Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. I welcome and thank the Irish Postmasters' Union and the postmasters. Some postmasters are in the House this evening but many more are in their post offices. They are in more than 850 communities throughout the country. I know they are very important in Donegal and they are just as important in Dublin.

The post office is the trusted face of the State in our communities. I acknowledge and very much welcome the Minister of State reaffirming the Government's commitment today to supporting a sustainable future for our post office network. It is essential. The postmasters have acknowledged how important State intervention and Government support was to ensure the post office network survived over the past three years. We ask him, on behalf of the postmasters and, more importantly and with no disrespect to the postmasters, on behalf of their customers and our communities, to go back to the Government and the Ministers for Finance and public expenditure and re-emphasise to them and remind them of why the Government made the commitment. We must remind them the €30 million was well spent and that post offices have evolved and extended their services, while all the time retaining the human element and the social value they bring to our communities.

An Post is a resilient, innovative organisation, one that creates local employment and serves communities locally. It connects the local with the global. It is unique and has been a constant presence in our society since the 1700s. The Government has to ensure post offices continue into the future, that they are sustained and that their network remains trusted and available to future generations.

I wish the Minister well with his work but I want to stress the urgency of this. Postmasters are employers. They have responsibilities to their employees. They live with this responsibility 24-7. They need to know how they will be able to plan for the next three years. They need to be able to inform their staff, employees and communities how it will work. I wish the Minister well. He has our support but I cannot overemphasise the importance of delivering on this important issue for all of our communities.