Ireland's Post Office network needs €15-million euro per year for the next five years to secure essential community services.
A Grant Thornton report calculates the annual social and economic value of the network to communities across the country as being in the region of €776 million euro.
A report forecasts that the future of the post office is bleak without €15m-a-year funding for five years.
It said a previous report found about a third of the country’s more than 900 post offices were at risk of closure without further investment.
The Grant Thornton report, published today, comes as the current annual funding arrangement of €10m is due to expire at the end of the year.
Seán Martin, a postmaster in Tramore, Co Waterford is president of the IPU, said. “I think everyone is in danger of closing. If transactions keep declining, every post office is going to be under threat.”
He said post offices were sustained by transactions and these were declining, mainly due to digitalisation.
“It’s hard for a face-to-face service to compete with a digital machine because of the cost. That is effectively the driver away from the post office,” he said.
“Government policy is digital first. We have no problem with that, but it can’t only be digital first.
Mr Martin said the Government could secure the network with an investment of less than €3 per citizen per year, or “less than the price of a cup of coffee”.
He said this would enable post offices to increase banking services, public identity verification, support for government energy-efficiency schemes, and processing of public forms such as passport applications and voter registration.
