Some eight rural post offices here in Co. Tipperary, part of more than 150 around the 26 counties of Ireland, are now set to close. The closures are part of a deal reached between An Post, latter the state-owned provider of postal services and the Irish Postmasters’ Union.
The Tipperary post offices listed to close are named as:- Ballingarry (SR), Clogheen, Coolbawn, Gurtnahoe, Littleton, Newcastle, Templetuohy and Upperchurch.
This arrangement will see 159 postmasters retire and their offices shut their doors, with 16 such post offices already vacated. All offices due to close are within 15km of at least one other post office, and all are to be closed within locations where populations of less than 500 people currently reside.
Whilst we understand that this is a voluntary retirement scheme backed by the Irish Postmasters Union, the current ruling minority Government of Fine Gael; supported by some 19 Independent TD’s, have shown totally no interest in keeping the rural post office network alive and viably profitable.
Remember our Ministers, TD’s and their under performing, protected, civil servants no longer address our rural population as ‘citizens’; citizens are simply categorised as ‘customers’.
Time to reconsider and review decentralisation out of Dublin, latter shelved when a former Fine Gael/Labour Party coalition took office in 1981.
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