‘Use post offices’ or lose them, Varadkar tells communities
THE boss of An Post has said it is inevitable that post offices around the country will close, as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar put the onus back on rural communities to support their post offices.
“If people want to protect post offices, they need to use them,” the Taoiseach said.
Mr Varadkar said he was not aware of a plan to earmark hundreds of post offices for closure.
“If it is a plan it’s certainly not a Government-backed plan,” he said.
His comments came as the Irish Independent reported the Irish Postmasters’ Union (IPU) has told its members in a letter the company has prepared a “blueprint” that will mean the closure of 400 post offices.
The Taoiseach noted that the number of post offices has been decreasing over the years.
“The network is being rationalised quite simply because fewer people are sending letters.
“The amount of mail volume is going down and because people in urban and rural areas are sending fewer letters, fewer and fewer people are using post offices, because more and more services are now going online.
“So, ultimately the best way for people to protect their local post office is to actually use it.”
However, An Post chief executive David McRedmond confirmed that up to 400 post offices could close over the next few years.
Mr McRedmond initially claimed this figure, reported yesterday in the Irish Independent, was incorrect, but later conceded that after the closures there will be between 700 and 900 offices left.
“We can’t treat this as something that is just set in stone, treat it as some kind of theme park, where you keep everything exactly as it was 100 years ago.
“Of course things have to change and things will change,” he said on RTÉ’s ‘Today with Sean O’Rourke’.