Since the closure of the post office in An Sean Phobal a few years ago, the only remaining post office in Gaeltacht na nDéise in Co Waterford has been that of An Rinn.
Now, with the retirement in the coming days of long-serving postmistress Máire Breathnach, that community service is set to be lost.
Efforts have been made to secure a new contractor for the postal service and its ancillary facilities in An Rinn, but the numbers have not worked out so it seems inevitable that hundreds of local people will have to travel the 12km to Dungarvan to avail of such services.
"An Post will come on Tuesday, close at three o'clock and they'll remove everything from here," Ms Breathnach said.
She initially worked for the old Department of Post and Telegraphs in the telephone exchange in Co Cork before transferring to Dungarvan in the early 1970s.
She worked in the An Rinn post office from 1974 with her husband who was postmaster until his death in 1999 and she has run the operation since then, until her looming and well-deserved retirement.
"Sad about that, very, very sad about that," she said of the probable closure.
She said: "For a community service really it's not good enough.
"But, commercially, maybe it's not viable, I don't know. But personally, I'm sad about leaving, it's been my life for so long. It's not easy."
Local people feel "probably very sad" as well, she said.
"It's a big change for those. Particularly social welfare and pensioners, having to go into the baile mór to collect pensions, having been here for so long," she said.
"They probably started here when they became pension age and stayed coming," she added.
One local businessman who was interested in taking over the contract is Páidí Breathach, who runs the local Spar shop beside the playground in An Rinn, but he said the offer from An Post was not viable for him.
He said: "We're quite willing to take it... we have a purpose-built building for it and we are quite willing to take it on."
Mr Breathach said that on a few occasions he had met executives from An Post, adding "there's no budging there".
He said: "Basically, what they're offering me is €21,000 a year to actually do this. On top of that we must pay about €45,000 for the An Post fit-out, if you'd like to call it that.
"The cost of running a business like that is high, staff costs have gone through the roof... The breakdown of what they're offering me is about €8.50 an hour... We can't do it for that and unfortunately we're going to lose this service in the parish of An Rinn."
He pointed out that other local services have gone from An Rinn in recent years, such as the garda station and the GP surgery.
"What we see happening here is that if the services are going to go it's going to delete the Gaeltacht completely because now people must go into Dungarvan," he said.
"They were doing their business in Irish all along, through the meán na Gaeilge, now they're going to have to do that in English. It's going to delete the Gaeltacht areas completely," he added.
A spokesman for An Post said they will keep searching for a solution, but closure looks "inevitable" now.
They advertised the contract a number of times and canvassed the local area, with a view to keeping the post office open, "but to no avail".
He said that, like most post offices, An Rinn is run by a self-employed contractor and, in relation to the offer specified by Mr Breathnach, the contracts are based on payments per transaction and reflect the number of transactions carried out in an office.
"We will continue looking for a suitable contractor to take over the running of An Rinn post office, but we are facing the very real and regrettable prospect of closure," he said.
Independent TD Matt Shanahan said the development underlines the need for State investment in Gaeltacht areas, to keep them viable as places to work and live.
"It's almost a death knell," he said of the post office closure.
Mr Shanahan said: "The garda barracks shuttered recently, we've lost the community doctor and now the post office is closing down and really the proposal to try and open a new post office here is not working out money-wise.
"We need the State to step in here and try and support An Gaeltacht."
He added that there is "fabulous work being done in contae Port Láirge with the gaelscoileanna and the gaelcholáistí and they're doing so much but we need to hold the language in the Gaeltacht community here and community services are at the heart of that".
