Welfare tender vital to post offices

The threat to the post office network has galvanised people into action and now Fine Gael and Labour are now trying to convince people that the post office is secure in their hands. Our local rural post offices network can only survive if it remains a major outlet for the payment of social welfare benefits.

The local post offices themselves will tell you that the social welfare payments are 62% if not more of their weekly business. If that business is taken away from them, how can they stay open? One or two customers a day paying a household bill or buying a few stamps isn’t worth keeping the post office door open.

If people travel to larger or bigger towns to collect their money, they will do their shopping and pay their household bills while they are there. What TD can keep a straight face and say people will travel a few miles to collect their money and then travel back to their local post office to pay household bills?

Socially, our local post offices are the heart of the community. A meeting place for a chat with neighbours, notices of events & what’s going on. For many elderly people, a familiar and reassuring face behind the counter, a friendly helping hand with household bills. Why promote even more isolation and loneliness for elderly people?

On February 25, Pat Rabbitte stated in the Dáil : “An Post is a commercial State company that earns its keep and receives no Exchequer subsidy. I and my colleagues cannot arrange a hidden subsidy for it by dictating that all or even any government business is automatically give to An Post. There are commercial contracts that must, under EU and Irish public procurement law, go out to competitive tender between all interested parties.”

What we need is a Government and a Minister of Communications who not only stands up to the EU bureaucracy, but fights for what Irish people need and want and tells them our post office network fulfils a vital and unique function. Without our local post office we might as well turn off the electricity in rural Ireland, because eventually, without them, the heart of our communities, there will be no one left living there. If, as a TD, you are not fighting tooth and nail to ensure the post office keeps the social welfare tender, you are not doing all in your power to ensure the future safety of the local and rural post 0ffices.

Brian Finucane

Lenamore

Ballylongford

Co Kerry