"We will fight tooth and nail" to save post offices

Geraldine Grennan

With a cloud of uncertainty surrounding the future of the post office network, the owners of Offaly post offices have vowed to fight “tooth and nail” to retain services in their local communities.

Mary Higgins, postmistress in Ferbane, says the town has been “very quiet” since the local branch of the Ulster Bank closed two years ago, and she says if the post office were to close it would be the “final nail in the coffin” for the west Offaly area.

Mary, whose husband, Brian Sheppard, is the postmaster in Cloughjordan, says they are being left “completely in the dark” about the future of the network.
“I will probably learn the future of Ferbane Post Office from one of my customers, as that is the way management in An Post do their business” she says.

She and her husband have devoted a great deal of their working lives to serving their local communities through their jobs in An Post, with both of them taking over their respective branches from their parents.

“It would be a devastating blow to Ferbane if the post office were closed, as it provides not only an important economic service, but plays a vital role in combating social isolation for many of our users, particularly our older customers.”

Meanwhile, in Pullough, Joseph Devery, whose late mother, Catherine, ran the first Post Office in the village in the mid-1950s, says An Post are trying to close down the rural post office network “by stealth, by taking business away from them bit by bit.”

Joseph's wife, Marie, is the current postmistress in Pullough, and he says the older generation are going to be the hardest hit if the post office is close.

“The post office is nearly the only thing left in the village, and we have a lot of older people who come in here to collect their pensions and we might be the only people they talk to all the week.... those people aren't going to be in a position to travel to Ferbane or Tullamore to pick up their pension, and they don't want their payment going into the bank either” he says.

Joseph says they know “nothing more”about the future plans for the post office network other than what has been published in the media, but both he and his wife are determined to “fight all the way” to maintain postal services in Pullough.

The postmistress in Kinnitty, Breda Byrne, says she would be “devastated” if she were forced to close her post office as it is the focal point of the small rural community.

“It is the older people I feel sorry for...the government don't care about rural Ireland or about the country people who come in here to meet other people and to have a chat as much as they come to collect their pensions” she says.

Breda has been running Kinnitty Post Office for the past 35 years and says she is “fully supportive” of the Irish Postmasters national campaign to retain postal services in rural areas.

“I am on my own here so I can't attend protest marches in Dublin, but I will support the campaign in every other way because somebody has to stand up for rural Ireland” says Breda.