‘This post office cull is ripping the heart out of rural Ireland’
Locals in the small Clare village of Cree, like many others, are furious. So why won’t the Government help them to keep a valued local amenity open?
TO reach the crossroads village of Cree in west Co. Clare, you must drive along what seems like an endless series of remote bóithríns. The village’s name in Irish – An Chríoch – translates as ‘The End’, although locals prefer to think of it as croí or heart as the road through the village leads to Quilty, Kilrush, Kilkee and Ennis.
But there is an end of sorts coming for Cree. It’s one of 159 rural villages where post offices have been listed for closure by An Post, as part of a consolidation process in which postmasters and mistresses have been given voluntary exit packages.
Villages with populations above 500 will get to keep their post office, but with around 450 residents, Cree misses the cut. When 71-year-old post master Jack Horgan retires with a lump sum at the end of this year after 33 years of service, the tiny post office adjoined to a house he owns will close its doors for good. From next January, local people will have to travel 8.4km to Quilty or 11km to Kilrush to collect pensions, social welfare and children’s allowance payments, or to post letters and parcels.
Friday mornings are buzzing with activity at the post office in Cree as farmers arrive on tractors or bikes to pay bills, post letters and meet with friends. Even on a quiet Thursday afternoon, a number of customers go in and out of the little office situated next to Cree Bridge.
‘This post office isn’t as busy as those in bigger villages or towns,’ says a relief worker filling in for Jack Horgan while he’s on holiday. ‘But it’s kept going. For the people who do use it – and in a village like this that means older people – its closure will be a huge loss.’
IN Meaney’s grocery store, 81-year-old farmer John Studdert – who has driven 4km from his Clonreddan home to buy three litres of milk for a calf he’s nursing – has harsh words for the people behind An Post’s proposals and the politicians with little will to fight them.
‘They’re an awful shower,’ he says. ‘I could be in the post office every day of the week, either paying bills or dropping in for a chat. It will be a bad job if we lose it.’
According to local representatives, the closure of three post offices in a 10km triangle of villages – Cree, Doonbeg and Cooraclare – will be a massive blow for their communities.
Despite a reported €3million turnover between them, all three will close, with the post office in Doonbeg, home to Donald Trump’s golf and spa resort, due to shut at the end of this month. Quilty will retain its post office, having turned down An Post’s closure package.
‘That figure represents €1million of turnover for each post office,’ says grocery store owner Declan Meaney.
‘That means €1million of potential spending going out of our village when the post office closes. Our biggest worry is that Cree will end up like Mullagh, which lost its post office about a decade ago.’
Cree benefited from the closure at Mullagh as people had to use the post office there instead and inevitably ended up shopping there. But now it’s Cree’s turn to feel the cold wind of cutbacks.
‘Mullagh is a fabulous village with a state-of-the art school, running track, broadband and solar power, but it has no post office or shop,’ says Declan.
‘It’s like a ghost town. There’s nowhere to go to after Mass on Sunday, there’s nowhere to buy a newspaper.
‘The whole coast of the west of Ireland is being changed and it’s as if west Clare is being forgotten and a way of life eroded. We’re fighting for our village’s life and can’t help wondering why they don’t bail out the post offices in the same way they bailed out the banks.’
Six Clare post offices are to close – Cree, Fanore, Kilfenora, Doonbeg, Lissycasey and Cooraclare. Each village has held a public meeting for local anger to be voiced, and the event in Cree last Monday made headlines when 400 people attended. Cree has a strong community spirit with 20 businesses employing 150 local people and events held annually to raise funds for charity. That community spirit has turned to anger and rebellion in the face of losing a vital public service.
At Monday’s meeting, Minister of State and Clare Fine Gael TD Pat Breen was told to sit down – to thunderous applause – when he reportedly failed to answer whether he would try to enact a November 2016 Dáil motion aimed at saving rural post offices.
That motion – tabled by a group of rural Independents and supported by 158 TDs – stated that ‘post offices serve a vital social and economic role in their communities (and) there is a very specific commitment in the Programme for a Partnership Government to protect the postal network’.
Councillors also drew up a motion asking Clare’s Oireachtas members to postpone further post office closures for a three-year period and that the necessary budget provision be included in Budget 2019 at a West Clare Municipal District meeting on Monday.
ALOCAL school teacher, who did not wish to be named, told us: ‘It’s absolutely awful, I feel totally let down by our politicians.
‘I feel emotional and angry about the way in which the post office closures have been brought about. This is a social and economic issue but you can’t measure social issues on pieces of paper. The politicians who make the rules have never been beyond Newlands Cross in Dublin; they have no idea what rural life is about, they don’t get it.
‘They want to shut us down. I believe they want to move us to bigger villages and towns but we want to live here, it’s a beautiful way of life. Rural pubs have already been deci-
mated with drink-driving laws. If the post office goes, what’s next: the school? It’s only a matter of time before the village church goes. It’s a catch-22 situation.
‘Because the village population is low, the post office turnover is low and they say it’s not viable, but without basic services like a post office, young families won’t move here to live – there’ll be nothing here for them. A lot of young people moved away during the last recession – without amenities, they won’t move back.’
She continues: ‘For our older residents, going to the post office on a Friday is one of their only social outlets in the week. They collect their pension, do their shopping, have a chat and a cup of tea – that’s their day out. That will all vanish.
