Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming along. The decision to close 159 post offices was taken without consultation with this House, the people's representatives, the Seanad or even county councils throughout the country. A private trade union, the Irish Postmasters Union, IPU, and An Post, a commercial semi-State company, designed a process for the closure of post offices nationwide without any consultation with the people's representatives. I was critical of the then Minister, Deputy Naughten, and the Government generally for allowing this to take place. It is a bad precedent. The IPU did a splendid job on behalf of its members in negotiating a retirement package and it is entitled to do that. An Post is entitled to balance the books because it has a commercial mandate. However, neither of those entities speaks for communities. Neither has the authority to decide what services communities need or aspire to. That is our job, a job that the Minister of State's Government has abdicated.

The Government set up a flawed process whereby it sought to close post offices on the back of a retirement package. While people are quite entitled to apply for the package, and that is fine, a flawed process was applied subsequently. A conurbation with a population of 500 people or more was to have a post office within a radius of 15 km. The bodies I have named determined that themselves. On we went and 159 closures followed. In particular I refer to Cliffoney, Gorteen and Ballinfull, County Sligo. Cliffoney was given a reprieve, even though it falls below the criteria, because common sense prevailed and An Post realised it is a thriving and growing village with a substantial number of people living in it. We did not see that in the cases of Ballinfull or Gorteen.

Here is the most troubling aspect of this. In August, An Post informed people in Ballinfull, to take one example, that they could make submissions for a review up to and including 28 September. They did so. The submission was put together very professionally and ran to 51 pages. It was posted on 27 September. It arrived with An Post on 28 September. Saturday and Sunday passed and, most peculiarly, on the Monday morning they got an email to say they had been unsuccessful. What is more, the decision was taken on 24 September, three days before they had sent their submission and four days before it arrived at An Post. Even it if was considered over the course of the weekend, there is no question that any time was spent on a submission of that nature.

As is outlined in that submission, if anyone would only read it, 21 townlands with a total population of 1,036 are serviced by the Ballinfull post office. It is all laid out in detail, but no one in An Post or in any independent review had any interest in that. Gorteen on the other hand has 512 inhabitants. It is a small town rather than a village, yet its post office is to be closed. The process was rigged from the beginning. As to the independent reviewer, he was only allowed to adjudicate against the criteria set by the IPU, a trade union, and An Post itself.

As we have been shown by the decision on Ballinfull, taken three days before the submission even arrived, the Government is standing over a Mickey Mouse superficial process. It is sending communities to go out and act like fools, myself among them. They put together well-thought-out submissions with the facts on population and a community's commitment to its post office, and it does not matter. The recipients do not care. The IPU and An Post run the country. They decide who is going to get services. We have made fools of communities throughout the country. In the Ballinfull case I can show written proof that the community was disrespected to the degree that the decision was taken well before they even sent in their submission. That is an insult in the extreme. I look forward to hearing the Minister of State's response.

See this speech in context