New study finds rural people are struggling to access essential services such as post offices

The number of people in rural Ireland having difficulty accessing a bank or post office has increased over the last ten years.

New CSO figures show the proportion having problems with access to banks went from just under 10% in 2011 to 15.5% in 2019. The figure for post offices went from 6% in 2011 to 10.4% in 2019. The stats also reveal the number of rural households with landlines, mobile phones and computers has increased significantly between 2004 and 2019.