Councillor Micheál Choilm Mac Giolla Easbuig has called on the residents of Gaoth Dobhair to come out and protest against the threatened closure of two more local post offices.
At the end of October, the post office in Gort a’ Choirce closed its doors for the last time.
On Tuesday, An Post announced that the post office in Dunfanaghy would be closing and yesterday, it was revealed that Burtonport post office would also be closing in January.
That leaves just two from the five post offices which faced closure without a decision.
Councillor Mac Giolla Easbuig is not hopeful about the future of Bun Beag and Bun na Leaca post offices.
“An Post changed the guidelines for viability of post offices and they are adhering rigidly to these new rules which they made up for themselves,” he said.
“This means that people who have been faithfully providing a much needed service to their community will now be left without a job and the community will be left without a service.”
He went on to state that it wasn’t today or yesterday that the Gaeltacht community in Donegal has been neglected.
“Since the foundation of the state, successive governments, both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, have deprived the whole of Donegal of vital infrastructure that other parts of the country take for granted. We have no rail links, no motorways, no natural gas network and no high-powered electric network. Our cancer patients have to travel to Galway or Dublin for chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment.
Now they are closing down our post offices one at a time. We are being cut to ribbons as a community. Report after report have shown the governments that we have some of the worst figures for unemployment, poverty and emigration in the state and yet the cutting continues.”
Mac Giolla Easbuig said it was time the community stopped putting their faith in establishment politicians, who had betrayed the county for nearly one hundred years, and should start building meaningful resisitance to the austerity policies that make the rich richer and marginalise small Gaeltacht communities even further.
He also said that the closure of post offices was just another symptom of the disease that was killing the Gaeltacht community in North West Donegal.
“Údarás na Gaeltachta have failed to provide decent jobs in this area,” he said.
“We have some low-paid jobs in the Industrial estate, but the nature of these jobs was exposed recently when workers at the RAP factory had to take strike action to gain Union recognition. Údarás has also failed to respond to the closure of five hotels in the area in recent years, even though the Tourist Board has been advertising the Wild Atlantic Way successfully.”
Mac Giolla Easbuig added that a stand needed to be taken some time against this litany of measures that were killing the community and he advised local residents to make the post office issue the start of a meaningful fight back against the political and economic decisions that were strangling the community.
Tags:
