Green councillor Oisin O’Connor has called the threatened move of Edmondstown Sorting Office “unacceptable.”
The planned move will see the office moved from Edmonstown to Lucan, which O’Connor says he objects to in “the strongest possible terms.”
The Glencullen-Sandyford councillor said, “the existing sorting office in Edmondstown is already inaccessible for many of the people it serves; moving it to Lucan, without giving people in Sandyford, Ballinteer and Rathfarnham an alternative local option would be completely unacceptable.”
He said, “I will not allow my constituents to be sidelined by an essential public service in this way.”
O’Connor said he was “urging” An Post CEO David McRedmond to “reconsider this decision and to show that An Post still sees itself as a provider of a public service, rather than a purely commercially-driven corporation.”
The Green councillor said “An Post should not be sending people to Lucan to collect missed post or parcels” and that the recent threatened closures or movements of post offices on the Southside is part of a wider government push.
O’Connor stated, “I believe this is part of a wider move by McRedmond & government to turn An Post from a public service to a commercially-driven corporation, part of the wider privatisation agenda of the current government.”
In March, Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan told the Dáil that there are 873 post offices across Ireland, with “most of them” operated by independent postmasters.
Minister O’Donovan noted that only 41 post offices are directly operated by An Post, with postmasters operating over 90% of the network.
“This is a nationwide network of significant scale, providing the economic and social benefits I have mentioned, to citizens, urban and rural, across all of Ireland,” he said.
He said that the government recognises the challenges for both the network and postal services, and that “uncertainty” regarding global trade is one of these challenges.
“As this network facilitates trade, I am aware that postmasters are likely to be feeling the effects of this uncertainty,” the Minister said at the time.
The last government term, which saw Éamon Ryan in charge of post offices in his role as Minister for Communications, saw An Post reach €1 billion for the first time in 2024, itself a further 10% increase from 2023 revenues.
Despite strong growth in Ireland’s postal services, the treatment of the system under the current Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/independents government has been criticised by the opposition.
“There’s nothing Fine Gael and Fianna Gáil love more than a suit cutting public services,” O’Connor remarked.