As council gives Rathmines Post Office a second look, locals push to set up forum to fight for community spaces

The Rathmines post office was packed on Tuesday at midday.

About 20 locals were queuing up at the counters, some clutching parcels to be delivered, and almost all a little soggy from the light rain falling outside.

The place was still bustling, contrary to expectations that the branch was going to close and relocate over the autumn.

An Post was planning to leave the building in August or September, Labour leader Ivana Bacik, a local TD, had posted on her Instagram account in mid-June.

But that date has been pushed out, with a spokesperson for An Post saying on 30 September that the post office is scheduled to move to a new location within Rathmines in early 2026.

The future of the building where it’s currently located remains unclear, since An Post confirmed its plans to sell the property back in February 2024. While it is still intended to be put on the market, their spokesperson said, no price has been set so far.

Dublin City Council had looked into buying the building, An Post CEO David McRedmond told an Oireachtas joint committee in June. But they decided not to make an offer.

Council officials didn’t inform councillors of this, and so, in an effort to keep the prospect of acquiring the building on the table, elected representatives scheduled a meeting with the council on 20 October, said Labour Councillor Fiona Connelly on Friday. “We wanted a meeting to fight for keeping a public building open to the public.”

Out of that meeting, public representatives were told by council officials that they are willing to engage further with An Post’s management to explore options for the building, Labour leader Ivana Bacik said via email Tuesday.

The council has not responded to queries sent Friday asking if they had made any arrangements yet to meet with An Post.

It’s too iconic a building to be let go, said Connelly, the local Labour councillor. “People have so many attachments to it, and it would just be really sad if it was sold off on the private market, and turned into something like a Wetherspoons.”

Still on the cards

An Post is currently transferring six of its post offices, including Rathmines, to “contractor offices” in Centra shops, McRedmond, the CEO, told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Media Communications, Culture and Sport on 25 June.

This was a more financially viable move in the long term, he said. “Whenever we do it, after we have done it, it gets the highest scores in customer satisfaction, customers liking their post office and what it does for the community.”

An Post offered the Rathmines post office building to the Land Development Agency, he said. But the LDA didn’t want it.

Dublin City Council was initially interested in the property but rejected it, McRedmond said. “The council visited the post office, it went to its valuations office and it then decided it did not want it.”

Local councillors weren’t aware of the council’s refusal, according to a motion tabled by Labour councillors Dermot Lacey and Fiona Connelly at the South East Area Committee meeting on 14 July.

Was McRedmond’s statement correct, and if so, why did the council make this decision? their motion asked.

The council had visited the post office, and if it were to make an offer, it wouldn’t be able to use the upstairs rooms, said area manager John MacEvilly. “That was made very clear. We can’t use the sorting office for ten years.”

Telecommunications company Eir also has a lease on part of the first floor, Connelly said on Tuesday.

The only area that would be available until then would be the downstairs area, he said MacEvilly at the area committee meeting in July. “And we didn’t feel that was particularly suitable.”

MacEvilly apologised that councillors weren’t made aware of this visit, and said maybe a multi-agency approach could help in the future.

On 20 October, council officials met with elected representatives up in the Civic Offices on Wood Quay, Bacik wrote in an email the following day to the Rathmines Initiative, a community improvement group.

It wasn’t just local representatives from Labour in attendance, said Connelly on Friday. “We were conscious about keeping everybody on board. There were representatives from every party.”

The purpose of the meeting was to review the council’s position on the post office and seek an assurance that it would remain in public ownership, Bacik wrote in her email to Rathmines Initiative on 21 October.

Council officials told them they had already carried out a site visit and some preliminary valuations, Bacik said, “and are willing to engage further with An Post to explore options”.

They agreed that council officials would now proceed to arrange an engagement meeting with An Post’s management, she said.

Getting synched up

It’s important that the post office isn’t sold off, and that it is kept in civic use, said Connelly, the Labour councillor, on Friday. “There’s not enough public amenities in Rathmines for community spaces.”

One attempt to remedy that deficit is a civic forum for the suburb, and which has recently been proposed by the Rathmines Initiative.

There are a large number of publicly-owned properties in Rathmines, says Ciarán McGahon of the Rathmines Initiative. “But they are not owned by the people, as it were.”

The town hall is owned by the council, but it’s on a long-term lease to the City of Dublin Education and Training Board, says Mary Freehill, a retired Labour councillor and member of Rathmines Initiative. “It is in bad need of refurbishment.”

It is also home to a dormant auditorium, which councillors have been looking for the council to restore for several years.

In order to restore the concert hall before what will be its 130th anniversary next year, Freehill says, the City of Dublin FET College Rathmines, formerly the Rathmines College of Further Education, which operates in the town hall would need to move some classes out.

Their best option was the former TU Dublin Conservatory of Music and Drama across the street, which the Department of Education bought back in 2019, Freehill says.

But that has been leased by the Department to John Scottus National School, Freehill says, after it was previously a temporary address for Harcourt Terrace Educate Together National School.

If the FET College could have got in there, it would have allowed the conservation works to the concert hall, says Freehill. “And nothing was done, because the enabler for those works was the school building across the road.”

A Rathmines Civic Forum would bring together these different state bodies and help them better co-ordinate a strategy for finding the best uses for these buildings, says McGahon, of the Rathmines Initiative.

“The people responsible for these buildings would be brought together to discuss their potential for the public good,” he says.

The forum would need to be comprised of representatives from the council, elected councillors, the four local TDs, the Education and Training Board, the Department of Higher Education and An Post, as well as the local residential and business community, a statement by Rathmines Initiative, published on 23 October, reads.

It’s about getting these different bodies to acknowledge each other and their respective roles in improving public amenities in the area, McGahon says. “And to take on some co-ordinated thinking.”

The forum is non-statutory, Freehill says. “We couldn’t it expect it to have any power. But at least it allows people to know what the needs of the area are, and who are making the decisions.”

So far, the Rathmines Initiative has written to all of the relevant bodies about their plan for this forum, she says. And they’re planning a series of public meetings being planned to get locals involved in the discussion.