Today we are all talking on the issue of post offices and post offices being retained. I want to emphasise the need for post offices to be retained in our town and village centres. All too often we talk about retaining the service but the key for me is that we retain them in the town centres. In my home village of Leixlip, we lost our post office from the town centre when it was put into a shopping area outside the town. That has had a huge impact on the other traders and the other businesses in our town. We have to be very conscious of this. An Post is a national entity. It is part of our government. We cannot sit here talking about redeveloping our town centres and about how our town centres are becoming derelict on the one hand while on the other hand allow the services to be taken out of those very same town centres. There has to be a degree of responsibility with An Post to ensure that the post offices remain central. That is the key issue. Obviously there are other towns and villages in Ireland that will probably come under the same duress. There might be a place in towns like Celbridge but then all of a sudden somebody is asked to go to a shopping centre outside the town. It could be Naas or another town in the future. We need to ensure people are able to go into the town centre because that is how other businesses will benefit. A shop could have parking and we could make it free or even pay a postmaster to have a post office in that shop. It benefits them being in one location but it does not benefit anybody else. That is where those opportunities are. We need to put safeguards around that too. We need to ensure a post office service in the smaller villages and towns but we also need to ensure the post offices in larger areas remain in locations that are helpful to everybody as opposed to the one or two shop owners who might see it as beneficial to give the postmaster a corner in their shop who will bring in hundreds of people on a weekly basis but nobody else benefits but the businessperson. In Leixlip we have seen a downturn for other businesses because this happened. An Post can provide other services and it has done so in the past. I would like to ensure we continue to reinvigorate the An Post services because it will be hugely beneficial into the future.

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