Committees: The new chief executive of An Post is to be called before the Oireachtas Committee on Communications to face questions about the accuracy of information previously provided to the committee by the troubled semi-state company.
Mr Noel O'Flynn told The Irish Times he was "not satisfied at all" with the information provided to the committee at the beginning of this year by the then chief executive of the firm, Mr John Hynes.
It subsequently emerged An Post was in serious financial difficulty, with an expected trading loss of €47 million for the 2003 financial year, and a further €39 million loss next year.
The company has implemented a recovery plan designed to return it to a break-even position by 2005, which will include between 1,000 and 1,500 redundancies.
Mr O'Flynn said the new chief executive, Mr Donal Curtin, has now been invited to appear before the Dáil committee on January 8th to discuss the restructuring of An Post. Issues such as the current quality of service, and the closure of rural post offices, are also expected to be raised at the meeting.
Mr O'Flynn was critical of the quality of information supplied to the committee at the beginning of the year, which he believes did not indicate the financial problems facing the firm. "I'm not at all happy with the presentation made by Mr John Hynes to the committee on the company's finances, as it turned out An Post's financial position turned out to be much worse," he said.
The firm has faced similar complaints from the Minister for Communications, Mr Dermot Ahern, who accused An Post in a letter earlier this year of providing "seriously inaccurate" information to the Government in January, which suggested it would make a profit of €1 million.
The committee is also expected to question the new chief executive on the quality of service provided by An Post during the busy Christmas period. Earlier this week An Post assured customers that delays which resulted in non-delivery of post in time for Christmas last year would not recur. The company blamed last year's delays on teething problems caused by new processing equipment that had been introduced in the run-up to Christmas.