Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for taking this Topical Issue debate. Just a few streets away at the GPO on O'Connell Street, there are copies of a beautiful yellow and green glossy brochure available in the atrium. It is a report An Post commissioned a few years ago, namely, A New Vision for Post Office Services in Ireland. Within it, there are different subsections, including one relating to the consolidation of post office services, which is lovely flowery language for shutting down post offices.

In my constituency of Clare, we have discovered in the last few days that Broadford post office, which has existed since 1831 and been a permanent fixture in the village for 190 years, is now going to close. The postmaster, James O'Brien, and his family have done a fabulous job there in recent years but for very real, personal and genuine reasons, he has to retire and step back from the business, which we all respect in the community. An Post is seizing the opportunity of an individual stepping back from his role to shut down the facility. It says people can go 15 km over the road to Tulla or Ardnacrusha or a shorter distance to Kilkishen. That is irrelevant because as we have seen during Covid, more and more people are back in their home environments working from home and villages have become viable once more. It is illogical to do this and shutting down key services is just stripping the bedrock out of a village.

I know the Minister wants to see a vibrant rural Ireland but when post offices, local schools and shops are closed, the very rural Ireland we are trying to protect is hollowed out. An Post is hell-bent on doing this. This is quite a personal thing because it was happy for this post office to remain open for a long time but when an individual retires, suddenly the whole business plan for that community and its 15 km hinterland collapses. That is wrong. That is not how a post office system should work. If it was good enough to run last year or the year before and was profitable then it should be serving the heart of the community and its surrounding areas for many years to come.

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