Another post off ice to close …and it’s NOT in a rural area
AN POST has come under fire for closing a post office – and for once, it’s not in rural Ireland.
CEO David McRedmond recently hit back at criticism that An Post’s decision to close 159 post offices around the country was an attack on rural Ireland.
Now he is being blasted by a community in west Dublin, whose post
‘There’s fury. We had 500 signatures by lunchtime’
office is being moved a few kilometres away – even though 10,000 new houses are being built in the area over the next year.
The move comes despite Mr McRedmond’s pledge last month that any community with 500 people would have its own post office.
Lucan’s Dodsboro post office is based in a Spar shop owned by Gabriel Byrne. Mr Byrne applied to retain it after the post master and former Offaly footballer Liam Hanlon announced his decision to retire. However, his application was refused.
Now angry residents have taken steps to reverse the decision. Mr Byrne told the Irish Mail on Sunday: ‘The locals are up in arms, especially the older generation as there is no bus service from here to where the post office is going to be now. We started a petition on Friday morning and by lunchtime we had close on 500 signatures.
‘There are 10,000 new houses being built just a few hundred metres from my shop. There is absolutely no sense to this.’
Local resident Lala Simsek agreed, adding that the relocated post office will be ‘a minimum 20-minute walk from most of the estates here.’
A spokesman for An Post declined to comment as ‘we are still in the process of finalising the matter’.