The government has announced that it will stop sending letters to welfare recipients in which they were inviting them to transfer their payments from post offices to banks.
In recent weeks, post offices, in particular, rural ones, expressed their concern that the government was encouraging welfare recipients to move away from using post offices by transferring their welfare payments through Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT).
However, the Minister of State at the Department of Social Protection Kevin Humphreys announced yesterday that these letters will no longer be sent by the department.
The move has been welcomed by the Irish Postmasters’ Union.
Postmasters have also welcomed another development announced by the minister yesterday that bodes well for the future of post offices.
This is the minister’s confirmation that An Post has tendered for the development of a new post office-based transaction account.
The IPU claims that essentially, this would introduce a post office-based banking service that would enable post offices themselves to provide electronic transfer services and would also ‘support financial inclusion’.
