I echo my party colleague's sentiments on the importance of post offices to our local communities. Everyone in Ireland appreciates the work of our postal workers and, indeed, those who man the post offices. I want to raise with the Minister of State a specific issue about Daly's postal agency in Hollywood in west Wicklow. They are a small shop but they perform certain postal services. Their mini-Riposte system is incompatible with fibre broadband, and when we moved from copper to fibre, it stopped working properly. It has been slowing down over the last number of years and now it is barely holding on. It could stop working at any minute. They have been offering the service of social welfare payments for over 20 years to the community and they administer 50 various social welfare payments per week. They are an important part of west Wicklow. Surprisingly, they receive a commission of only €70 a month for providing that service, which I was quite surprised by. It is a very small amount of money, but they recognise the importance of the service. A 93-year-old man visits them every week to get his social welfare payments but has the chats and meets people. It is a really important part of his week. This postal agency is very worried because there is not an alternative for them to perform this service. They are now doing it with paper because the machine is not working properly. An Post is trying to work with them to find an alternative, but I ask that the Minister of State make sure that happens. We really need to keep open this agency and, indeed, other agencies. My understanding is that this is a big issue in the west of Ireland where these types of small shops might be performing this function. It is really important that we enable them to continue that. I wanted to raise that with the Minister of State in case she was not aware.

Sentiment score: 0.15