'Rural Ireland is just being closed down’

AFTER 20 years as postmistress in the north Cork village of Lombardstown, Catherine Anne Healy is on the verge of quitting, ending a family link with postal services in the area which reaches back across three generations.

“I’m finding it hard to survive,” she told the Irish Examiner yesterday. “I’m getting €16,475 a year and out of that I have to take all my expenses, pay tax, provide a premises and heat it and light it, pay the insurance on it, pay rates on it and pay staff if I’m out of action myself.

“I open at 9am and close at 5.30pm and open on Saturdays for a half-day. All that for €16,475.”