When was the last time you posted a letter to someone?
Even at Christmas, people have pulled back on sending cards of goodwill to friends and family.
Whether that’s because of the ever-increasing cost of postage or the fact that it’s easier to send a digital greeting is hard to know but it’s probably a mix of both.
On Monday, An Post announced that it was increasing the price of a national stamp by 20c (or an inflation-busting 12 per cent) to €1.85 from February 3rd, with big increases also for sending post to Europe (up 85c to €3.50) or the rest of the world.
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It cited the high cost of the daily delivery service and the expense to the company of pay increases to staff.
A decade ago, the price of a stamp was just 72c, so it has more than doubled in the meantime with demand going off a cliff at the same time. Steep price rises rarely stimulate demand.
Letter volumes declined by 7 per cent in the past 12 months and by more than 50 per cent since 2016. Another decline of 7 per cent is forecast for this year.
Postal services around the world are in retreat. PostNord in Denmark delivered its last letter on December 30th, ending a more than 400-year-old tradition. It cited a 90 per cent decline in letter volumes since the start of the century.
In an interview with The Irish Times last year, An Post chief executive David McRedmond said he wanted to follow Europe’s lead by tweaking the universal service obligation that requires it to offer a daily postal service to each house in the country from Monday to Friday.
“It’s changed in every European country, one way or another. Some of the countries have that obligation but they just bend the rules.”
Easier said than done, of course. Removing this obligation would have implications for staffing levels and generate a huge political row around the provision of services in rural Ireland.
Whether through action by our politicians or regulators or the effect of punishing annual price increases, the days of the daily letter delivery service here appear to be numbered.
