Locals rally to save post office in Phibsborough

Plans by An Post to close the post office in Phibsborough have been met with fierce local opposition. 

Plans by An Post to shut the post office in 2017 were reversed following a public pressure campaign organised by former TD Joe Costello and Senator Marie Sherlock.

At a public meeting organised by Sherlock and other Labour members, the meeting heard from people from all walks of life how the post office is crucial to them.

Prior to the meeting, over 1300 signatures had been gathered locally and the meeting was told that the overall aim was to present the signatures to An Post executives in a bid to show how important the post office is to the local community.

Sherlock told the meeting “we can’t let it disappear; our community needs public services like this.”

Councillor Declan Meenagh said that as he is visually impaired, he is reliant on the post office to carry out his business and losing access to the facility would be a blow.

“Cutting this service doesn’t make sense considering the amount of money they make on parcels. They claim they want to close the post office because it isn’t viable!” 

To Meenagh’s point, 2022 statistics for An Post revealed that their revenue was €888.1m.

A Tipperary native named Mary told the meeting that their own local post office was closed in 2011, and they were surprised the same thing was happening in Dublin. 

Rural post offices have been hit by closures over the last decade in a bid by An Post to push their services online, and Mary said that “if a post office gets brought down to a shop like what happened back home in Tipp, An Post will get rid of it. I have seen that happen before.”

“I had to explain to my housemate that bin tags are only available from local post offices. I’m calling on anyone who is environmentally minded in the area to step up and take part in this campaign.”

The drastic reduction of services at the nearby AIB in Cabra and closure of the post office in the nearby Ashtown was also raised at the meeting, with Ann from Phibsoro Tidy Towns saying “it is a sad state of affairs.” 

Anita from the post office in Cabra said that local post offices are “vital” in terms of finance.

Anita told the meeting that clients who visit her post office pay off their HAP, TV licence or pet bills in instalments at the post office, whereas that wasn’t possible with banking.

The recent British TV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office was invoked at the meeting, with Anita asserting that An Post wants to create a similar culture in Ireland.

“To An Post, it’s all a business to them. They don’t care.”

While acknowledging she was “preaching to the converted” at the meeting, she said that the local community must take action and rally to save the post office.

A local e-commerce owner said that the closure of the post office would make it “incredibly difficult” as she relies on using it to deliver goods to her customers.

“I would be lost without it,” she said.

A Cavan resident who moved to the area said that closures of post offices “is happening in England, it’s happening in Northern Ireland and it’s starting to happen here.”

He said that local post offices were closing in rural Cavan, and that the same fate could befall Dublin post offices.

“It’s clear to me that the government doesn’t want money in local post offices, it is more expedient for them to have money sitting in banks.”

It was noted that in the case of an emergency, there are limits of up to €600 in cash that can be withdrawn from certain ATMS while the limit in post offices is €3,000.

Local Fine Gael TD and Minister Paschal Donohoe was invoked at the meeting, with Donohoe cited as the one person who has the most power to stop the post office from closing.

As part of Éamon Ryan’s brief as Minister for Communications, the postal service falls under his remit and Sherlock predicted that it would be Ryan who will make the decision instead of Donohoe owing to the latter’s workload.

The issue has already been raised in the Dáil by Dublin Central TD Gary Gannon, with the Social Democrats TD saying  “we should not have to protest too hard to keep these types of services.”

“We simply cannot have a scenario where it is outsourced to a postmaster who moves those services off-site to the back of a shop or we find some other little outlet that does not come anywhere close to providing the same service.”

Joe Costello said “there is a sense of deja vú with this. We were successful in our campaign in 2017, and then out of the blue An Post made this willy-nilly decision to close to the post office again without any prior consultation.”

“We cannot let that happen; communities need footfall to survive.”