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Brian Finucane via Twitter
# Post Office
Postmasters distance themselves from campaign to 'Name and Shame' TDs
However, the local elections candidate says he will continue with the campaign, and hopes that it will spread nationwide.
POSTMASTERS HAVE MOVED to make it clear that ‘Name and Shame’ posters that appeared in several post offices in Kerry were the work of an individual local election candidate.
People Before Profit candidate Brian Finucane put up the posters with the support of local post offices, and told TheJournal.ie this evening that he hopes the campaign spreads nationwide.
The posters list local TDS who voted against a Dáil motion tabled by Independent TD Seamus Healy aimed at protecting the local post office networks.
ePayments
Finucane said his campaign is aimed at protecting the future of the post office network, highlight the effect that introducing ePayments systems could have on communities.
“It is going to affect every community,” he said, saying that it will led to people heading into local towns rather than small villages.
Finucane described the government as taking a “kicking the can down the road” attitude to the issue.
“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail,” he said.
“While we do have a high level of public concern about Post Offices,” Irish Postmasters Union General Secretary Brian McCann said this evening, “The IPU believes this type of action, which is personalised towards individual TDs, is unhelpful and we do not support it.”
“Tangible commitment”
He noted that the IPU will be meeting with Minister Pat Rabbittee next week on the issue, and said the union sees it as an “opportunity to give tangible commitment with clear actions, timelines and expected outcomes”.
Finucane received support from People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd-Barrett on Twitter this afternoon.
Minster Rabbitte has said in recent weeks that post offices need to “innovate” in order to ensure their viability.
He called for “innovative new ideas, new products and services, that will enable, consist with law, that the post office network may be used as front of office for the provision of government services.”
