Rural Ireland can overcome challenges but we need action
FOLLOWING recent media reports that over 80 post offices and up to 30 Ulster Bank branches are to close across the country, ICSA rural development chairman Seamus Sherlock has said this is a further symptom of the need for a comprehensive Government response to the issue of rural development and balanced regional growth.
“Rural Ireland is not dead but we are experiencing challenging times. It is unlikely that every post office can be saved but we must do everything possible to make the optimum amount of post offices viable throughout the country. We need more urgency to put the constructive proposals from the Kerr report into action.
The Government and the financial services sector could do a lot more by maximising the use of post offices to provide additional state and financial services in rural communities where neither government nor the commercial sectors are willing to provide such services.
We must be realistic; modern technology has brought massive change and with these advances there is always going to be a need to adapt. But in a country where broadband is still totally inadequate in many rural areas we also need com- munity based facilities. Realistically this may not be feasible in every village but on the other hand, ICSA believes that we cannot allow everything to be based on a centralised model either.
ICSA advocates the maintenance of rural post offices and banks but we are conscious that these businesses need to be profitable, in some cases it may be the lesser of two evils to sacrifice the non-profitable outlets so to ensure the future of the ones remaining. We also need to ensure that even if some Garda stations will not be reopened that we have a progressive model of community policing where Gardaí are based within rural communities and know the people.”
ICSA believes that the issue is not about a building at every crossroad but about the level of service. “It is far better to have 30 viable post offices in a county rather than 40 post offices and very few viable. However, our fear is that Government inaction will result in sowing the seeds of long-term decline right across rural Ireland with almost nothing viable. ICSA believes that rural Ireland can overcome challenges but we need action now to transform this into a vibrant future.”