Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend the Regional Group on bringing this motion before the House once again. I also commend the amendment Deputy O'Rourke has moved. As has been stated by many Members, the local post office network is in many respects the heartbeat of local communities. For many people, it is also their primary interaction with the State. It is where Government, business, communities and real living people can meet. That is why the closure of a post office can be such a devastating ordeal for a local community. It cannot be overstated that when a service such as a post office is removed, it also removes part of the fabric of that community and creates a sense of disengagement and disempowerment. Unfortunately, all too often post office closures are part of a wider removal of other services so the same communities that lose their post offices will also see their Garda stations or schools under threat. Invariably, local enterprise will follow those services out of the community.

The Government should not only agree to adopt this motion and accept the Sinn Féin amendment but also recognise the failures of its own policies. Under a Fianna Fáil Government, 755 local post offices were shut down between 1999 and 2011 and Fine Gael oversaw the closure of 159 other post offices in 2018 alone. With each one of those closures, the Government failed those communities and the principle of balanced regional development. Therefore, it is important that as a first step we accept the PSO as a model that can revitalise those post offices and start putting our money where our mouth is. It is not good enough to simply say we support our local post offices unless we are willing to adopt the budgetary and policy framework that will allow them to be viable.

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