‘There’s no public transport service here, so what’s their next option – to take a taxi to Quilty or Kilrush? For people on low incomes, taxis are expensive and taxi drivers won’t wait around while they do their bits and pieces. Instead of coming two minutes down the road to post a letter, I’ll have to travel at least 8km, which means more time and expense. I work full-time so getting to a post office in another village will be difficult.’
An Post’s stipulation is that villages with fewer than 500 residents will lose their post office. But population figures don’t tell the whole story. At first glance, Cree looks like a remote village with one street, a couple of pubs, a shop and a post office, but there’s more going on than meets the eye.
Amongst the 20 or so local business owners is 33-year-old Riverside Beauty salon owner Sarah Gould, who moved back from Australia six years ago to open a business in her home town. She currently rents a building that was the original village post office.
‘People told me I was mad,’ she recalls. ‘But I took a chance. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it could work. Now the salon is flat-out – I have two full-time staff members and one part-time.’
During lunchtime, her salon is filled with the chat of young women having their nails done.
‘We have a big catchment area with wedding guests from Trump Doonbeg coming in for pre-wedding treatments and tourists passing by on the Wild Atlantic Way,’ says Sarah. ‘There are three secondary schools in the area so the teachers come in. We’re reliant on neighbouring villages and find that if you have a good business going, people will support it. People sometimes come from Ennis.’
The village also gets through-traffic from the ferry service linking Killimer in Clare to Tarbert in Kerry. In a few weeks’ time, Sarah will start the build on a new beauty salon across the road, while her father Denis Gould has plans to open a restaurant in the village. The post office closure and possible knock-on effects are not something she wants to envisage.
‘I don’t like this notion that our village will die if the post office closes,’ she says. ‘I certainly hope it won’t, because what will it mean for me if it does? I’m here trying to pump business into the village.
‘On an economic level, losing the post office will be dreadful. I use it to pay salon bills and buy All-For-One vouchers as bonuses for my staff. I run in to Jack for change if I need it. I also use the post office’s AIB cashback facility so it’s effectively an ATM for me.’ Sarah adds that without a post office, she will have to make the trip to Kilrush to get cash of any kind.
‘Socially, it will be very sad to see it go,’ she continues. ‘Because we’re right next door to the post office, the older women in Cree often drop in to us for a treatment or a cup of tea and chat.
‘If you’re looking for someone, they’re usually in one or the other place. I used to file the parish priest’s nails for free. “Say a prayer for me” I’d ask him. I have one lovely customer in her eighties who comes in every week or two. She’s very hard of hearing so her carer brings her to get her pension in the post office and then she comes in to me to have a simple treatment – she might spend €15. If we lose our post office, the result will be our elderly people getting out less.’
According to Declan Meaney, the post office is the heart of any rural village. ‘It’s like the doctor’s waiting room,’ he says. ‘You come in, say, “How are you?” and hear a person’s entire life story.
‘The post office fulfils many roles – for tourists coming to research their ancestry, the first place they go to is the post office for local knowledge. The postmaster or postmistress knows their customers well and will often help older customers out with other issues.’
Declan has already submitted a proposal to An Post which would see the post office re-located to his shop premises once Jack Horgan retires.
‘I submitted it at the end of July but haven’t had any reply yet,’ he says. ‘I think it will be a long time before I do. From hearing what postmasters and mistresses say, An Post has forced them to accept their offer by saying, “If you don’t accept, you must pay to upgrade your premises” with things like bullet-proof glass and spends of up to €20,000. They have forced people’s hands.’
Declan’s wife Lorraine adds: ‘Everyone’s delighted that Jack is getting to retire with a lump sum and to give him credit, if we do get to open a post office in the shop, he has offered to stay on until it’s up and running.
‘But just because Jack is retiring it doesn’t mean we should lose our post office entirely.’
Local people – including Pat Kelly and Bernie Kelly – have formed a committee to fight the post office closure. Pat Kelly says: ‘Pat Breen said that if there’s a strong local plan in place then the proposal to close the post office could be appealed.
‘So that’s our next move – any business interested in taking over the post office has to put forward firm proposals and then we want to meet with political representatives and An Post.’
COLETTE Keating, part of the third generation of her family to run Walsh’s pub on the main street, is clearly worried about the knock-on effects of the post office closure.
‘This is a dairy and beef farming community,’ she says. ‘Brexit is already hanging over our farmers, now this.
‘The pub trade is gone – I don’t make a living from the pub, I’m lucky that my husband works. We want to live here and we want our children to live here, but they are destroying rural communities.’
Naturally, An Post bosses are firmly out of favour in the village. ‘CEO David McRedmond said in a radio interview that some villages losing their post offices don’t meet the definition of a settlement,’ says Bernie Kelly. ‘That’s an insult to the people of villages like Cree, which could actually expand.’
According to local Fianna Fáil TD Timmy Dooley, the Government is failing to recognise the viability of rural villages such as Cree. ‘This triangle of post offices serves a significant amount of people,’ he says. ‘The proposed extinction of that entire network will place an unbearable burden on some people – especially the elderly and vulnerable – who will be forced to travel elsewhere to go to a post office. Local shops and businesses need everything they can get to survive, and this move will take money out of villages like Cree, so there will be a knock-on effect. The savings for An Post will be relatively small but the impact on communities will be substantial.
‘Other countries acknowledge their post office network as a vital public service and use subventions to keep them in place.
‘The Government should be stepping in to fill the gaps and keep post office signs above the door.’