Assurance sought that post delay will not reoccur

An Post's delivery of mail is to be monitored by the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Mr Ahern, following the delay in distributing more than one million cards this Christmas.

This emerged yesterday following a meeting between the Minister and the company's chief executive, Mr John Hynes.

A spokesman for the Minister said that Mr Ahern wanted an assurance that the delay was a one-off occurrence and would not be repeated this year. "The Minister will continue to keep a close eye on the matter," he added.

The delay was caused by a combination of late posting and difficulties with sorting festive cards. Despite Mr Hynes's assertion on RTÉ Radio yesterday that the company can handle all shapes and sizes of mail, it is known that envelopes of irregular size containing cards caused problems for the automatic sorting machines.

The Minister and Mr Hynes met yesterday in the Minister's Dublin office for an hour. Midway through the meeting, they adjourned to be interviewed on the RTÉ Radio News at One programme.

Mr Ahern said he had called in Mr Hynes because he felt, from the public's point of view, that an explanation was needed as to why the delay had happened and to ensure that lessons were learned for next year, particularly at Christmas. Asked if he was happy with Mr Hynes's explanation, he said: "We will have to wait and see, because An Post is centralising the sorting service."

He had discussed this with Mr Hynes before, the Minister said, adding: "He does admit, I think, that starting this in December in the greater Dublin region was probably not the best way to go about it. He feels that they are being crucified because the delay relates to one million Christmas cards out of 100 million items of mail."

Mr Ahern said that Ireland was one of the few European countries without a postal code. "Sometimes addresses are put on envelopes which are not particularly informative. And I would say that causes a problem," he added.

Mr Hynes said that 92 per cent of mail posted in Ireland in 2002 was delivered on time. "That is a 4 per cent improvement on our performace in 2001. During that period, we were introducing major internal change. We did stumble towards the end of the year."

Asked if An Post had been ill-advised to introduce a new system shortly before the Christmas rush, Mr Hynes said: "With hindsight, we would have done it differently."