Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The people of Tallaght are up in arms about the plan to close the post office in the Square, Tallaght, to privatise it and to reopen a smaller post office with fewer services in a different location. Almost 2,000 people have signed a petition that was delivered to the GPO last week, where An Post informed the campaigners that it intends to proceed.

I have been doing a lot of work on this and have been speaking with a lot of people. I have not come across a single person who has anything bad to say about the staff in the post office, who provide an outstanding service. It is not just a matter of the basic bread and butter of a post office; it is a real community service for people. Tallaght is not the only location that is on the chopping block of this privatisation agenda. Rathmines, Phibsborough, New Ross, Roscommon and Tipperary are in a similar situation.

I can predict, because I am a mind reader, what the Minister of State will say in response. As well as being a mind reader, I also have a letter from the Minister for the environment, which states that An Post indicated that the change in business model of the six offices will not in any way change the range or extent of services offered. That is just not accurate. That might be what An Post is telling the Minister, but it is not even really what An Post is telling me.

I got a similar commitment from An Post. I wrote back to it to ask if it could confirm the number of staff working in the new post office in Tallaght will not be reduced from the current number and if it could confirm that the number of physical counters will not be reduced. I received information back, which stated:

We will almost certainly be moving, but staff and counters are normally pitched to the numbers coming in the doors. Post offices often have extra counters that are never used in practice.

It stated that it has no plan to do anything other than to have a top-notch facility. In other words, there was no guarantee that the same number of staff will remain. There was no guarantee the same number of counters would remain. In reality, what will happen is that there will be a reduction in the number of staff and a reduction in the number of counters.

We know that these contractor-led post offices often do not provide the same level of service. Currently, people are often directed to the post office in the Square, Tallaght, to get the full range of services, for example, to get prize bonds, etc., because the privately operated post offices can effectively opt out of them. I just do not see how in the real world having fewer staff and counters is a guarantee to provide the same service.

The workers are being treated abysmally. Again, I have correspondence with An Post about this. The workers are not being given the option to transfer over to the contractor operation. The workers are not being given the option of voluntary redundancy. They are being given no option whatsoever. They are going to be transferred elsewhere within An Post in Dublin. They will probably have to go from a situation where they live and work in Tallaght to a situation where they will have a one-hour commute into and out of town every single day.

That is not even the worst of it. Once the post office is no longer directly run by An Post, as is the case with the majority of post offices across the country, there will be no guarantee that it will stay at all. Over the past three or four years, approximately 200 post offices, which were all contractor-run post offices, have been closed down across the country. This is not something that is just happening in rural areas, although it should not be happening in rural areas. It is also happening elsewhere in Dublin South-West. In Templeogue and Rathfarnham, post offices have closed. In one circumstance, this was because the shop it was in closed. In another circumstance, it was because the postmaster died. No one has replaced them and An Post has said this has nothing to do with it because this is a contractor-led operation.

This is a two-stage process. Step one is having smaller or fewer services, which is bad for the workers. Step two is when the post office goes entirely. This plan should be withdrawn and the Government should put pressure on An Post to do so.

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