Post Office Closures: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-04
============================================================

Conor D. McGuinness (SF), Waterford

What planet are the Ministers on? Is that really the best they can come up with? The devastating impact of post office closures on all communities, rural and urban, is leaving residents without access to essential financial, social and State services. These are important social services that should be provided elsewhere but are only available in the post office and from that network. What we are saying on this side of the House aligns with the long-standing warnings not just from Sinn Féin, but from the Irish Postmasters' Union and many other people about the systemic failure of successive Governments over decades to address the decline of our office network. Some 257 post offices have closed over the past ten years. That is one per fortnight for the past decade that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been in power based on figures my colleague Deputy Cullinane received last year. That is eight in my own County Waterford. The Minister of State might be interested to know that is 15 in the past ten years in County Kerry - 14 rural and one urban.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-04