Further Attack On The Fabric Of Rural Ireland By The Fine Gael/Labour Party Government??

APRIL 15, 2014

Threat of Mass Closures in Post Office Network

by Peadar Breathnach

A recent report by Grant Thornton Chartered Accountants says that up to 557 post offices could close by 2017 if the government persists with cost cutting measures as part of the programme for government. An Post latest figures which was for 2012 calendar year indicate that the organisation’s losses were at a staggering €37,243,000. The state owned company’s turnover was €807,295,000 however operating costs were at €824,779,000 while other expenses were at €19,750,000 making it An Post’s worst year on record.

In a bid to tackle the losses, the government seem to be taking aim at local post offices as new policies being introduced could spell disaster for the An Post network. Mass closures seem a distinct possibility. The Grant Thornton Report, which looked in to the possible consequences of these new policies has postmasters and postmistresses up and down the country fearing for their jobs.

An Post won the latest tender in June 2013 to be the majority distributor of social welfare from the Department of Social Protection. This contract covers the next two years with the option for an additional four on the current deal. At the moment An Post deliver an estimated €9 billion in social welfare payments annually which is worth €60 million a year to the post office organisation.

The government appear to favour ‘electronic funds transfer’ (EFT) which would mean social welfare would be paid directly in to people’s bank accounts instead of the traditional  ‘over the counter’(OTC) method. As it stands An Post are paying out 48% of the total social welfare payments. However, under the current programme for government, the Fine Gael/Labour government want to reduce this to 22%. If the government carry out this plan, it would inevitably lead to the closure of several post offices around the country.

The Grant Thornton report estimates that if the government are successful in this plan to leave only 22% of payments to An Post that 444 post offices would close which amounts to 39% of the total post office network. However if An Post lose the Social Welfare contract altogether, 557 post offices would close which is 48% of all post offices.

 The EFT payments as it stands would be paid through the banks instead of An Post and as of yet post offices do not have the facilities to administer payments through EFT. However, the government would have to pay An Post to administer EFT payments whereas they do not have to pay the banks.

Seán Martin, treasurer of the Irish Postmasters Union (IPU) feels that if the government was to push ahead with using the EFT payment method, they must allow An Post to be the ones to administer it, or else the Department of Social Protection would be reneging on the tender won by An Post in June 2013. However as of yet the government have made no move yet to give An Post the facilities to administer EFT payments and the IPU remain very concerned.

He said, “We may have won the contract in theory but the business is being diverted away on a daily basis. We cannot survive if this continues.”

Martin also was quick to point out the advantages of allowing An Post to administer EFT payments. “If An Post is allowed to administer the payments, it will act as a deterrent to potential fraud as the account holder would have to become known to their local post office in order to receive payment, whereas they would be able to receive payment in any bank. The An Post workers would be in a better position to act as a deterrent to fraud as opposed to bank staff.”

He also alluded to another advantage, “when someone doesn’t collect social welfare from their post office, the money is returned to the social welfare office. However with the banks, this is not the case.”

However it is not just the government’s policies regarding social welfare that has the IPU worried. Pilot schemes are being launched which would see supermarkets be able to carry out many of the duties which post offices currently undertake, such as paying bills. As it stands the government have piloted the scheme in four Tesco outlets. However there are plans in place to introduce the scheme in a further ten Supervalu outlets.

 There has been no contact between government and postmasters regarding the scheme and postmasters fear that if the scheme is rolled out nationwide that post offices will close. They fear that customers will use supermarkets to conduct business, as they will have longer opening hours. Another worry for the IPU is that staff in supermarkets will be untrained and not bound by the ‘Official Secrets’ legislation as An Post workers are.

Martin suggests that postmasters should be working in conjunction with supermarkets and it should be the postmasters running the outlets through the supermarkets, thus ensuring that jobs remain safe while also maintaining staff fully trained to undertake post office duties.

Martin continued, “The government need to monitor and cap the amounts of supermarkets used in the scheme in order to safeguard jobs.”

The IPU was also keen to point out the social impact if post offices closed. They say it will cause social isolation within elderly people as they would be electronically receiving payments instead of visiting their local post office.

The IPU already have held a protest outside the Dáil, where there were representations from nearly all of the 1,150 post offices in the country. The IPU has not ruled out further protests. They are calling on Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources Pat Rabitte "Labour Party" whose department is responsible for the running of An Post, to clarify the future plans with Tesco and SuperValu and to maintain negotiations with the IPU. They are also calling on Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton "Labour Party" to ensure that her department honour the latest social welfare with An Post.

