Post Office group launches second election candidate

The plight of the nation's post offices is being highlighted by a group of candidates running in the next general election.

The second of eight candidates has declared his intention to run on this platform.

Andrew Kelly is Cabra Postmaster and will run in Dublin Central.

Mr Kelly said the future of post offices isn't exclusively a rural issue, as sometimes portrayed.

"I disagree this rural-urban divide argument in relation to post offices," he said. "This is a national issue … about communities, jobs, and business, and it effects everybody in Ireland."

"When a post office is closed, the local area is decimated, economically," he claimed.

The group has already declared its first candidate, Seona O'Fegan in Galway West. She is the Postmistress at Barna and Fr. Griffin Road Post Offices in Galway city.

The Irish Postmasters Union voted to run candidates in the general election at their annual conference in Kilkenny at the beginning of May, amid a number of changes to the system.

The Post Office network employs approximately 3,700 people nationwide.