Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 17 September 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment

Post Office Closures: An Post

Mr. David McRedmond:

Yes. There must be sufficient demand, not just for it to be viable. It is not a sense that it is purely market-driven. We have a requirement to have a post office within 15 km of 95% of the population in an area or 3 km in a town, as I think the Deputy knows. They are the criteria in place. Our number one obligation is to provide a service, which is what we do, but because postmasters run individual businesses, it is not the job of An Post to make sure they are viable. The best we can do is to design it in a way that it can work.