THE post office in Crosshaven is to close on Friday May 30th next and customers have been advised to transfer their business 8km away to the office in the SuperValu supermarket in Carrigaline.
A spokesperson for An Post said the postmistress, Tara Murphy, who took over the role in December 2023, announced in March that she was stepping down.
The spokesperson said that An Post advertised Crosshaven a number of times but couldn’t find anyone to take up the contract.
‘We regret that we were unable to find someone to run the post office in Crosshaven. We worked really hard to try and come up with an alternative but were unable to do so,’ said the spokesperson.
Independent Ireland leader Michael Collins told The Southern Star that the Crosshaven post office is serving a population of 4,228 people and needs to be retained. He said its closure, and the closure of other rural post officers, would be ‘the result of a systematic and decade-long neglect of vital rural services by the Government.’
The TD said postmasters are finding that the service is no longer financially viable, and he added: ‘They will all die if they are not given assistance.’
He accused the government of spouting rhetoric but doing nothing practical to support what is essentially a vital service, especially in rural communities.
Deputy Collins said there is an unwillingness to make the tendering offers for new post office contractors financially viable or attractive.
‘What are people expected to do now to collect their pensions or social protections payments?’ he asked, before calling upon An Post to revise the tender contract for Crosshaven in a last-ditch attempt to save it from closure.
