Joe Conway (Independent)

Lonraím mo thacaíocht ar na hoifigigh phoist agus ar an dea-sheirbhís a thugann siad lá i ndiaidh lae ar fud na tíre ó Chionn Mhálanna go Dún Mór Thoir i gContae Phort Láirge agus gach áit eatarthu.

Responsibility lies with all of us in Seanad Éireann and Dáil Éireann to help shape an Ireland where opportunity, investment and quality of life are shared fairly across all villages, towns and cities. This Government is committed to balanced regional development and supporting an Ireland where all regions and communities, both rural and urban, have equal opportunities to thrive.

Let us ponder the words "both rural and urban, have equal opportunities to thrive". They are not mine, of course, but a verbatim quote from the address given by the Minister for rural and community development in this House little more than three weeks ago. We were having a robust debate on balanced regional development at the time. A goodly number of Senators of all shades outlined their visions of what balanced regional development meant to them. The one common thread in practically all of the contributions from all sides of the House was the critical need to maintain communities in rural Ireland. Caithfear bánú na tuaithe a sheachaint.I will not boil my cabbage twice by rehearsing again what was said on 17 June but my message today is fairly straightforward. The post office needs €15 million in the coming and subsequent years to maintain its level of service to its 1 million customers. Some €15 million sounds a lot, but it is a paltry sum. It is, effectively, the cost of one cup of coffee per person in the State on one day.

Our post offices are the jewel in the crown of our support and social mechanisms. They are a leading national asset playing a vital role in supporting communities across Ireland, not just economically, but socially and environmentally. Economically, they process more than €7 billion in social welfare every year, much of which is spent locally, for example, in the supermarket around the corner or the local craft shops. This is particularly true in rural and disadvantaged areas. The local post office, furthermore, provides a trusted face-to-face service that engenders social inclusion and reduces isolation, particularly for older and vulnerable people.

Environmentally, too, local post offices' presence reduces the need for long-distance travel to access further post offices that may be necessary with the closure of the local one. The essential services of post offices facilitate their 1 million weekly customers to support sustainable local enterprise, as well as assist in the ongoing fight against carbon pollution.

The Grant Thornton report, entitled "Securing the Future: Sustaining Ireland's Post Office Network through Strategic Investment", outlines the need for an investment of €15 million a year for five years. Post office revenues, while somewhat static since 2018, have actually fallen by about 20% to 25% in real terms and when taking account of inflation. It is not that post offices are inflexible about new trends. That is not the case. They are very willing to take on any new Government services possible or expand existing services, for example, in documentation generation for all Government forms, which stump many people of the older age cohort; PSC card ordering through their network; or augmenting the difficult register of electors forms, which I saw in Waterford coming up to the last local elections. We had to bring in a bunch of new staff to try to get the register of electors fit for purpose for the local and European elections. That could be done by the post office, or it certainly could be assisted in that way. I am a peace commissioner and it is high time we began to look at post offices as the locus for peace commissioners. It would be much handier if people who were dealing with Government forms could have them authorised or countersigned by a peace commissioner in situ rather than having to look up where the next peace commissioner might be – it could be anywhere in the county, according to the legislation. These are a handful of things we could look at.

I wish to now take a little step aside – a little bit of a digression by way of an illustration. Is léir go bhfuil an-eolas ag an Aire Stáit ar na hoifigí poist ina dhúiche féin, go mórmhór i nGaeltachtaí Thír Chonaill. Tá oifigí poist i gCill Charthaigh, i nGleann Cholm Cille, in Ardara, i Dungloe, i Leitir Mhic an Bhaird, sna Dóirí Beaga, sa Fál Carrach, i nGort an Choirce, Milford, Ros na Cille, Árainn Mhór agus Toraigh. Is iad sin an dosaen díreach atá istigh nó gar do na Gaeltachtaí. By contrast, the one remaining post office in the Waterford Gaeltacht closed last year. The local Spar owner Páidí Breathnach wanted to take it on, and An Post was offering him €21,000 a year to run it, but only after he put in €45,000 of his own money to fit it out. If there was a bit of flexibility there, it would not have been the inevitable. For a want of ha'p'orth of tar, the ship was lost.

We are aware that the quantum of computer literacy with the older cohort is still significantly in deficit. Those people yearn for face-to-face advice rather than being told coldly to download an app.

I refer to parcels and e-commerce. This growth has increased demand for parcel handling click-and-collect service points, another viable entity for the post offices. That all depends on a physical footprint that is trustworthy and welcoming. Here again, the post office provides a familiar, recognisable and reliable locus for such services.

We see time and again advisories on scams all over the place. However, none of those advisories is more focused or trusted than the word from the local postmaster.

In rural communities, the post office is an immediate access point to the banks – AIB and the Bank of Ireland. Those two august institutions, as Members know, closed branches with literal abandon over the past decade and a half to assuage the greed of the institutions and fund managers. The institutions and fund managers drove those closures. We should not be in the driving seat of driving the closures of post offices for the want of a better investment. We can ensure the survival and prosperity of the post offices if we put the funding in place.

The pinnacle, and some would say the encouraging and caring nature of post office workers, was truly and inexorably shown during the pandemic. The thousands of hours of selfless service they gave can never really be quantified but, certainly, should never be forgotten. How much more trying and traumatising would it have been had we not had these doughty people in the post offices, who stood strongly with their communities, and sensitively in many cases as well?

The bottom line is that it is €15 million a year for the next five years. Anything less will generate losses of service. For example, we can quantify it like this. Some €14 million will lead to 80 to 100 closures, with attendant losses. They will be permanent and damaging - socially, societally and politically. They will demonstrate a haughty dismissal of rural Ireland by the Government.

In fairness, I thank the Minister of State for being here to hear our pleas, from his own party colleagues, the Independents and Sinn Féin. Everywhere, the chorus will be the same. The fundamental bottom line when it comes to post offices is like the slogan that some chain of shops uses that we hear regularly on radio advertising: when they are gone, they are gone. There is no bringing them back. It is up to us to be wise enough to hold onto the jewel in the crown.