*The post office at the Market in Ennis is to close.
300 post offices are facing closure without the assistance of State funding, a Clare postmaster has said.
In a proposal before the October meeting of Clare County Council, Cllr Tom O’Callaghan (FF) warned “Up to 300 post offices face closure without more state funding, I call our Minister for Communications to work closely with all stakeholders ensuring a viable business model is achieved preventing the closure of many urban and rural communities post offices especially within our county”.
Prior to becoming a county councillor in 2022, O’Callaghan had previously spoken before the Oireachtas Committee on Transport and Communications through his role as a lobbyist with the Independent Postmasters Group.
Addressing the October sitting of the County Council, he said, “it is a topic that has darkened its head before and has not gone away”. He continued, “It is well known that I’ve lobbied for years, back in 2022 there was a crisis and €10m allocated for the post office network”.
Transactions at post offices have dropped, O’Callaghan outlined, “people have objected to paying their TV licence so they are not paying their stamps in the post office”. He continued, “The €10m allocated is to expire in early 2025 so we’re looking at significant closures, you’re looking at taking out the heart of ourvillages, no postmaster in the country is saying they don’t want to work, we’re also conscious of the digitalisation of the world”.
He said the upcoming closure of the Post Office in the Market in Ennis is “really upsetting” and added, “when they advertised it they couldn’t get anyone to take it on, on the basis that it didn’t stack up”.
Seconding the proposal, Cllr Pat O’Gorman (FF) stated, “The post office is a vital social interaction for the elderly people in small towns and villages, the bank is a hole in the wall now with nobody to talk to, a person shoving on that goes in to collect their pension it is a way to go out and meet people, it is bringing people together and bringing villages together, they might spend a few pound in the small shop that is struggling and they might go in for a pint”. He added, “Any person who saves a few pound in the post office, they will always say how friendly the person is behind the counter”.
Post offices “are a vital part of our communities, when we’re trying to combat social isolation and particularly for the elderly it is a key role,” maintained Cllr Rita McInerney (FF). “We all know situations where someone in the post offices noticed somebody was missing or wasn’t in to collect their pension and vital calls were made,” she said. The Doonbeg woman added, “We’re cutting off that social link, it is vital we fight to keep our post offices”.
During his canvass for the local elections, Cllr Joe Killeen (FF) said he was assisted by a person retired from the post office, “for every house he knew the people who lived in the house, he knew when the dog was coming out, he knew the ages of the children, it showed me the impact of a person like that”. He said “it is something we value and we have to support, I know a village in North Clare where the post office closed five years ago and it has been a huge loss, there was not enough transactions there”.
North Clare has experienced the effect of losing post offices, Cllr Joe Garrihy (FG) detailed, “We’re experiencing the stress in a number of towns and villages across North Clare, it is a psychological impact as much as anything else when you lose services”. He said staff at a post office in the locality had been instructed to go to Ennis to sort their post, “It is planned obsolescence of rural Clare to borrow a phrase from a former esteemed colleague”.
Previous Government decisions led to the privatisation of the post office service, Cllr Tommy Guilfoyle (SF) noted. “I’d urge councillors to talk to their Government parties about the possibility of bringing it back into public service, at the minute it is a private entity”.
An Post have a seven day delivery for Amazon but not the public, claimed Cllr Michael Shannon (FF). “Where are we going to go in five years time if the majority of post offices are going to close,” he questioned. Examination is needed as to why An Post is no longer sustainable, Cllr Tony Mulcahy (FG) said.
