Councillor fears ‘mass closure’ of rural post offices

Councillor fears ‘mass closure’ of rural post offices


Anton McNulty
antonmcnulty@mayonews.ie

Bailed out banks may end up paying out social welfare payments at the expense of post offices according to a Sinn Féin councillor who fears it will lead to the mass closures of rural post offices.
Charlestown councillor Gerry Murray expressed his fear that post offices may lose the contract for administering social welfare payments when the current contract ends at the end of the year.
An Post currently issues payments on behalf of the Department in respect of various social welfare schemes but the contract will expire on December 31, 2013. Cllr Murray had called for the government to negotiate a derogation from the EU to ensure An Post continues to provide the service.
However the Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton, confirmed that the Department is ‘required to tender for any new contract for the delivery of social welfare payments’ because of the ‘financial value of this particular service’.
Minister Burton said An Post would ‘of course be open to the current provider to bid for any new contract’ but Cllr Murray expressed disappointment with the answer and predicted ‘a mass closure of rural post offices in the event of An Post losing the contract’.
“The previous Government were only too happy to stand idly by and watch the ongoing closures of our Rural Post Office network and now it seems that the current Fine Gael/Labour Government is doing likewise.
“We might very well end up with a situation that some of the banks that were bailed out by the citizens of this state may end up winning the social welfare contract thus leading to a mass closure of our local  Post Offices. But the real prize for those financial institutions would not be the social welfare payments but rather the flight of capital that would happen in the aftermath of such mass closures. An Post savings are estimated to be in excess of €12 billion,” he said.

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