Government must stop sitting back while post office network withers on the vine
Speech to Dáil Éireann, 6 December 2006, by John Gormley TD, Green Party Chairman
I’m glad to have the opportunity at last to speak in the House on the issue of the running down of our Post Office network. As you know, Ceann Comhairle, I have repeatedly submitted questions, motions and requests for adjournment debates on this issue over the past few months. On each occasion, the matter was ruled out of order on the basis that the Minister is not responsible for An Post. However on the 11th of May this year, Minister Seamus Brennan told my colleague Dan Boyle in the House that “The Government is committed to maintaining a viable network of post offices throughout the country”. How can the Government be committed to an objective, and yet refuse to take action on it, and refuse to even answer questions about it in this house?
The fact is that this Government is presiding over the withering away of our Post Office network. We have heard already about the problems in rural Ireland, but I would like to assure the House that this is not just a rural phenomenon. In the Dublin 6 area in my own constituency of Dublin South East, residents have seen three post offices close in the last few years. First Terenure Post Office closed its doors, inconveniencing a large number of people in that area. This post office has remained closed since 2003. Earlier this year, Kenilworth Post Office on the Harold’s Cross Road closed down due to the death of the postmaster, and Rathgar Post Office closed when the rent on the premises increased dramatically. In each case, An Post has advertised for suitable persons to come forward to take on the contracts for these post offices, but in each case no suitable candidate has been secured. An Post have told me that they are continuing the search, but how can local people have confidence that these services will ever be restored?
My constituents now find they have to travel to Rathmines to have simple matters such a registering a letter dealt with, or to collect social welfare payments. I don’t expect every member of the House to be familiar with the geography of Dublin South East, but suffice it to say that this is quite a trek for an elderly resident of Terenure or Rathgar. And let’s not forget that it is older people who are affected disproportionately by these closures. This Government likes to portray itself as caring for older people, and yet it is presiding over a situation where essential services used by the elderly are being run down. My constituents regularly receive election literature from Fianna Fáil candidates in particular which emphasise issues affecting older people.- which is all very well, but my constituents are entitled to ask these candidates what their party is doing to preserve the essential public services which older people use?
The fact that Rathmines post office is now the only port of call for so many residents has created its own problems. Rathmines was busy enough without having to deal with all this extra business, and queues and waiting times are way up. To compound the problem, Rathmines post office is no longer open on Saturday afternoons. While I’m on the subject, I may as well mention that the number of post boxes in the area is decreasing, as well as the number of collections from these boxes. How can this be seen as anything other than a serious decline in public services?
The facts in relation to the state of the Post Office network are stark. Some of the figures released by the Irish Postmasters Union recently leave no doubt that the network is in decline, and that the Government is doing nothing to halt this. The facts are these:
- 44 offices have closed this year
- One quarter of all post offices have closed since 2000
- Most offices are now sub-offices: there are only 84 full post offices left
The IPU’s figures also show how many postmasters are barely scraping by. The union says that hundreds of members are earning less than minimum wage and working up to 50 hours per week. 35 IPU members are earning below €8,000 per year. All of these post offices must be considered at risk of imminent closure.
Terenure, Rathgar and Harolds Cross are busy urban villages with plenty of footfall, and plenty of customers for the services provided by An Post. If the contract for running a Post Office in these areas is not attractive enough to draw out suitable candidates, what hope can we have that the Post Office network can be maintained? The fact is that the deal being offered by An Post is not attractive enough, and the responsibilities and risks of running a post office are too onerous. Prospective postmasters have to find a great deal of money up front in order to secure the franchise, and the return from running the post office is uncertain at best. This is not to mention the security fears, especially in the light of a number of “tiger” kidnappings of postmasters. These are problems which require imaginative solutions.
My proposal to the Government is to stop sitting back while the post office network withers on the vine. If the matter is left to An Post, we all know what the outcome will be. The major banks in recent years all decided that it was in their commercial interests to reduce their number of branches, and on a purely commercial basis An Post will come to the same conclusion. Why should they invest further in sub-post-offices which make very little money, when higher-value services can be offered through more centralised locations? When commercial factors are the only driver, public services always lose out. This is a lesson this government has yet to learn.
We need more imaginative solutions to this problem than this government can or will provide. We need to rethink our post office network not as a residual component of a commercial postal service - a “legacy system”, to use the business jargon – to be inevitably run down as commercial reality bites. There is an opportunity to recreate our post offices as “one-stop-shops” for services and information provided by local and national government.
Dublin City Council has local offices throughout the city. We also have citizens’ information centres at various locations. Many of the various state agencies also have public offices scattered around. Would it not be of benefit to citizens if there were a central point in their own neighbourhood where all of these local and national services could be accessed? Every member of this House will know that there is nothing which frustrates people more than being given the run-around. We all get calls from exasperated constituents who have been unable to negotiate the bureaucracy in order to get the information or services they require. A one-stop-shop based on the local post office could provide a valuable first port-of-call for citizens in their own locality.
This is just one idea for revitalising our post office network. I believe it could work, but it would require the one thing this Government has talked a lot about but never delivered: joined-up thinking. It would require them to think about the issue from the point of view of the citizen rather than from the point of view of the bureaucracy. It would also require them to think beyond commercial factors for a moment and consider its responsibility to provide public services.
At the very least, I think the people deserve something a little more substantial from the Government than a hollow “commitment to maintaining a viable network of post offices throughout the country”. Talk is cheap.