On behalf of the Social Democrats, I welcome this legislation as a measure that will alleviate some of the issues we discussed in committee and heard about from the postmaster community. Postal services are a vital lifeline for so many of us, particularly, as others have pointed out, in rural parts of Ireland. Despite this, many communities have lost their post office. The current model undermines the public interest when it comes to ensuring that everyone has access to postal services. Until we are employing postmasters directly, we will constantly have post offices under threat. Our post offices in many communities are where people come to connect, interact and receive help from a service they trust and where people go to access public services and banking. It is how they connect outside their own homes. I am reminded of Kenmare, a town I have visited my whole life and my parents visit. My parents have two friends down there who are known locally as Eileen and John PO because they are the postmaster and postmistress. It is a part of their identity and how they are known in the town. For the older among us, the post office is where people link to their community and each other, particularly when not everyone can make it to the active retirement group or the community centre. Postal services fill a vital gap for those who cannot use, or choose not to use, online services. We act like paying our bills or doing banking online is everywhere but there are still houses that do not have broadband and many people do not have digital skills or are fearful, and increasingly so, of online scams. Sa lá atá inniu ann, cé go bhfuil an oiread rudaí ar líne, caithfidh muid tuiscint go bhfuil tábhacht le seirbhísí fisiciúla. Tá neamhspleáchas agus sábháilteacht ag baint leo do dhaoine, go háirithe dóibh siúd atá níos sine. Many communities have faced the loss of their post office in recent years. In my constituency of Dublin-Rathdown, we have seen post office closures, including one near my home in Kilmacud. Those that remain continue to come under increasing pressure. It may not seem like a big deal to some people that instead of walking to the post office, they have to drive or get a bus. For many of my constituents, however, that is a huge barrier to accessing these vital services. The post office is a community service, one that is often accessed by the most vulnerable in our communities. For older people in particular, that journey may be the difference between being able to go and collect their pension independently or being reliant on other people who may then have to assist them with their finances. I mentioned that the current model undermines the public interest because our postal network is under increasing pressure. I welcome that the Bill seeks to address this issue because postal services are a public service and ensuring that they are available to all, cheap and easy to use, and are protected into the future, is in the public interest. The model of insisting that postmasters are self-employed and run post offices like a business franchise is actively contributing to the collapse of our postal network. It means that once these postmasters cannot make it work financially any more in the face of loss of business and limited means of increasing business, they must simply give up. It means that communities can be faced with the sudden loss of this public service simply because we do not recognise that it is a public service. If we are not employing postmasters directly, we will constantly have post offices that are under threat. We deserve to have a resourced postal network, from the person who puts the letters in your door, all the way to the person who sold you the stamps in the first place. According to the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, in March only 41 of 873 post offices were directly operated by An Post. This means that, apart from those 41, every other post office is vulnerable to business conditions, making the provision of the public service impossible for the postmasters who provide them. I welcome that this Bill seeks to support our post office network. However, without recognising that our system is broken, we will never be able to fully ensure that every community has a post office it can rely on, today, tomorrow and in ten years' time. We will continue to have people who are unable to make the community post office work or are leaving the sector because they need to do so if they are to ensure that they and their families have financial stability and security. The provision of public services should not be left up to the market. When we do that we stop looking at them like public services and we stop looking at those who use them as people who should be guaranteed access.

Sentiment score: 0.01