The Finance Minister has said he’s ‘disappointed but not totally surprised’ at Postbank’s decision to close its operations here by the end of the year.

Brian Lenihan was speaking at the Irish Taxation Institutes’s annual dinner in Dublin last night.

The Communications Workers Union meanwhile is calling on the country’s bigger banks and the Department of Finance to examine ways of saving the Postbank network and its 260 jobs.

General Secretary of the CWU, Steve Fitzpatrick, says there is an opportunity to save the network and it should be pursued.

“We were hopeful that this development a couple of years ago would have lead to a third banking force – particularly given the size of the post office network, there’s a post office in every town in the country” he said.

“It was an opportunity to try and cement that business”.

“But we would hope that it’s not too late to rescue something from this; that some other bank – hopefully an indigenous bank -  would see the opportunity that presents itself with the post office network” he added.