I thank the House for giving me the opportunity to raise this issue. The Minister for Social Welfare may feel that some of the issues which arise in this debate are distant from him, but he will appreciate that since the passage of the Postal and Telecommunications Services Act this House has no direct control over the manner in which the postal service is organised, where services are provided and under what circumstances they may be terminated or changed. However, this House does have an obvious interest in ensuring that social welfare business which, to a large extent, is operated through the post office system, is transacted in a manner which is just to elderly people.
The circumstances under which I sought this Adjournment debate are as follows. For 80 years there has been a post office at Clanbrassil Street in the city of Dublin. It has recently come to the attention of public representatives, the community at large and the local community council of St. Kevin's Parish that An Post proposed to terminate this service. They were availing of the opportunity afforded by the fact that the sub-postmistress proposed to retire. That casual fact was to be seized on as the pretext for closing down this post office.
I want to make it clear that I do not believe the whole postal service has to be preserved in aspic. I am not suggesting that every subpost office must be preserved, nor am I suggesting that because this post office happens to be located on the border between my constituency and that of Deputy O'Brien that it assumes some special importance. However, it is important that the Minister should know that Deputy O'Brien, Deputy Brady, Deputy Mitchell and I, as well as other public representatives and a huge cross section of the local community, were present at a meeting in Synge Street Christian Brothers School the other day. The meeting was packed to the rafters with ordinary people from the area who were inconvenienced or put out by the loss of a local post office. There were many elderly people at that meeting for whom this change would mean a great injustice.
An Post had indicated there were five subpost offices within a mile, but for an elderly lady — and there were some there who were partly immobile — such distances are a problem. More than 100 traders had also protested that they lose a local facility which is important for trade and for bringing people into the locality. Of course, they do not concern the Minister for Social Welfare. However, pensioners and people who get allowances from the Department of Social Welfare through such a post office would be very adversely affected if they had to travel a mile on foot — most of these people do not have cars or any other facility to travel long distances to cash their pension certificates.
The Minister is one of the chief customers of An Post. He uses An Post to deliver the service to old age pensioners. He has a very legitimate and real concern where subpost offices are to be closed that this service is maintained. When An Post propose to close a post office, especially in an urban area, it is important for them to consult the Department to see whether the Minister, who has a duty to the public, is in a position to see whether it is a reasonable closure. In this case it does not seem to be a reasonable closure. What is much worse is that nobody from An Post came to explain the matter to the community, nobody was present at the meeting and we have since heard that Deputy Mooney circulated a notice in the area saying that as a result of the intervention by the Minister for Communications, Deputy Burke, a decision had been made to postpone indefinitely the closure of this sub-post office. I have doubts as to whether the Minister has the power to intervene in relation to individual sub-post offices — perhaps it is substantially true — but the fact remains that, for many people, a very important local facility is under threat and access to the Department of Social Welfare is substantially worsened and made more difficult by decisions of this kind.
An entire community was united on this issue even though it is under very serious stress. The inner city areas of Dublin contain many elderly people, there is a high degree of crime and to travel a mile with your pension and perhaps your Christmas bonus in your handbag or wallet at the age of 75 or 80 is a hazardous enterprise, especially when these post offices are watched and beset by young people on occasions bent on robbery and mugging of those people. The south and north inner city areas are in crisis and withdrawal of services of this kind, making it more difficult to get social welfare entitlements, are the very things that lead to creating a concrete desert and abandonment of those areas.
I appeal to the Minister to use his undoubted political and correct clout with An Post to say "no" to closures of this kind. The system of social welfare in which the Minister is involved in supervising and which delivers redistribution to the deprived and weaker sections in the community should not be the subject of arbitrary decisions based on the fact that a person will or will not retire.
I appeal to the Minister to assure the House that he will get in touch with An Post and put as much pressure as he can on them to ensure that these services continue to be available to the elderly in circumstances where it is not a huge hardship on them to get their entitlements, that is, reasonable access to the minimal pension the State can afford.