GPO opens doors to An Post's past
A NEW exhibition that explores the role of An Post and the GPO in Ireland's history was opened last night.
The exhibition is entitled 'Letters, Lives and Liberty' and is open to the public at the new museum in the GPO on O'Connell Street in Dublin.
Speaking at the opening, Communications Minister Eamon Ryan said he was "deeply proud as a Dubliner" to be on hand to cut the ribbon.
In a speech, he said he hoped An Post would remain state- owned after Colm McCarthy's review of semi-states.
"I will sit down and talk to Colm McCarthy, Alan Matthews and the officials from the Department of Finance," he said. "But I think we need to get away from the ethos in this country that the public sector is bad and private sector is good."
The exhibition includes a scale model of the GPO as it would have been in the 1800s, stamps from down the ages, letters from seminal figures in Irish history, and a recreation of an old travelling post office, which operated on the Dublin to Cork train. There is also an 11-minute film that recreates events inside the GPO on the weekend of Easter 1916.
- Colin Gleeson
Irish Independent
