LAHINCH marked the end of an era with the closure of its post office on Main Street on Friday as the service relocated to the Spar store.
Joe Duffy finished up as presenter of Liveline on RTÉ Radio One on Friday, it was also the same day when Shane Talty closed the doors of the Lahinch post office for the final time, bringing the curtain down on a family link with the service stretching back seven decades.
In October, Shane tendered his resignation as postmaster in Lahinch, the service was set to close in April but a new arrangement has managed to keep a post office in the coastal town. Robert Kennedy is the new post master with the post office now situated in Spar’s store on Rue D’Arzon also known as Back Lane.
John Joe Foley was the final customer of the Lahinch post office on Main Street as sixty years of service from the Talty family came to an end. The post office was initially operated by the late Aggie Marrinan, a grand-aunt of outgoing postmaster Shane before his late parents Francis and Marian took over the mantle while his siblings Nóirín and Paul also played their part down through the years.
Speaking to The Clare Echo, Shane noted, “it was the end of an era but it was well flagged, it was nine months since I announced I would be closing, we gave a six month notice and we tried to get an alternative shop set up, thankfully Robert Kennedy is now ready to roll in the Spar shop so the service continues but Friday definitely was the end of an era”.
His grand-aunt was the post master from the late 1950s and also ran a drapery shop where The Atlantic Hotel is now situated. When Shane’s father Francis moved to Lahinch from Cloonanaha to start secondary school, he ended up staying and taking over the post office, moving its location along the way.
“It was the right decision made at the right time for the right reasons,” Shane said of the decision to finish up in Lahinch. “It is a history piece, it was where we were reared, there was numerous families living and growing up on the Main Street of Lahinch at that time but Lahinch has changed in thirty years, there are very few people living on the Main Street now, the ideas of families being born and reared on Main Street seems to have gone away. There was countless families living there in the 1980s and 1990s, we were one of a last of a breed but time changes and people move on”.
Support from the people of Lahinch and surrounding areas for the Talty operated post office was acknowledged by Shane. “The older people of Lahinch and the people living on Main Street in the 1980s and 1990s were all very appreciative of the time and the service they got over that period of time and they are of course glad the service will continue in Lahinch, there’s worse stories nationally where there is no hope of anything coming but Lahinch continues to have a service. People were very good over the last number of weeks.
He will continue to operate the post office in Ennistymon but admitted the future of the post office network in rural Ireland is “very challenging. The days of the standalone post office in small rural areas are effectively numbered. Lahinch was one of the last ones in the country, Ennistymon continues but it has a bigger footprint in a busier area. The co-location aspect might continue for some time where a retailer takes over the service in the hope it might improve turnover in their own space, it will continue in that vein for another period of time”.
A Fianna Fáil councillor since 2019, Shane said “there is a big decision to be made” in the Budget on whether the Government continue to give a subvention to the post office network, “if that doesn’t continue there will be a lot more closures”.
Last week, the Oireachtas Communications Committee were told there could be widespread closures of local post offices from January if a fifty percent increase in the level of subvention is not sanctioned. An approximate €23m has been provided to postmasters to help maintain the network since the scheme was introduced a little over two years ago. The annual amount needs to be increased from €10 million to €15 million if services were to be retained in hundreds of offices considered to be less viable, the Irish Postmasters Union has flagged.
