An early 1900s brown Milner’s safe sat securely on the back of a crane lorry parked outside the Rathmines post office on Friday afternoon.
It was held in place by a long canvas strap and as the sun beamed down on the Upper Rathmines Road, its round brass plaque, which said it was fire-resistant, seemed almost golden.
As lunchtime neared, an office worker wheeled a silvery blue deposit box out onto the footpath by the lorry with its safe door open.
Two men strolled by, with one pausing to take a picture of the Milner's safe.
“You love stuff like this,” his friend said.
Somebody had left a large knock-off Barbie adventure trailer in the windowsill of the post office.
In another, a member of staff had attached a slip of paper, informing passers-by that their Rathmines branch would be closing at 1pm that day.
But An Post would re-open on Monday at 11am, 100 metres down the road in the Centra, their new permanent home, the notice said.
It was 12.55pm.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in the dimly lit service area. There wasn’t a queue. Yvonne Dunleavy, in a dark blue Hawaiian shirt, had gone in to pay an electricity bill.
Her partner Mary Dunleavy walked up the road a few minutes later just as a member of staff approached the doorway.
The staff member explained to her that they were finishing early for the day to accommodate the move.
That was disappointing, she said. “It’s iconic.”
Yvonne Dunleavy stepped out onto the street. There was the dull thunk of the wooden doors closing, and slowly a crowd of confused locals started to gather as they processed that the art deco post office had officially closed.
Even if they aren’t losing the post office's services, the scaling down of services is going to impact the area, Yvonne Dunleavy said. “Its going to be such a loss. There’s an awful lot of old people around here that rely on this place with their pension and everything.”
Since An Post announced their intention to sell the 1930s post office more than two years ago, locals have been eager to keep the building in public use.
The postal service has been engaging with possible uses for the property, a spokesperson for An Post said. But they still intend to put the building up for sale next year.
Right now, the council is considering some interim uses between its closure and An Post putting it up on the market, South East Area manager John McEvilly told the South East Area Committee on July 13. “They are essentially in agreement with giving us a licence.”
An Post announced in February 2024 that they were going to sell off six of its branches, including the Rathmines post office.
The post offices impacted by these sales would be transferred to “contractor offices” in Centra shops, An Post CEO David McRedmond told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Arts, Media Communications, Culture and Sport on 25 June.
It was the most financially viable move for An Post in the long-term, McRedmond 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.”
Yvonne Dunleavy knew the post office was closing, she said while standing outside. “But I didn’t know when.”
But, she noticed it as she was walking in, she said. “I could see all this pandemonium. That’s why they were doing up the Centra.”
Just down the street, the Centra was filled with construction workers and a few people in An Post lanyards.
There was a large sign inside the window. They were under new ownership, getting a new look and the post office too, it said. “Please bear with us during our renovations. Apologies for the inconvenience.”
It’s a post office the Dunleavys knew their whole life, with Mary coming from Rathmines originally and Yvonne growing up in Rathgar, Mary said. “It’s absolutely awful, because this post office is so big.”
Within 10 minutes of the doors closing, there were 12 people outside voicing their frustration. Two women were there to collect their pensions. One man had arrived to collect his social welfare.
A pair of sisters approached the sorting office gate where a van was parked to inquire about picking up a package from the clothing marketplace Vinted.
Yvonne Dunleavy was peering through one of the tinted windows.
Yvonne was just told she was the last person they served and one of the staff hugged her, Mary Dunleavy said. “She said they’re in there crying.”
Mary Dunleavy said, on Friday afternoon, they cannot say that the art deco building wasn’t viable. “It’s so well used. And it’s not just used by old people.”
The worry now is who An Post will sell the property to next, she said. “This is a public building that was paid for by public money. It’s well used. It’s needed, and now we’re going to be at the back of a Centra?”
Local councillors have previously proposed that the art deco building be re-zoned as a civic amenity.
Residents of Rathmines have also suggested that it be used as a replacement for the former Citizens Information offices which vacated its premises nearby on the Wynnefield Road in 2022.