Both ministers offices have refused to comment on the potential closures but undoubtedly plans are in place which if carried out will result in post office closures.

Máire Breathnach who is the postmistress of the An Rinn post office in Co. Waterford is also anxious about her job in the future. “The post office in An Rinn dates back in my family over a hundred years. My husband’s grandparents ran it before passing it on to his parents. He then took over the running of the post office in 1974. Following my husband’s sudden passing in 1999 I have ran the post office since. If the government continue with their cost saving plan and we are forced to close, over a century of tradition will come to an end in An Rinn.”

Martin concluded, “Post Offices employ over 3,000 people, people’s livelihoods are at stake. They have to keep the post office network alive.”

"There is a petition available to sign on the counter of Mountmellick Post Office. Seeking to keep it and other Rural Post Offices open."

Sinn Féin Mountmellick – Serving The Community

Post Local And European Elections (Press Analysis)

Mary Lou McDonald has been SF’s star TD. Photo Tom Burke

COLETTE BROWNE – PUBLISHED 26 MAY 2014 02:30 AM

If the Government hopes to stem the Sinn Fein surge before the next general election it will have to do more than make snide jibes about Gerry Adams' alleged IRA membership in the Dail.

In an attempt to shift blame for the massive collapse in their support in the weekend's elections, Fine Gael and Labour representatives donned their 'mystic meg' hats, gazed into the minds of the electorate, and took to the national airways to describe the drubbing they received as a protest vote.

Voters, according to this analysis, are ingrates. Fine Gael and Labour saved the country from catastrophe but instead of falling to their knees and venerating their saviours, voters have instead, inexplicably, opted to deliver them a paralysing kick to the groin.

The inference of this self-serving version of events is that voters are too stupid to know how good they've had it. Fine Gael and Labour saved the day but now face obliteration from the fickle oiks who elected them just three years ago.

The Government would be wise to abandon this patronising narrative, accept that they have let people down and determine to take the threat from Sinn Fein more seriously or else face annihilation in 2016.

Up to now, ministers have shown a staggering condescension towards Sinn Fein, despite its rapid rise in the opinion polls, which presaged its performance at the weekend.

They didn't take the threat seriously and now they have been left counting the cost.

Enda Kenny, in particular, has preferred to make cheap asides about the IRA in the Dail whenever he faces a difficult question from the party. While he may be obsessed with the IRA, the rest of the country has moved on.

According to an RTE exit poll at the weekend, when casting their first-preference votes just 2pc of voters were influenced by party leaders. Much more important to voters were the Sinn Fein brand and its anti-austerity policies.

And, while 34pc of voters think Adams should be replaced, even more think both Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore should go – so, really, they're in no position to judge.

Even the arrest of Adams for questioning in connection with the notorious Jean McConville murder a couple of weeks before the election didn't stem the tide of new support.

Just 23pc of voters said they were influenced by the arrest but, significantly, Sinn Fein supporters were most influenced, with 38pc of them saying that their anger at his treatment encouraged them to go out and vote.

So, the message is clear. Voters are well aware of Adams' background but they either don't care or don't see it as relevant in domestic politics. It's time that the rest of the political establishment accepted that.

While Kenny and his frontbench chums have been busy carping on about the IRA, high-profile members of Sinn Fein have spent their time much more effectively, eviscerating the Government at every opportunity.

Young and articulate TDs like Pearse Doherty and Padraig Mac Lochlainn have been more than capable in their briefs, but the star performer, without doubt, has been Mary Lou McDonald.

Arguably the best performer during leaders' questions, McDonald doesn't take any guff from the government benches when attempting to hold the administration to account.

She has also not been afraid to call out puerile, sexist comments that seek to demean her as some haranguing busybody instead of a public representative diligently doing her job.

One of the most high-profile members of the Public Accounts Committee, it was she who first recognised that former Garda Commissioner Martin Callinan's use of the word "disgusting" to describe the whistleblowers was a watershed moment.

After he made the remark, she gave him a number of opportunities to withdraw it but he stubbornly refused, ultimately sealing his fate.

McDonald has helped change the image of Sinn Fein from that of a fringe mono-issue party, exclusively focused on the national question, to that of a rapidly-growing party of the left.

Establishment parties have derided Sinn Fein as offering nothing but fantasy economics and half-baked policies but an increasing number of people think differently. They see the party as offering an alternative to the seven-year diet of austerity that they have endured.

The challenge for Fine Gael and Labour will now be accepting that Sinn Fein poses a credible threat and deigning to debate the merits of their policies instead of the past of their leader.

Irish Independent

Sinn Féin Mountmellick – Serving The Community

Spoken As A True Republican.

