Few public services are as much appreciated as those provided by An Post. The post office is where older people collect pensions and parents children's allowance. It is where parcels are dispatched to family and friends as well as for business.
In a village post office without queues, in city or country, there is time for a chat with someone who is an information exchange on the locality.
The daily delivery is a form of lottery providing occasional excitement. Apart from bills, leaflets and other unsolicited mail, there are personal letters, sometimes a cheque in the post, and unexpected invitations. On isolated farms or rural dwellings, the postman's visit is one guaranteed human contact every working day.
Older postboxes, the green painted over crowned VR, EVIIR and GR monograms, as well as ones marked SÉ for Saorstát Éireann, evoke a bygone era. A short-lived aberration, one hopes, has been the substitution of hire vans in place of their own green-liveried vans.
Since the euro was introduced with only the harp on the reverse of Irish coins, which is at least a recognisable symbol, stamps are the other main expression of national identity in daily use, though most parcels and business mail are franked.
Geared both for stamp collectors and the general public, an average of 40 special stamps are issued yearly. They commemorate special events and people, and celebrate all aspects of Irish heritage, service and achievement, within the limits of what the philatelic market will bear.
International figures and achievements also feature, for example, the 50th anniversary of the death of Einstein, paired with the 150th anniversary of the death of William Rowan Hamilton, revered by mathematicians for his discovery of quaternions.
Sometimes there is collaboration with another postal service. A recent series has featured paintings from the National Gallery, though one might think twice about sending a friend a letter stamped by Caravaggio's Judas's kiss.
A philatelic advisory committee, chaired by Dermot Egan and serviced by An Post, of which this columnist is a member, considers all suggestions submitted by members of the public, politicians and organisations, and selects the choice of subjects, subject to cabinet variation and approval. A stamp design committee oversees the artistic implementation.
A few weeks ago in Cork City Hall, stamps depicting its most famous landmarks were launched to celebrate its year as European Capital of Culture. Other recent issues include the centenary of the birth of Patrick Kavanagh, the 350th anniversary of the establishment of Quakers in Ireland, the Irish College in Paris, camogie and the advent of the Luas.
Anyone wanting an interesting array of stamps to choose from for their private correspondence would find a visit to the philatelic bureau in the GPO well worthwhile.
Notwithstanding the many positive things that can be said about An Post, postal services have been experiencing considerable turbulence in relations between the relatively new management under former ESB senior executive Donal Curtin and the post office unions.
Areas of dispute include further automation, the future of rural post offices, the winding up of the specialised parcel service SDS and the withholding of standard social partnership increases. The central issue is control of costs on the one hand and protection of the incomes of postal workers on the other.
The spread of other forms of communication, notably e-mail, has put a brake on increased turnover in line with economic growth. Can An Post be a viable, self-sustaining business, or is it heading, like its British counterpart, towards at least limited subsidisation to meet its public service obligations, particularly in rural areas?
Eyebrows were raised recently when the highly profitable Bank of Ireland announced it was seeking large-scale redundancies. An Post is in a different situation. In the public sector particularly, redundancies have to be voluntary, and the degree to which volunteers are forthcoming usually depends on the terms.
With its recent realisation of a substantial profit on the sale of assets, An Post has more to negotiate with.
As with some other public sector employments, overtime has become embedded. It can only be bought out at a price, which usually nullifies any short-term gain. The separate parcels service SDS, which duplicates overheads, is to be reintegrated into the general postal service.
For An Post to go forward with confidence at a period when competition is increasing, a successful conclusion to negotiations on a package is needed, as well as a determination to go after new business.
Post offices provide an unrivalled countrywide network, able to carry out a range of straightforward financial transactions. This can only be done with automation, which needs to be further extended. Even a small automated post office, together with, say, a village garage and a small store or supermarket, can save many unnecessary journeys to congested urban centres.
There is a tension in public policy between rationalising and centralising, and providing services where they are needed and sustaining the viability of rural life, as well as allowing suburbs to be centres in their own right.
Like courthouses and railway stations, older post offices are often prominent public buildings. There is, as seen in the controversy over Cahir Post Office, a reluctance by the workforce to abandon a centrally located building that has served the needs of the public in favour of an often cramped sub-post office in a store.
A discipline imposed by EU membership and the liberalisation of services is that management and unions can rely less on monopoly power to solve their difficulties. Yet, if they can bring their act together, An Post enjoys a huge headstart over competitors in most categories in terms of an established network and public goodwill.