An Post offered the building to the Land Development Agency, but they didn’t want it, McRedmond said at the committee in June.
Dublin City Council also rejected it, he said.
South East Area Manager John McEvilly explained to local councillors at their area committee meeting in July 2025 that they would only be able to use the downstairs area of the two-storey building.
“We can’t use the sorting office for 10 years,” he said.
Telecommunications company Eir currently has a lease on part of the building's first floor.
A spokesperson for An Post said on Monday that they continue to engage with Dublin City Council on a best possible use for the building “which An Post intends to place on the market for sale”.
On the Monday before its relocation, Labour Councillor Fiona Connelly sought an update on the future of the old post building at the South East Area Committee on 14 July.
The council and An Post met in the last “probably” 10 days, McEvilly told the committee. “We’ve asked them essentially to give us a licence and then we could sub-licence.”
The council’s chief valuer has written to them, he said. “We’re waiting on a response from them.”
But, in the meantime, McEvilly said he will be working on expressions of interest in relation to “the retail unit as such”. “So I think it’s best we get a response before we have a meeting,” he said.
When pressed for a “tentative date” for a meeting with An Post by Connelly, McEvilly said they could look at late July. “Probably before the August break, if that’s alright?”
They need to do it because it would be a real tragedy if this public building was lost, Labour Councillor Dermot Lacey said. “It won’t cost An Post anything. They could still retain ownership just as we still retain ownership of the town hall, but the ETB use it.”
“It’s a real win-win for the community,” he said.
An Post is essentially in agreement to give the council a licence, but they do plan to bring the building to market as early as the first quarter of next year, McEvilly said.
Anybody who goes in there next will need to be consistent with its current zoning, he said. “And that’s essentially zoned as a shop.”
The council won’t have time to get together a planning permission, he said. “It’s a time critical element to it if they’re going to go to the market early next year. There’s very few months that someone would actually be occupying the building, but we’ll proceed anyway.”
The councillors don’t actually want it to go to market, Lacey said. “We want them to transfer a public building from one arm of the state to another arm of the state.”
At 4pm on Friday evening, an An Post worker wheeled a few computer system units down the Upper Rathmines Road in a trolley.
He greeted a co-worker who stood outside the Centra, and proceeded to push the units through the store, passing the deli and the shelf stacked with cleaning products.
Down a grey corridor, the new post office was almost complete. The walls behind the counters were painted green. There were a few sweeping brushes and sacks of levelling compound lying around still.
The new service will be open during regular post hours, but it will also offer some enhanced features like a self-service kiosk, an An Post spokesperson said on Monday. “The Centra store is also a PostPoint location enabling many extra out of hours features for customers.”
An Post is also preparing to relocate several of their delivery offices this year and next, including the one currently located in Rathmines, they said.
That delivery office will be moving to An Post’s Whiteheather facility on the South Circular Road in the second quarter of 2027, they said.
It’s not going to be great news for elderly people collecting registered letters, Rathmines local Enid O’Dowd said on Friday evening as she stood outside the post office “Particularly if they’re on Zimmer frames.”
Although there are ways to avoid trekking out to depots to get packages these days – such as having them delivered to the nearest post office, instead of home.
O’Dowd and local activist Peter Dooley arrived outside the building at 4.30pm, unfurling a banner asking that the post office be saved, while the crane lorry was loaded up with more empty safes of all ages and sizes.
It would be great to get the Citizens Information service in here, said O'Dowd. “But probably, it’ll be left empty for a while.”
A spokesperson for Ireland’s Ombudsman for Children said it is “very concerned” that the best-interests principle was not referenced in the new policy.
They're still thinking about the best way forward, and that might be improving the current system rather than replacing it, said Alan Dillon, Minister of State with responsibility for the Circular Economy.
Some tenants had been disconnecting window restrictors put in to keep people from falling out windows, which are required under building regulations, an email from the building manager said.
Consolidating operations into one main hub would be the dream, says Amy Carey, CEO of Solas Project, but they don't yet know what doing up the vacant building on Cork Street would cost.
