Lives would literally be "put at risk" if An Post's plan to end home deliveries went ahead, the president of the Irish Association of Suicidology has warned. "There has been a significant increase in the number of suicides among the young elderly, [those] aged between 65 and 75 years," said Mr Dan Neville, who is also Fine Gael TD for Limerick West.
Mr Neville said he believed that the changes in rural culture in recent decades had played a significant part in such tragedies. "An Post is now proposing to compound the situation," he added.
Rural Ireland had changed dramatically, Mr Neville said. For many, it had become a very lonely place. "The social interaction of previous times has almost ceased. Many people living on their own have very little social contact and their only outlet is the television set."
Mr Neville continued: "Before the advent of the letter-box, he [the postman] knocked at every door and interacted with the people . . . Rural people in isolated areas saw the postman as the only contact outside of Sunday church and weekly shopping. He often alerted the doctor if a person was living alone and ill."
Mr Neville maintained that this lack of social intercourse for prolonged periods, particularly among the elderly, put lives at risk in a growing number of cases.
However, Mr John Kane, the general secretary of the Irish Postmasters' Union, expressed concern that An Post's proposals for reform might "degenerate into a political football", which could result in the efficiency of the mail service being sacrificed on the altar of expediency.
While the IPU as a union would welcome the retention of the maximum number of post offices, "with the latest technology", the reality was that the service had to be paid for.
It was understandable that people should be "alarmed" at suggestions that the existing postal service would be reduced, Mr Kane said. However, to argue that An Post had a wider remit than the delivery of mail and that it had to "embrace a social security dimension for elderly or isolated citizens" raised the question of who should pay for the wider service.