The decision by An Post to close a number of post offices is met with apprehension and protest in rural Ireland.
Fine Gael and the Irish Farmer's Association (IFA) have been assuring locals that they will oppose a decision by An Post to close the smaller post offices and to cut back on door to door rural deliveries.
In the crossroads villages of East Galway, a sense of growing alarm and dismay there at the prospect of the wholesale closure of local post offices.
John Donnelly, Deputy President of the IFA, says that the IFA had been fighting to keep rural communities alive and these decisions do not make sense.
We’re going to fight this tooth and nail.
Fine Gael TD Paul Connaughton believes that there is no way that people living in rural Ireland will accept a second rate delivery service.
Many people, under the new proposals, might have to travel a mile, two miles, every morning to find out if in fact there’s a letter in the green box for them.
The closure of post offices is another blow for rural villages who in recent years have suffered the loss of schools, Garda barracks and railway stations. They are determined to resist what they see as the latest attack on rural life.
Some of those affected by the cuts to service have their say.
It’s killing all the villages.
I think it will have a very bad effect on elderly people as well as business people.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 12 February 1991. The reporter is Jim Fahy.
