Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire Stáit. There have been many excellent contributions this evening on the social, cultural and community needs that are reasons to retain our post office network. I will focus a little on the heritage assets of our towns, looking back at the last programme for Government, under which we introduced the town centres first programme. Thankfully, it has been committed to again in this programme for Government. We can see the invaluable asset the physical presence of our post offices continues to be in our towns. Historically, our towns evolved as places of transaction - market towns - and if it becomes a situation where the opportunities for transaction and interaction are diminished or reduced year on year because of the loss of banks and other facilities, our towns will unfortunately go into perpetual decline. That is where we have these challenges. The reality is that many towns are still struggling despite policies brought in by the Government around urban regeneration and conservation and restoration of older buildings. We need all these services to make our towns vibrant, and what our post offices offer, as well as the wider services they provide, is being a physical hub. The opportunities to expand that have been mentioned in many contributions this evening, such as energy hubs, information centres and lots of other places of exchange that our post offices could become, if the will is present in the Government to do so.

Comments were made about Rathmines post office. It is an incredible built heritage asset in the heart of Rathmines. Many post offices are heritage buildings in their own right and many are on the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage. Even in my home town of Kilkenny, we have a beautiful high street post office. Backing onto it was a sorting depot, which moved its operation to an industrial estate more than 20 years ago. That depot has been empty for that period. Many of us have been looking to convert it into a black box theatre space for local productions, yet despite many letters to An Post, we have not had any positive engagement with An Post on the matter. Therefore, there is also the built element, where the buildings have a dual use or could be brought back into productive use. That is important.

Most of all, though, and like other Members have this evening, I urge the Minister of State and the Government to take seriously the requests of the Irish Postmasters' Union, which have been there for many years, even during our time in government together, and to find a way forward to try to maintain a vibrant ecosystem of post offices and a viable economic return for postmasters for their activities within it. It is essential to our town centres.