Post offices could be wiped out within three years if social welfare payments by-pass them, it was claimed today.
The Irish Postmasters Union has called on the Government to ensure post offices are able to keep making the welfare payments, which make up 60 percent of the network's business.
The union's president, Paddy O'Shea, today told the IPU annual conference in Castlebar, Co Mayo, that without welfare payments the entire post office network was under threat.
He told delegates that the electronic funds transfer (EFT) facility where the payment is sent directly from the Department of Social and Family Affairs to banks was inevitable.
The union last week called on the Communications Minister Noel Dempsey to use his influence with An Post to ensure the company provides post offices with an EFT facility.
"Let there be no doubt about it but the whole post office network will be wiped out in the next three years unless this issue is resolved quickly," Mr O'Shea said today.
"The social welfare contract is such a critical part of the total post office business that no amount of new business could fill that vacuum.
"The Government will have to face up to its responsibilities to match their stated concern for the preservation of local communities by ensuring that the local post office not only survives but thrives."
He said he was sceptical of claims by the Department for Social Affairs that they did not oblige recipients to go the banking route and that the initiative lay with the customers.
"However, what matters is that more and more social welfare recipients will go the EFT route and that will be to the detriment of our members," he said.
Mr O'Shea said that the mass resignation of the country's 1,400 postmasters and postmistresses could not be ruled out unless the social welfare payments were retained and there was an opportunity for the postal staff, who earn between 10,000 and 12,000 euro a year from their post office work, to improve their standard of living.
PA