Blanch man one of eight on Community and Post Office ticket

A Blanchardstown postmaster and community activist is to contest the upcoming general election.

Geoff Boyle has declared he will run as the Community and Post Office candidate in the Dublin West constituency.

At press time, plans to launch Boyle’s election campaign were being finalised.

He is the third of eight candidates across the country seeking to get elected on the platform of better services for communities, including Cabra postmaster Andrew Kelly and Galway postmistress Seona O’Fegan.

Through his work as a postmaster, Boyle says he hears “the concerns of different people every day. What I hear very strongly is a need for greater supports for communities. Places where people can access the essential services they need and where local economies and jobs are sustained.”

He adds that while cuts to the post office network are “often perceived as a rural issue, I see from my work that people in Dublin West are also deeply concerned about the future of the communities that they live in. Protecting the post office network is about citizens ­rural and urban ­having access to essential State and commercial services.

“The future of post offices is a political choice. It is Government, not postmasters, who decide which services post offices provide and which services people can access.”

Boyle, who has been Blanchardstown village’s local postmaster for 12 years, adds: “As a candidate I am not just about the post office. If elected, I will work for stronger policy, and more investment, in each of the areas that make communities vibrant ­ particularly local business, jobs and transport.”

Boyle says the Community and Post Office Candidates group is not a new political party but a movement of independent candidates, all of whom are practicing postmasters or postmistresses and who share a common platform, non-aligned with any other political group.

“Current Government policy is forcing Post Office customers to the commercial banks and will lead to major network closures,” he says of what prompted the movement. “We know that when a post office closes, it is followed by further local business closures and the heart is torn out of the community.

“Repeated Governments have failed to place enough value on the real experience of where we live and how we live. I am running in the next general election to enable me to become a voice for community.”