Committee Reports > List of Committees > Dáil > 1966 > Committee of Public Accounts > Interim and Final Report - Appropriation Accounts 1964 - 1965

APPENDIX IX.

POST OFFICE: RENTING OF PROPERTY

Rúnaí,

An Coiste um Chuntais Phoiblí.

At the proceedings of the Committee on 8th June, 1966, I undertook to supply some general information about the renting of property for Post Office purposes.

The properties rented by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs fall broadly into four categories viz. (1) accommodation for small units of telephone equipment such as carrier apparatus (2) garages for postal and engineering vans (3) storage for local engineering stocks and (4) office accommodation.

In the first two categories the accommodation needed is small and isolated (the garages, for example, are required for a van used by a local lineman or by a postman-driver based at a sub-post office) and it is more practical to rent premises than to provide state-owned accommodation. The same considerations apply generally to the third category but there are a number of instances where accommodation, urgently needed to cope with development of the telephone service, has been temporarily rented pending the provision of new official buildings. As regards the fourth category, accommodation rented as offices consists, for the most part, of premises leased in Dublin for the telephone administrative and engineering headquarters staffs, together with a limited number of provincial post offices which are due for replacement and, meanwhile, continue to be held on lease.

Except in the case of offices, leases are normally for short terms such as 1 or 2 years certain and terminable thereafter at 3 or 6 months’ notice. The lease of office accommodation generally tends to run for longer terms and to be within the range 5 to 14 years.