As I’m queueing to speak to the postmaster, I’m surprised by how busy the premises is at 9am on a Monday morning. O’Dwyer’s grocery shop, post office and filling station in Old Pallas, Co Limerick, has an old-style feel to it. There are essentials and nonessentials, from sliced pans to pot noodles.

The post office is housed in a booth in the middle of the shop floor. Postmaster Denis O’Dwyer is speaking to two women who I gather live nearby, they are catching up on the news from the weekend. Afterwards, he tells me that one of the ladies visits daily, whether she has something to get or not.

The road narrows with meandering bends on the way into Old Pallas. It is a small settlement based around a crossroads in the parish of Pallasgreen/Templebraden in Co Limerick. Recently, Denis was served with a notice from An Post outlining a number of possible futures for the post office, one of them was closure.

The contract for the post office was in Denis’s late mother’s name. Although, due to her health, which had been deteriorating over time, he has been running the service for over 10 years. When she passed away in the summer, he received a three-month contract from An Post, which ran out on 15 October. He is still operating, awaiting a decision.

At first when he displayed the notice outlining the possible closure, not many people noticed it – but when they did, a campaign to save the post office was initiated by the local community. From a small crossroads in Co Limerick, their voices were heard across the country.

“People felt it would be an awful loss to the area. We have a list of about 1,300 signatures of people who don’t want the place to close. There are a lot of submissions gone into An Post – reasons from locals business, the GAA, the parish council and various committees as to why they need the post office.”

In recent years, post offices in nearby Kilteely and Herbertstown, five and 10 minutes away respectively, were closed and their customer base was migrated to Old Pallas. For the local area, the potential closure of Old Pallas was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Rural Ireland

“I do feel it isn’t Old Pallas post office we are talking about here, it’s rural Ireland,” explains Denis in relation to the potential closure. “All you have to do is drive up to Kilteely and see how the village has gone or drive to Herbertstown – people are there but you have no shop, nothing.”

“This place is like an oasis in the desert at times. People out here are a bit different you know, they are not like city people, they don’t have those conveniences.”

Denis believes the closure of regional post offices highlights the underlying disconnect between the Government and rural Ireland. He acknowledges that times are changing and that banking services will eventually be completely operated online, but he says in some areas of the country people are a long way off that.

“People need the post office for their pensions and social welfare because broadband is so bad they don’t have computers. I think you are trying to go from step one to step seven or eight with this. I know online banking is eventually going to come in and people are going to have to use machines, but I think we are a long way off that here. There is a big divide there between what they are trying to get to and where we are now.”

The outpouring of support from the parish of Pallasgreen/Templebraden has been enormous, but Denis says he is not surprised as that is just the type of community it is. However, he did not expect the plight of the local post office to receive support from local politicians, which it did.

Some of the popularity of the campaign to save Old Pallas post office can be attributed to the fact that around the same time the post office was served with the potential closure notice, it was circulating in the media that 400 post offices are to be phased out across the nation.

Ned O’Hara, general secretary of the Irish Postmasters’ Union (IPU), speaking to Irish Country Living, claims that An Post have a contractual obligation to the Department of Social Protection to keep 600 post offices open and they want to keep a further 100 post offices open, bringing the figure to 700. There are over 1,100 post offices in the network, meaning that there could be potentially 400 closures.

A spokesperson for An Post denied that the company is looking at 400 closures, saying the plan is to have a post office for every cluster of 500 people and to keep services on the islands also: “We are not fixed on a number, we are fixed on the future of the network.”

In recent weeks, the IPU was in talks with An Post. There was a deal put on the table which was rejected by the union. Speaking to the general secretary, he is reluctant to give any information as regards the contents of the offer.

Ned believes that postmasters and postmistresses should be able to retire without the threat of their locality being left without a post office, and thinks that the relevant parties need to come to a solution sooner rather than later.

“I think the Government, as the shareholder, should look at the structural issue, fix it and take all this uncertainty out of it. We need to get on with our lives and get on with making the post office the best it can be and get out of squabble mode. This is going on for the last two and a half years. They are political footballing it, a decision needs to be made.”

Previously, telecommunications company Ericsson complied a presentation that was made to Government Ministers on possible ways to keep post offices viable. These initiatives included cafes, Wi-Fi zones, printing, ID verification, peace commissioner services and video doctors.

The post office in Ballymore Eustace, Co Kildare, set up a video doctor service four months ago where people can access a GP remotely using the internet. It has proven to be successful so far and when the post office was visited by Irish Country Living, the service was being availed of by locals. Postmaster Seán Fogarty says the Government needs to make inroads in providing more services like it.

Seamus Hennessey, postmaster in Newcastlewest, Co Limerick, thinks that the future of the postal service is not all doom and gloom and that An Post is fighting back and stepping up its game.

“You can’t design a business to just be open for the purpose of meeting and greeting people in the community, there has to be a business side of it and I think An Post is really fighting back, they are stepping up the game nationwide. They are delivering parcels on Saturdays to online shoppers, they have introduced Post Pal. They are fighting back significantly.”

We are living in an Ireland that is ever changing, but a decision needs to be made regarding whether or not we are going to protect the viability of rural communities and, if so, what steps are going to be taken to do this? CL