When rural post offices are threatened, politicians also feel threatened. There are over 1,900 post offices in the State and local politicians fight tooth and nail to protect any in their constituencies that are considered vulnerable.
Therefore, although enormous population shifts have taken place in the past 60 years, the network of post offices has hardly changed.
In 1937 there were around 1,900 post offices at a time when almost two-thirds of the State's population lived outside towns and villages. Today, over two-thirds of the population lives in towns and villages, car-ownership is widespread in rural areas, yet the network is unchanged.
Attempts to reduce the network have run into strong political opposition at Cabinet level in the past. In 1991 the Cabinet rejected a proposal to close up to 1,000 post offices. Dail deputies and ministers have always found it impossible to stand up to intense local opposition to closures. However, now the pressure on small post offices is coming from the EU's insistence that the delivery of social welfare payments be put out to tender. Supporting the move, the Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs Mr Ahern, is motivated both by the desire to comply with EU law and the opportunity competition gives his Department to save money.
However, the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, who is directly responsible for An Post, opposes the move. She sees the threat to small post offices that the proposal brings as damaging to the fabric of society in rural Ireland. She also sees it as politically fraught to make such a decision during the local government election campaign.
For small, struggling rural post offices, An Post's monopoly on the distribution of social welfare payments is an important source of income.
Some 45 million social welfare transactions per year are carried out at post offices, with An Post charging 70p for each. This means post offices are paid close to £35 million per year by the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs.
The EU Services Directive 50/92/EC told the State that it now had to put large public service contracts including the social welfare payment delivery system out to tender.
Several parties are understood to be keen to tender for the business. Industry estimates suggest that social welfare payments could be delivered at a cost of 10p or 12p per transaction, rather than the 70p currently charged.
Last autumn the Minister for Social Welfare, Mr Ahern, is understood to have reminded the Cabinet that the decision was due this year. In February a preliminary notice was placed in the appropriate EU journal saying that the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs intended to put social welfare payment delivery out to tender.
As the process moved on, it appears that the full political implications in Dail constituencies throughout the State were not fully appreciated by most Ministers. However, Ms O'Rourke was alert to the dangers and opposed the plan.
Three options were presented to Cabinet yesterday. The Government could proceed as agreed with the EU and put the business out to open tender, or it could decide to put only part of the business out to tender. The final option was deferment of the tendering process.
However, the Attorney General's advice to Cabinet yesterday was clear: only by putting the entire business out to tender would the Government be behaving legally.
This is not the only EU law that threatens the long-term viability of rural post offices. Late last year the chief executive of An Post, Mr John Hynes, wrote to the Secretary General of the Department of Public Enterprise, Mr John Loughrey, warning that under the EU competition regime "it will not be possible to cross-subsidise the rural post office network from profits earned in the letter monopoly.
"This means the financing of the rural post office network must be resolved by the post office division itself without recourse to the rest of An Post.
"Alternative financial arrangements such as explicit subsidisation by Government of the rural network would have to be explored."