A RANGE of community and voluntary groups have joined forces to campaign against the closure of local post offices.
The post office network is in decline, with 500 closures over the last eight years.
The group met yesterday with the Irish Postmasters' Union (IPU), which said further decline is inevitable unless the Government takes action. It wants post offices to be made the provider of choice for social welfare payments, a policy on the future size and spread of the network, and commitments to maintaining services in remote areas. Representatives of the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Irish Farmers' Association, Age Action, Irish Senior Citizens' Parliament, Irish Rural Link and the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed attended.
John Monahan, national vice-president of St Vincent de Paul, said it would be "catastrophic" if post offices were to lose the contract for social welfare payments. Banks tended not to be interested in financially vulnerable consumers, he said. People used the post office network to pay bills and receive social welfare payments and organised their budgeting around the availability of this service.
In rural areas, the big difficulty was not necessarily financial but the "poverty of loneliness, isolation and fear". Local post offices provided a social service for isolated old people but their closure often forced elderly customers to travel long distances by public transport to access the service.
Robert Lynch, of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, said the people served by post offices were the most vulnerable and the most at need in the country. The State had a responsibility to ensure it reached the most people in the most effective way, and while cost was a consideration it should not be the primary one.
Sylvia Meehan, president of the Irish Senior Citizens' Parliament, said the possible closure of more post offices was a matter of tremendous concern to older people.
IPU general secretary John Kane said there was a clear message coming from the community and voluntary sector that a structured policy to protect the post office network was needed.