Close a post office in a small village, and the likelihood is that you will kill off that village. That is the message from rural communities in the south-west who fear that the threat to remote post offices could affect the very heart of non-urban Ireland.
Father Pat Griffin, parish priest of Waterville and chairman of Conserve Our Rural Post Offices, said yesterday that the situation was potentially very serious.
"I am hopeful about the outcome, but there is a threat to post offices in small rural areas if An Post loses the contract to provide social welfare services," he said. "Supposing the banks took it up - there would be fees, there would be great inconvenience, especially for an ageing population, many of them without transport. They would then have to go to the bank to get their pensions and they would have to find transport to the nearest big town.
"Think about the effect this would have on the smaller villages. If you have to go to a big town to get your cheque or pension, then that's where you're going to do your shopping. That's where you will have your pint and your chat. The local shops and the local pubs would suffer. In effect, you could be looking at the impoverishment of the villages.
"The post office is the place visited probably only once a week by local people who use it as a social occasion. It would be a great mistake to close them down. This is a social, not a financial, matter and I hope that those in power will accept this fact. Everything else is gone from the villages.
"We have lost the Garda stations and the small banks. We must not let the post offices be closed, too."
Mr Anthony O'Sullivan was one of the agitators who fought to keep open the post office in the village of Kilmurry (population 200), about seven miles from Macroom. But it closed in 1991, the day after the postmistress, Mary Murphy, died.
"Ms Murphy died, and the following day they boarded it up. Now people have to make their way to Lissarda, about a mile-and-a-half away, to get their post and their cheques.
"The village has suffered as a result. There isn't much building activity going on because young people will not move into an area without a post office. The post office is the heartbeat of a rural village. We fought the closure to the very end, but ultimately that was it, and we got no satisfaction. That was how it turned out.
"Now the old people are finding it difficult to make alternative arrangements because many of them do not have motor cars," he said.
Mr Neilie Lehane, the press officer for Conserve Our Rural Post Offices, said the organisation was set up in 1994, aimed at preventing the closure of the Kiskeam post office in north-west Cork, about three miles from the Cork-Kerry border.
Not only was the local campaign successful, but the organisation ensured that the post office under threat was computerised. Local communities from all over the State telephoned Mr Lehane and his colleagues to ask how they had succeeded.
The Independent Fianna Fail TD, Mr Jackie Healy-Rae, made it a condition of his support for Fianna Fail that rural post offices would be retained. This proved to be a very useful weapon in the fight against post office closures, Mr Lehane said.
"If you close a local post office, you decimate the village and the hinterland which revolves around it. The post offices are a meeting place. That's where you go to get your news and gossip, your pension and official forms. There's no two ways about that.
"Kill the post offices and the villages will die, too. The post office is the only service available in most villages. They are a wonderful asset but are being treated like a liability."
One stark example of how a post-office closure can affect a village came from Ms Mary Arnold in Bartlemy, a community of 200 people not far from Fermoy. Its post office closed in 1991 and, hot on its heels, the local shop closed. People must now go to the next village, Rathcormac.