Government. Now is the time to put those into action because many people across the country are living in fear that their local post office will close. Postmasters are living in fear also because they are reliant on the State to support them.

At the start of the pandemic all of us were on Zoom and we thought it was great because we could connect with our families and friends, life could go on and we could still be sociable. However, it was not too long before the chats and the drinks we had dried up because it was not the same. We cannot do everything online. If we think back to that time we can put ourselves in the shoes of people who are reliant on things that are outside the digital world for their social lives and services. We need to remind ourselves that progress does not mean moving everything online and being digital. Progress means something else and well-being has to come into that.

I visited post offices much more often during this pandemic because I was not living near family and I had things to post. We would write on postcards and send them to loved ones, particularly our older loved ones. We can continue doing that because we saw that has enriched our lives. Our mental health and well-being in general relies on post offices and other community places that are real locations as opposed to on the Internet and it is important that we keep them.

From the point of view of sustainability, every time we close a post office people have to travel a little further to find one. It has not happened so far but we have seen many closures around County Galway and other counties. That has meant somebody has to travel a little further each time for those services. Looking at it in terms of climate and emissions, keeping post offices and other services open and developing our town centres first approach that we have advocated in the Green Party for a long time is about communities but it is also about the environment and is the reason we must invest in rural transport. We do not ask how much money it is bringing in. We may have been doing it but we should not ask how much money post offices are bringing in. As a State we need to say it is not about what is coming in but about the cost in terms of emissions and people's well-being when we close down these services.

This year the Welsh Government announced a climate target to have 30% of its workforce working flexibly to ensure that they spend some time at home. For that reason it is investing in working hubs. It is taking a climate perspective but we also need to look at it from the point of view of building up our communities and town centres and not destroying them. Regional development would be the next step. We have seen that the north-west has moved back to being a region in transition. What is the reason for that?If we fail to invest in some of our regions, that is what will happen. Investment does not mean: show me the companies or small businesses and SMEs that are already in these towns and now let me put in the infrastructure such as post offices, schools and transport. It means having a transport first and a town centre first approach and then developing around that. That is why I am supportive of the western rail network and post offices.

We also need to consider that if people are not using post offices in the same was as they were, we need to use them and be more creative. I mentioned working hubs. We could put much more investment in and look at, perhaps, diverting some of our funding from activities that are damaging to the climate into something that will ensure that we bring life back into communities and protect the environment. That might be something for the committee to look at but it is certainly something for the Minister of State to look at as well. I know he also has that commitment to climate and transport so all those things go hand in hand.

Finally, I will go back to the point I mentioned about the Eglinton Street post office in Galway, where we have these large spaces that are no longer needed in the same way as they were for post offices. They can still be used and developed for the community rather than sold off or, as we have seen in Galway, sitting idle for a really long time waiting. As the Minster of State will be aware, fantastic exhibitions have been held there as part of the Galway International Arts Festival. TULCA Festival of Visual Arts uses that space almost every year and it is used for an indoor market. Investment in that building is needed in order that it can be used all the time and also retain that post office. That is the way forward for small and large post offices.