Michael Healy-Rae urges greater support for post offices

Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae has accused the Government of discrimination against post offices despite a clear commitment in the programme for partnership government to support the network.

In an angry outburst in the Dáil, he held aloft an application form for naturalisation of Irish citizens which requires a fee of €175. But he said the form states that no postal orders will be accepted.

“What sort of message does this give out to the people when we are trying to attract them to use our post offices?” he said.

Mr Healy-Rae, a post master in Kilgarvan, Co Kerry, said the Government had the power to change this. “It is a Government-issued document for people who are applying for naturalisation.”

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He said: “Can we please take out that reference? What genius decided that no postal orders should be allowed?”

The Kerry TD said “a postal order is every bit as good as a banker’s draft. It is the same as cash.”

He added that “I want to ask the genius in question to go back and throw these forms away, light a fire and burn them and then issue new forms indicating that a postal order will be allowed.”

Mr Healy-Rae said “let our postmasters and postmistresses get a little business”.

Price of stamps

His comments follow the revelation that more than half of the State’s 1,100 post offices are loss-making. An Post has said it needs to increase the price of a stamp from 72 cent to €1 to sustain the company prior to a major restructuring.

The failing post office figures signal the possibility that far more than the 80 rural post offices thought likely to close down will go out of business.

The company has said it is committed to keeping post offices open in villages with more than 500 residents.

Fianna Fáil Roscommon-Galway TD Eugene Murphy warned in the Dáil that hundreds of post offices were likely to close and he said issues such as those raised by Mr Healy-Rae were coming up time and again.

Mr Murphy claimed there was “utter confusion” as to which Minister had responsibility for the postal network.

Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald said she would examine the issue of postal orders.

She said the post office working group, chaired by Minister of State Michael Ring, had looked at models that could potentially expand the role of post offices to act as economic and social hubs in the community.