Post office ‘downgrade’ plan criticised

FIVE large communities in Co Cork have been urged to fight plans to “downgrade” post offices in their areas.

It emerged yesterday that An Post is seeking to farm out the postal services to private operators.

Councillor John O’Shea, a former mayor of County Cork, said he was shocked by the plans to alter the running of post office services in Bantry, Bandon, Macroom, Cobh and Charleville.

“This is disgraceful — it is a totally retrograde step and I for one will be fighting to have An Post maintain its control of Bantry Post Office,” he said. “I hope people in other towns do the same. This is a move to downgrade services.”

Councillor Phil O’Regan, who led a campaign to stop a similar threat to Clonakilty Post Office, said people in the towns affected should organise themselves.

“We believed that we were entitled to a full service. The reality is that if communities don’t fight they will lose. You have to get everybody onboard,” said Ms O’Regan.

Her organisation, Clonakilty Post Office Action Committee, started battling An Post plans in late 2003.

“We didn’t want the post office located in a corner shop. We went to people and offices to encourage them to do more business in the post office,” she said.

That was coupled with an intensive lobbying campaign of TDs and ministers.

However, while the axe didn’t fall, Ms O’Regan and her colleagues know there’s every possibility that An Post might, one day, revert to its original plan.

“At least twice a year we remind everybody of the importance of the campaign,” she added.

Liam O’Callaghan, Cork branch secretary of the Communications Workers’ Union, said he believed An Post shouldn’t be seeking such a large number of changes in the county. However, a spokeswoman for An Post denied the company was downgrading its services.

She said that the running of the post offices would be handed over to contractors. “In an ideal situation, one of the staff would offer to take over the running. However, staff can take voluntary severance packages or they can be redeployed or even be seconded to help the contractor,” said the spokeswoman.

She pointed out that services could be moved to other buildings because the current post offices were not in a good state of repair, or were away from the town’s main trading area.

“For instance, our building in Cobh is very poor, so the likelihood there is that we’ll move premises to another location. The offices in Bandon, on the other hand, are in a very good position in the town,” said the spokeswoman.

An Post directly runs around 100 post offices throughout the country, while 1,180 are run by contractors. “Obviously some people would like to maintain the status quo. But this is a very competitive business and we have to move with the times,” said the spokeswoman.