Dempsey: Irish An Post will be wiped out
Communications minister Noel Dempsey has warned management and workers at An Post that the company will be wiped out” by competition unless it is dramatically reformed soon.
The reality of this, and people have to grasp it, is that in 2009we will have a fully liberalised market, Dempsey said last week. And if we’ve a fully liberalised market, An Post as it exists today will be wiped out within, I would say, six months. Dempsey was blunt in his warnings to An Post, which has been beset by tensions between workers and management over a restructuring and rationalisation plan.
I’ve used the analogy of the Royal Mail delivering mail in Ireland in 2009, Dempsey said. It’s nearer to reality than some people seem to realise.
As long as people think there’s a magic wand out there that I can wave, or that they can exert huge political pressure and the political system will cave in and give them subsidies or whatever else it is – all they’re succeeding in doing is writing The End’, as far as An Post goes. Dempsey made his remarks in an interview with The Sunday Business Post before the resignation last week of board member Paul Kavanagh, who slammed the attitude of the company’s unions in his letter of resignation.
Kavanagh warned that the unions’ approach to the restructuring of the company would result in far greater downsizing and redundancies’.
Dempsey declined to blame either unions or management.
I’m not saying the fault is all on the union side or the fault is all on management side – there’s fault on both sides in relation to this, he said.
The only way this is going to be avoided is both sides being mature enough to sit down and say: Right, this is the recommendation, this has to be put in place, we have to move on from here very, very fast. When pressed, however, he indicated some frustrations with unions.
In fairness to the present management, I think they’ve done as much as they can currently to try and bring a sense of reality to the whole situation in An Post, he said.
