This motion on An Post is one of the most important motions to come before us for some time. It is not simply a matter of the post office; it is a matter of our whole attitude towards State services, particularly in rural areas. I have no doubt that the policy regarding the closure of rural post offices is one of long standing. The sequence of events to achieve such a management aim are to run it down, reduce the service, let it die, make it unviable and then, when it is totally unviable, say that we have no option but to close.
Everything in this plan lacks imagination. The plan smacks of people who knew what they wanted and were determined to get it. There are a few fundamental questions we should ask the people who drew up this plan. It is intended to downgrade Ballinrobe post office to a sub-post office and there is talk about closing 550 sub-post offices throughout the country. I look around my local town of Ballinrobe and I see three of the associated banks maintaining offices there. I also notice that despite the saving and staff cuts brought by computerisation over the years, the two major banks have had to extend their offices and increase their staff since 1974. Banks are not charitable organisations so the charge cannot be levied that they did this for national or altruistic reasons. What they did was broaden the range of services on offer; they tackled their problems with imagination and found that the major workload reductions achieved through computerisation were more than offset by increased demand for their services.
Let us look at the situation with An Post. During the same period they proceeded to run down the Post Office Savings Bank. They adhered to totally outdated work practices. They made it totally unattractive for someone to invest in the local savings bank through An Post. Up until a few weeks ago one could not withdraw in excess of £50 from a sub-post office without the book having to be sent to Dublin, thus necessitating a delay in getting it back. The sum has now been increased to £100.
In the case of stamps, there was a more ingenious method of ensuring that sub-post offices did not get credit for the sale of stamps. What they did in that case was quite simple; any large user of stamps was approached by Ah Post and asked to take a franking machine. The result was that instead of your stamps being recorded in the local post office the sale of those stamps was recorded in the main post office maybe 20 or 30 miles away. To give a very simple example of how significant this type of operation can be, I noted, according to the report, that the 970 smallest post offices earned between £2,800 and £6,000 per annum. I live in a village that boasts two shops, two pubs, the church, the school and a very small vocational school. When I asked my local postmistress what her earnings were, without giving away any State secrets, she told me they were in excess of this £6,000 limit. The reason was quite simple; we made it our business locally to defy all the cajoling of An Post. The local business people did all their business in the local post office and we kept the business there. But we were doing the job that An Post should have been doing. Despite their best efforts we kept the business where it was most convenient.
I accept that An Post is in dire financial circumstances. That is quite obvious. But again, it is quite obvious if you read the report — and the report is totally disingenuous — that this happened not because of the cost of rural post offices but because overhead costs soared in the period from 1986-90. The fact is that none of these extra costs was incurred in rural Ireland. The reality is that the local postman is not earning much more in excess of what he was earning at that time. Therefore, that is not where the loss is incurred and that is not where the blow should fall.
The other thing about this report is that since sub-post officers are paid by the piece and the total payment made to 500 of them is in the region of £1.5 million what saving will be made because, when they transfer the business from one post office to another they will, in turn have to pay extra fees to the post office that gets the extra business. The only possible saving that could be made is in the long term in terms of capital in the cost of computerising and equipping sub-post offices. Sub-post offices are great value for money. £2,500 to £6,000 a year for the 970 smallest of them. The reason, of course, that the sub-post offices are willing to work for this meagre funding quite obvious; it is for the same reason that people seek an agency for newspapers. It is because the profit is not from the post office or the provision of the facility, the service, the building, the heat, but from the business that that normally generates in a local shop. So, it would seem from a management point of view that there is no financial justification in the proposal and that it was a "copout" to achieve aims that would just make life more simple for top management having to manage fewer outlets.
The second thing I would draw attention to is this proposal regarding roadside mailboxes. Many people have accepted these voluntarily and, if people accept them, I have no quibble with that. But there are also many people who do not want them. Let us take the situation of a pensioner without a car living a mile or a mile and a half up a boreen. Monday morning comes and that pensioner is wondering if there is a letter in the post. He or she trots the mile or the mile and a half down to the little box, opens it and there is nothing there so he or she trots all the way home. The same happens on Tuesday and Wednesday and so on through the week. I have no doubt that if there is a cost overrun in that and if it could be proved that there would be very significant savings in changing the present system of daily deliveries to every house it could be done. If they deigned to consult with rural communities rather than having these experts come round our areas in a covert manner and becoming annoyed that anybody should know they were there measuring the roads for the boxes, I have no doubt that a much more equitable and better system could affect the same cost savings and still provide the basic service the people want.
There is also a proposal to downgrade many of the regional post offices. From a mail delivery point of view, I cannot quibble with this as it is about time we reformed the whole method of mail distribution. I am not totally convinced in the long term that it is going to be as efficient, as is stated, to abandon totally the railways but, that may be something for another day. However, I could see, just as I pointed out in the case of the banks, that the staff who will now be reallocated from these post offices could — and I am sure the post office workers would be willing to give this flexibility — be put at other work which would provide the public with a much better service. Because, at the end of the day, the consumer has to be the overriding interest of the workers, the management and the Government regarding An Post.
I said recently that I could see a whole lot of new roles for An Post in the future. I could see that they could accelerate out of their problems rather than back themselves into a corner. They could make all these cuts and come back here — as I would foresee they would if they implemented this plan — in five years' time trying to make more cuts because they were still totally unviable. They can accelerate out of this with a little imagination. There are very obvious areas in which this can be done. They could, for example, start providing a whole plethora of social welfare services on an agency basis for the Department of Social Welfare. A very obvious first step would be to remove from the Garda their involvement in regard to signing the dole on a weekly basis in rural Ireland and let them get on with the work they should be at, police work. They should not be made a type of super social welfare officers signing dole forms each week.
The second thing they could do is provide a comprehensive banking service that would be particularly convenient for old age pensioners, where there would be a one-shop situation. Again, we looked to the banks to see if this was viable. I brought my point home at a meeting the other night when I said there is enough money there, money that is going to the Associated Banks, which could be going into the post offices and be at the disposal of the State if conditions were made attractive. I brought it home like this: the banks, not being altruistic, do not run services for social convenience but they find it convenient to run travelling banks at great cost, considering the staff costs they have compared to a sub-post office into the most isolated spots to collect the money because they know that the total accumulation of that money is very large. If there was a competitor and a realistic alternative, if there was a system whereby the social welfare recipient could make his banking and his receipt of money on the same day I have no doubt they would opt for the convenience of post office banking. It would be there five days a week. Many a person would tell you in the small hamlets and villages of Ireland about the queue outside the travelling bank every week to do business, to pay the ESB bill and the phone bill.
Unfortunately I have not got enough time to go into other aspects but in passing I will mention other areas where services could be provided. For example, there is the whole question of paying local authority fees, on car tax, passport forms, etc. I would have to say there is only one thing in this plan that makes sense to me. I accept that in this day and age we are looking towards equality of service and equality of cost throughout the State and therefore, I cannot quibble with one proposal in the plan that is, one day delivery to everybody. That makes sense because in this day of fax and whatever, most people will accept that that is a reasonable proposal.
Molaim an tAire as an gcéim a thóg sé an NESC a chur ag athbhreithniú an phlean seo. Bhí misneach aige é sin a dhéanamh. Bhí jab aige len a chinntiú nach sáróidh an bhainistíocht é, ach tá muinín agam go mbeidh sé in ann chuige ar ball.
