Year: 2005

Half of all post sent in Dublin for national and international delivery does not leave the An Post sorting office the same day, according to the company’s internal figures, writes Olivia Kelly.

Daily records for the Dublin mail centre from September 15th to October 5th, seen by The Irish Times, show that the proportion of post leaving the sorting office the same day regularly slips under 50 per cent.

The Communications Workers’ Union (CWU), which represents postal workers, said the company’s customer service department was receiving up to 1,600 calls each day, and 1,200 of these related to letter delivery.

On September 15th some 1,611,105 items were received in the Dublin mail centre; 835,395 or 52 per cent remained in the mail centre at the end of the day. On Thursday last week, 2,272,040 items were received, with 1,429,765 or 62 per cent still in the sorting office at the end of the day.

The Government is threatening to remove the final part of An Post’s letter post monopoly if the Communications Workers’ Union (CWU) goes ahead with industrial action at the troubled State company.

With a ballot already underway for strike action that is likely to disrupt the mail in the busy pre-Christmas period, Government sources said that the Minister for Communications Noel Dempsey was minded to remove the monopoly immediately instead of waiting until an EU directive takes force in 2009.

Such an action would cause severe commercial difficulties for An Post in the long run, as it would free the hand of rival private sector companies to introduce their own mail services in big urban areas.

Despite the difficulties that such action would prompt for An Post, Government sources said the Minister believes that no alternative course is open to him as any intervention in the company’s industrial relations process would be in breach of social partnership.