Something’s rotten in the Dáil as foxes piggy back on slick hounds
LIFE is amazing and blindingly brilliant in this age of spin. Take politics, for instance and the announcement slipped in on a quiet, newsless week recently that post offices across the country are set to close. At first the number stood at around 110, but within a few days, (and radio interviews), the number had swelled to 161.
The fact that rural post offices were on their last legs was news to noone who has had occasion to use them lately, by which I mean in the past five years.
Apart from Social Welfare payment mornings and Christmas time many post offices have struggled for footfall, in the same way record shops struggle for footfall.
The shiny white silicone elephant in the industry is the internet. Emails have replaced letters. Online is omnipotent.
Like numerous state owned sectors, An Post is a basket case. The business model is a joke. When changes needed to be made they weren’t. When urgent action was required by successive governments to keep rural communities alive, again nothing was done.
Of course a business can only stand on its footfall and in some cases the business just wasn’t there due to decimated populations in villages and the proximity of towns and larger villages.
I find it amusing how brass necked Fianna Fáil has been over recent months in calling up Fine Gael for the closure of 161 plus post offices across the nation. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the last time I checked Fianna Fáil are in a partnership in government with Fine Gael.
Micheál Martin has come out swinging, looking to score political points whenever our fledgling Taoiseach falls short of the ‘high’ standards of his office with a gaffe or a policy Hari Kari move.
The truth is that the government have been too busy turning Ireland into a slick, modern economy, propped up by multinational companies like Apple and Google that the eye has been taken off rural Ireland. There is a push which has been under way for several years, to urbanise rural Ireland, pushing residents into larger urban centres, by Hook or by Crook.
The elderly will suffer most, but also our national sense of identity.
Look at while swathes of England where small villages stand proudly cheek by jowl with neighbouring villages. All self-contained, pristine, functioning.
By allowing and enabling the vanishing of post offices from our countrywide the Government, both fine Gael and Fianna Fail, have summoned the spectre of ghost villages blooming all around us.
I witnessed a postmistress break down in tears several tears during an interview as she described the impossible conditions she works under. Imagine working a five day week for €200, Social Welfare without the extras effectively. The sad reality is that rural Ireland has been blatantly ignored, for the most part, by governments. Token gestures have been made. There have been initiatives, clever ones. Ireland’s Ancient East, the Norman Way, rural bus services.
The only truly successful ones I know of are the Waterford Greenway and the mobile library service.
Communities have been left to fight for scraps. Some, through grit, sacrifice and determination, have weathered the recession and are doing OK. Most are sinking fast.
While the political heavyweights trade blows, rural Ireland is on the floor. The good times have not come to rural Ireland. Does anybody in the Dáil bar care?