The 90-year-old Rathmines Post Office, one of the most prominent buildings in the south Dublin suburb, is to be sold by An Post along with two other Dublin post offices and a further three across the State.
An Post plans to sell the imposing 1934 art deco building, as well as the post offices in Phibsborough and Tallaght in Dublin, Roscommon Town, Tipperary Town and New Ross in Co Wexford, as part of the “transformation of the national post office network,” it said.
Expressions of interest will be sought by An Post in the coming days for contractors to run post office services in the six towns. A spokesman for An Post said there would be “no break in services” for communities in these locations and the buildings “will go on the market only when new the Postmaster is appointed and new location open”.
More than 95 per cent of the 900 post offices across the State are already contracted out to independent business owners, who often run post office services as part of a local shop. “Less than 40 post offices nationally are run directly by An Post,” the spokesman said.
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“Changing the business model of a post office, does not impact on the level or variety of services which are available to customers. Continuation of service is of key importance to An Post. All services available before the change remain available after the change,” he said.
However, concerns have been raised about the sale of prominent buildings, such as the Rathmines post office.
“The post office has operated from the same building in the centre of Rathmines for 90 years. An Post is shutting up shop without any consultation with the local community,” Fine Gael councillor James Geoghegan said.
“The community has been given no certainty as to where their new post office will be. It might be in a stand-alone building, or in a local shop, but Rathmines is a very long town, and there’s every possibility it could be a considerable distance from where it is now.”
Locals were also worried about what might happen to the historic building he said.
“An Post it going to sell this off to the highest bidder. Does selling a building like this even make sense now, at a time when commercial real estate prices are dropping?”
The plan to sell the Phibsborough post office “must be stopped”, Labour senator Marie Sherlock said. “There is no guarantee on the range of services that will be maintained or offered in future and no clarity as to where this will be located.
“We do not want any possible downgrading of our post office service, we do not want to see the building sold off, and we ask that Phibsborough Post Office remains as an An Post-operated post office.”
An Post said the post office staff can chose to be redeployed or seek work with the new postmaster. Seán McDonagh general secretary of the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) said: “The union would prefer if this wasn’t happening but the company position is that they need to do it and we have agreed it.”
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