From the middle of the nineteenth century to the popularity of online communications in the last decade of the twentieth century, the Irish post office services Ireland held a strong presence in the lives of families and local communities, providing an infrastructural contact network with the outside world. The establishment of cheap postage from the 1840s did much to encourage literacy in Ireland as people now had a reason and opportunity to read and to write correspondence to their emigrant sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, aunts and uncles working overseas. The local post office facilitated communications through letters, parcels and telegrams as well as providing as a savings banks for children and the less well-off.

From 1911 the postal service took sole responsibly for the provision and development of the telephone network in Ireland, a position that it maintained until the establishment of a separate state company Telecom Éireann in 1979 which was privatised in 1999.