An Post is to bring in outside consultants to study its performance in the next-day delivery of mail, it has emerged.
The loss-making company wants to examine whether it is possible to reach a 94 per cent next-day delivery target and to assess what it might cost. The telecommunications and postal regulator ComReg has said it wants An Post to reach the 94 per cent target as soon as possible
Hiring the consultants is likely to cost between €300,000 and €500,000, sources claimed last night. An Post already does its own sampling of next-day delivery performance and this contract, held by PricewaterhouseCoopers, is not affected by the latest move.
The company wants to select one firm to conduct what it describes as an "end-to-end examination of An Post performance quality". The company has previously questioned whether a 94 per cent target is achievable or affordable.
The consultant's work may prove controversial as it will concentrate on identifying "reasons for quality of service failures".
It will also involve an "in-depth analysis of measures, operational and commercial, that will need to be taken to achieve the 94 per cent next-day delivery target which has been set" by ComReg. The impact of the 94 per cent target on the future provision of the universal service obligation," will also be studied.
At the end of August, ComReg claimed An Post was falling well short of targets for next-day deliveries.
A ComReg study of postal performance in the first half of the year found that only 70 per cent of letters were arriving at their destination the next day, compared with the target of 94 per cent.
ComReg also said An Post was failing to meet the target set by regulators for delivery within three working days. Following a consultation earlier this year, ComReg set a target for this sector of 99.5 per cent but only 95 per cent of letters were arriving in the time.
An Post dismissed the findings, saying the study, carried out by TNS mrbi, was too small and selective to be representative. It said that its most recent indications were that 92 per cent of mail was taking just one day to arrive.
But ComReg chairman Mr John Doherty said that, regardless of disruption caused to postal services in March and April, "the service throughout the period measured falls significantly short of both the required standard of service set by ComReg and international best practice".
The survey found that only 75 per cent of local mail - letters destined for addresses in the same county in which they were posted - arrived the next working day. The performance of Dublin (73 per cent) was worse than elsewhere (77 per cent).
