This year An Post celebrates its silver jubilee, twenty five years as a commercial State company. The Irish Post Office, of course, has been around for very much longer than that – about 350 years – and during that long period it has naturally gone through various transformations, changes in administrative structure and legal form, which have reflected business and political changes over the years.
An Post and its sister company, Telecom Eireann, were created in 1984 out of what was the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, the largest Civil Service 
department in the State with a workforce of close to 30,000 people and an extraordinary range of business services which touched every citizen almost every day. By the mid 1970s it was becoming clear that direct State management of such a vast enterprise was holding back Post Office development, particularly in telecommunications where significant investment was required to provide modern services. A Government-appointed Review Group, comprised of prominent Irish business people with Post Office consultants from Britain and Denmark, recommended radical structural change which would allow two new state-sponsored companies the commercial flexibility necessary to modernise both telecommunications and postal services in Ireland.
From its first day of business, when An Post reintroduced penny postage for one day, the Post Office signalled its intention to be innovative in its approach to marketing. Ably assisted in this respect by its first Chairman, Fergal Quinn, the Company strove, through new products, to stimulate demand. This has remained a core objective for An Post, particularly in the face of the huge technological changes which have affected the way people communicate with each other over the last decade or so. Mobile phones, e-mail and the internet challenge the continuing existence of the traditional letter but they also represent opportunities for new An Post products and, outside of Star Trek, there is no substitute for the physical delivery of the products people buy on-line every day!
While, from the customer’s point of view, a commercial, market-led approach to business has probably been the greatest single change in the Post Office over the last quarter of a century, there have been several very significant internal operational changes. Not surprisingly, the main one has been technological. Computerisation has affected our operations at every level – postal collection times are recorded by a scanning system, mail sortation is overwhelmingly automated and concentrated into large centres, counter transactions of all types, be they bill payments, pensions or banking, are handled by the latest data capture technology.
Structurally, the Company has also changed greatly. The Travelling Post Office, for so long a very useful and well-loved feature of Post Office operations ran for the last time in 1994. The organisation of the service into Head Post office districts, each administered by a Head Postmaster, which was the epitome of solid efficiency for well over a century has given way to a regional structure more in keeping with today’s operational needs. The sub-office network, that living system of dedicated postmasters and postmistresses, which gives the Post Office its unrivalled local presence has also changed. The much respected job of running a local post office, like some other professions in today’s society, is seen by people in a different light perhaps and numbers have fallen since 1984.
The technological and structural changes of the last twenty five years are essential in helping An Post deal with what is certainly one of the greatest challenges the Post Office has faced in its long history. Charged with the responsibility of providing a nation-wide postal service at an affordable cost, the Post Office has always had a degree of monopoly protection so that it can deliver through the length and breadth of the land at a fixed price. Reduced over the years, that monopoly assistance is due to disappear completely in 2011 but the primary responsibility for operating the State’s postal service is likely to remain with An Post.
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The future, particularly in these difficult times, is uncertain but, with such a long history, we in An Post are well used to challenge and change. What we believe will remain constant is the human touch – the friendly smile at the door or greeting at the counter – and a tradition of service that see us look forward with expectation to our golden anniversary.
Stephen Ferguson
Assistant Secretary |
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