Locals campaign to save Phibsborough post office
Phibsborough post office is at risk of closure after An Post announced that three of its Dublin offices would be contracted out to a new location.
Offices in Rathmines, Tallaght, and Phibsborough are among the Post Offices at risk of being sold.
This is part of An Post’s “transformation of the national post office network.”
Labour party Senator Marie Sherlock said, “An Post’s current proposals reflect a major lack of imagination with regard to its buildings.”
“The sorting office at the back of the post office has been closed for many years and is now used to house IT equipment,” she added.
She says, “There is no reason why An Post could not look to maximize the use of the building and lease space out to local buildings as opposed to selling it off.”
An Post’s announcement was not well-received by the Phibsborough community due to the negative impact that this closure could have on them.
On February 22, a Labour-party-led public meeting was hosted by Sherlock together with Councillor Declan Meenagh and area representative Angela Boyle Shafer, in Phibsborough’s Panama Scout Hall to discuss efforts to save the post office.
The public meeting was attended by 40 Phibsborough and Cabra locals, including business owners, the elderly, and employees of the Post Office.
During the meeting, some attendees raised some concerns one of which was that, with the post office out of commission the services that people rely on, on a daily or an annual basis, will be impacted.
A local took to the floor and said, “The parcel collection, I think it’s a game changer… It’s completely bananas to drive up to Bannow Road in Cabra just to collect your parcel…we shouldn’t have to move outside of our community when we already have the basic services that help with our needs.”
Deliveries would be affected, with parcels going to O’Connell Street or Parnell Street, which requires further travel for the locals in Phibsborough and Cabra.
“The Post Office makes everything really fluid, I’m in there three or four times a week… It makes my business run smoothly, I’ve used the business advantage stickers and scanned them at the kiosk and I finish in a few minutes, and the workers are lovely and supportive and I can pick up my kids on the way home. It just makes my little business work.”
– E-commerce business owner and mother living in Phibsborough
Another point raised during the meeting was that the Phibsborough Post Office is a major source of footfall for the community.
“We need that footfall for a community to thrive, so if we take this away we are taking away that footfall as well,” former Councillor Joe Costello said.
In 2017, An Post planned to outsource the services of the Phibsborough Post Office. however, this plan did not go through due to the petition of the local community.
That year, former Cllr Joe Costello started a campaign against the plan to outsource the Phibsborough Post Office, and by the end of the campaign, the local community gathered 1300 signatures.
Phibsboro Post Office caters to more than 15,000 people in East Cabra and Phibsborough.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, Labour TD and former councilor for Phibsborough said at the meeting that, “There is a kind of feeling of drift around Dublin…a drift of losing of art spaces and now losing post offices.”
“Those things that we always felt, were going to be there are being taken away from beneath us, so what I can do to help this campaign since I am a TD, I can ask parliamentary questions to whoever minister to bring up the situation … the Post office in Phibsborough has a community that needs the facility.”
The petition to save Phibsborough post office is ongoing.
People can sign through an online form created by Sen. Marie Sherlock and her team.
Sherlock told the Liberty, “The main plan for An Post Phibsborough is to get more signatures, spread public awareness, and to pass on the message, that the people of Phibsborough doesn’t want this.”
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