Martin Ferris TD highlights cost of withdrawing medical cards

14th May

Speaking in the Dáil tonight on Sinn Féin’s motion to stop cuts in discretionary medical cards, the party’s TD for Kerry North West Limerick, Martin Ferris TD said:

“What is the definition around the Fine Gael and Labour cabinet table of a hard case? Would it be, for example, a couple in my own constituency?  

“She has asthma. He has a heart condition and high blood pressure. They had their cards taken away and during every one of the months it took to get them back, they had to make hard decisions.

“What decision was that? It was which of them would get their medication and which of them would hope for the best, as they could not afford to fill the prescriptions for both of them.

“They came to the decision that her inhalers were the most important. He ended up in hospital with a stroke, as he had gone without his blood thinning medication for so long.

“Would that be a hard case, minister? Would that be a case that is causing concern? Leaving aside human compassion and decency, it is saving no one any money that instead of giving the man his medication, the health service now has the greater cost and use of resources of treating him in hospital for a stroke.”

ENDS

Text of speech by Martin Ferris TD on private members’ business on discretionary medical cards – check against delivery

It seems that nowadays I am standing up here more often and talking, even pleading, with ministers about the distress I am seeing in my constituency and in the people who approach me for help.

There is a single, clear message coming from this government: if you are in trouble, you are on your own.

If your mother needs care, if your child has special needs, if you have lost your job, if you have an accident, if your child gets into trouble, whatever it is, don’t come looking for support or help from this government.

No. If you have a problem you can pay to resolve it, or go away, even if that problem is a long-term, terminal, painful or immobilising medical condition or disease.

If you have no money to pay - then tough, this government is about balancing books, the bible according to the Troika, and after that - not humanity, not solidarity, not compassion, not ordinary human decency comes into it.

The minister, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste have stood here in this house and told us, again and again, that there was no change in criteria for the issuing (or more commonly the withdrawal) of discretionary medical cards, even though we know that in 2009 the rate of discretionary medical cards was 1 in 18, but last year it had dropped to 1 in 33.

The minister knows this too and it is shame upon shame on him. As the election campaign progressed over the past few weeks and Fine Gael and Labour canvassers had the temerity to knock on people’s doors, they were told again and again of the suffering the withdrawal of medical cards was causing.

They got windy then and James Reilly got roasted at a Fine Gael parliamentary party meeting. That’s when we began to hear about a third tier and the amazing discovery by the Minister that what he called “some hard cases” which were causing “concern” and then referred to “administrative” problems.

I’d love to know what he calls a “hard case”. What is the definition around the Fine Gael and Labour cabinet table of a hard case? Would it be, for example, like a couple in my own constituency.  She has asthma. He has a heart condition and high blood pressure. They had their cards taken away and during every one of the months it took to get them back, they had to make hard decisions.

What decision was that? It was which of them would get their medication and which of them would hope for the best, as they could not afford to fill the prescriptions for both of them.

They came to the decision that her inhalers were the most important. He ended up in hospital with a stroke as he had gone without his blood thinning medication for so long.

Would that be a hard case, minister? Would that be a case that is causing concern? Leaving aside human compassion and decency, it is saving no one any money that instead of giving the man his medication, the health service now has the greater cost and use of resources of treating him in hospital for a stroke.

There is not a TD in this house or a canvasser going from door to door that has not heard about the suffering, hardship and stress that this is causing.

In the circumstances, I see how James Reilly was quoted in the Irish Examiner as saying “My main concern is two-fold — number one, that people get the care they need but number two, to protect the taxpayer.”

To protect the taxpayer against what Minister?

Do you really expect us to believe that people are feigning illness to get a medical card, in order to pull off some sort of a scam?

In your anxiety to root out some kind of imaginary scam on behalf of the taxpayer, you have ignored the advice of those in the front line of the health service: the family doctor, the local GP, the men and women who are calling again and again for the resources to run a proper primary care service.

Best practise internationally, expert reports and recommendations and simple cop on, indicates that a properly funded and resourced primary care service is the least expensive and most efficient way to keep your population healthy. It is the way to go to stop people getting seriously ill and the most effective vehicle for health promotion.

It is the cheapest way by far, in money and in resources to achieve a healthy population. GPs are banging their heads against that particular wall for years, begging to be properly supported to provide that service and still, Minister Reilly goes on about protecting the taxpayer from people getting medical cards, while ignoring those pleas.

The essence of this motion is respect, compassion, consultation and transparency. I urge all members to support it.  

Sinn Féin Mountmellick – Serving The Community