An Post Delivers Good News

It has been announced this week that the latest official survey results show service improvements on mail delivery targets across Ireland.

An Post's ongoing drive to improve figures for 'next day delivery' of domestic mail has been boosted by the new statistics - with an international award also providing a fillip.

The Communications Regulator (ComReg) figure's show a 2% increase to 79% in the next day delivery figure for last year, 2008.

They said this compares well with 77% for 2007 and 72% in 2006.

The figures also demonstrate a breakthrough in ComReg's quality figures for the traditionally difficult Christmas period to 78% - up from 73% for the same quarter in 2007.

The news emerged as An Post was also celebrating being awarded the International Post Corporation (IPC) Certificate for Excellence in the Management and Processing of International Letter Mail.

This recognised having achieved and maintained a standard of 93% of next day delivery for incoming international mail; and 85% for outgoing mail reaching its destination country next day.

Only 22 countries worldwide have achieved this sought-after IPC recognition, which is awarded for a three-year period.

IPC Director, Dr Herbert Michael Zapf travelled to Ireland recently to officially present the certificate and to meet the managers and staff in An Post's international unit spread between Dublin Airport and the Dublin Mails Centre.

Chief Executive of An Post Donal Connell said the latest figures were proof that steady and sustainable improvements were achievable through An Post's drive for quality.

"These figures underline the importance of our efforts to upgrade and improve our mails collection and delivery systems nationwide, including an investment of more than €150 million.

Ongoing investment will yield further sequential improvement over the next two years as we move towards achieving our 94% domestic target," he said.

"We are particularly heartened by the dramatic improvement in quality for the last quarter of the year in which we deal with massively increased volumes due to the impact of Christmas mailing.

"We committed ourselves to tackling this particularly difficult period and these figures indicate that the steps we have taken are bearing fruit," he said.

He pointed out that electronic monitoring (scanning) of mails collections would be a feature of the mails operations nationwide by the third quarter of this year, 2009.

(BMcC/JM)