We all have stories about post offices and memories of post offices. My one is waiting in my mother's car while my grandmother collected her pension. It used to take her about two and a half hours to collect the pension because she got every bit of gossip and it kept her going for the week. She got everyone's information, news and excitement. That is what a post office was about. It was about people meeting, congregating and chatting. It was the heart and soul of the community. While we have 950 post offices, 14 have closed in the past year. Those were 14 that a postmaster did not take on. We have to ask why this is. If it is not a financially viable business and someone cannot make money out of running a post office, why would they take it on? In the future when people retire, nobody will want to take on the business because it does not benefit them. I asked a guy who runs a Centra why he would not take on the post office licence. He said it is too expensive to run the post office. To have to put in this number of safes, to have to have this type of public liability insurance and to take on this number of staff would not be financially viable. We have to make post offices and that life financially viable. In France post offices deliver for pharmacies. They have secure contracts where they are delivering pharmaceuticals drugs and medicines to elderly and infirm people who cannot get out of their homes. That is another option we have not looked at. People are saying they cannot afford to put in the safe system and the whole lot. In our villages and smaller towns around the country why are we not amalgamating the Garda station and the post office? I can guarantee nobody will go in and rob a Garda station. We need to think about it. These are small things that are possible. They could be merged together and secure a community hub that way. It is about keeping it alive and keeping it in the post office.

Sentiment score: 0.05