§ MR. JOHN DILLONI beg to ask the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General, whether he is aware that at Fintona the largest and most important town in South Tyrone—the mails are not delivered on Sunday mornings till 10 o'clock, though they have been lying at Omagh (six miles distant) from 3 a.m. on the same morning; also that the latest hour for posting letters at Fintona on Sundays is 4 o'clock p.m., though these letters are conveyed to Omagh and lie there till 10 p.m. the same evening; and whether he will remedy this inconvenience by having the delivery and dispatch of mails on Sundays altered at 1308 Fintona to reasonable hours, say 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. respectively?
§ MR. HANBURYThe mails are due at Fintona on Sunday at 9.30 a.m., and the delivery commences at 9.50 a.m. On weekdays the service to Fintona is by train; but on Sunday no trains are run, and the mails are conveyed by a postman on foot, leaving Omagh—where they have been lying, as the hon. Member presumes, for some hours—at 6 a.m. This is the usual hour of departure for rural postmen, and, in this case, he reaches Fintona, the last place on his walk, at 9.30 a.m. The Sunday dispatch from Fintona is at 4.40 p.m. As a rule, rural postmen are allowed to return from the terminal point of their journeys on Sundays in the forenoon, about one hour after the completion of the delivery, so that the inhabitants of Fintona have the advantage of an exceptionally late dispatch. The Postmaster General sees no reason for disturbing the present arrangements.