Martin Conway (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. The post office network is exceptionally important. It is important for many reasons, but one is because of the indelible link that people have with their post office. People remember going to post letters as children and the green box and all of that. That has evolved. Sadly, there are not too many young people now posting Christmas cards, letters or anything like that, but they are getting parcels. They are booking online and the postman is bringing the parcels, so to some extent it has evolved and postal deliveries are experiencing a bit of a renaissance.

We saw the sad news recently of a delivery company going out of business. An Post will be there to pick up the slack from that. In the next couple of months, on Black Friday, Christmas and so on, we are going to see a significant uptake. Some postmen have never been busier, which is great.

The physical building, as my colleague has already said, is not the main story about the post office. It is the places they are in and the people who man them that matter. Many reports have been done in recent years. Certainly over the last ten or 15 years, which is the length of time I have been a Member of the House, we have had reports from different organisations regarding the future of the post office network. One of the most timely interventions was from Deputy Carrigy, which did result in a significant financial investment on an annual basis to support the post office network.

In most cases, post offices are part of a business. The business is supporting the post office and the post office is supporting the business. That is wonderful. Where that is not possible, there are opportunities to create perhaps a digital hub or a tourist information point with audiovisual and touch screens. There is huge potential for post offices to be information points, tourism points, and points to access bus and rail transport information where people could perhaps have a booth for Internet access.

A simple thing that was recommended in one of the reports was that each postmaster would be made a peace commissioner. It was never implemented, although it was a simple thing. I contacted all the postmasters in the north and west Clare area, and I suggested that they become peace commissioners, and most of them did. It is a service that makes sense, as somebody is available to sign a document. A lot of peace commissioners are not available when they are needed, so it is an obvious and simple thing for postmasters to become not just peace commissioners but commissioners for oaths as well. This would be a practical thing to help support postmasters.

We must think outside the box, look at each post office on its own merits and identify what services are not in a community that could potentially be provided through a post office. A post office in one town might serve one purpose, while in another town that purpose may not be required and another purpose may be necessary. There are lots of ways, but of course the community bank is the obvious one. That is a big decision for the Government to create a community bank. We have a wonderful community bank in the credit union, but there is scope for looking at the creation of more financial options through the post office network. That could perhaps be done where there is not a credit union in a town. I know the post office network has a good relationship with the AIB, but there is so much more that could be done in that regard. We really need to have a situation where we close no more post offices, and in actual fact, where appropriate, we should look at opening post offices to provide a one-stop-shop service for a town, village or community, including in an urban area that perhaps does not have certain services or facilities. The future of the post office network in this country has never been better, once we are creative, imaginative and our thinking evolves.