50,000 letters and parcels undelivered by An Post every week

50,000 letters and parcels remain undelivered every week, frustrating both the senders and An Post’s returns staff, says Roisin Burke.

TWO and a half million items of mail are sent each week in Ireland, and 50,000 of these are lost, despite An Post’s meticulousness.

Adrian Gordon, operations manager of the returns office in Limerick, says of the discarded mail that will never make it to its final destination. “Everything that cannot be delivered is opened here. We have a team of 19 in the returns department and they have all been with An Post for a number of years. We tend to handpick the staff for the returns office, as it can be quite hard to open people’s personal mail. You would never get a newbie in this section.”

With An Post for 31 years, Adrian has learned unusual skills: “No matter how untidy or scribbly the writing is, we can generally decode it here. I suppose it is something that comes with practise, but we would rarely get an address that we cannot read,” he says.

Adrian can ‘see’ the personalities behind the mail. “You can see, from the writing, the age of the writer. If it is an elderly person, the writing would usually be joined, as that is how they would have learned to write in their time. A child’s writing would be very big and printed. You would notice it straight away.”

A variety of goods are undelivered. “There could be legal documents, personal correspondence, birthday and Christmas presents, anything with a return address is sent back and everything else is logged and filed on the computer. After three months, if no-one has enquired about the item, it is donated to the Irish Charity Association, which distributes the items on our behalf,” he says.

Of the undelivered post, 9,000 returns are from foreign addresses, 11,000 from the UK, and 30,000 from Irish addresses.

Every unreturned item is marked with a pink sticker, which states why it did not make it to the recipient. “The era of the Celtic Tiger made things very difficult for us,” he says. “Electric gates became a problem and emigration is another issue that leaves us with a few items.”

Alongside these modern irritants are the traditional ones. “An angry dog will stop post being delivered. We would not expect any of our staff to put themselves in danger to get a letter to the door,” Adrian says.

But technology has made post more traceable. “Franking machines have a serial number with the stamp, making them easy to return if they cannot be delivered. Bulk post is also easily traceable, as it must have a return address.” Stamped letters are the most common undelivered items. “The biggest piece of advice I can give people posting letters or parcels is to include a return address,” Adrian says. “It is very frustrating to have all this post that is undeliverable. We want to do our job and get these letters to the intended person, but if it is not possible, a return address will at least get them home and avoid them going to waste.”

Christmas and the summer are periods of increased mail. “At Christmas, there can be up to nine million letters and parcels to be delivered. In the summer, you have an increased number of parcels to, and from, international students, or Irish students gone travelling during their college holidays. It can be quite tough and it is hard to see hand-knitted jumpers from Auntie Mary, or a box of tea and Taytos, going to someone abroad, being undelivered because of an incomplete address or bad parcelling,” he says.

Unusual undelivered items include an ice hockey stick, a ringmaster’s whip, a compass with a swastika, a cow’s horn and a remote control car with an ash tray on top. Keys and memory sticks are also frequently lost. The letters are put through a sorting machine, which allocates them to their postal area. Metal items can become detached from the letter, through a rip or tear, and can be very difficult to trace back to their owner.

“Use padded envelopes,” Adrian says. “It will save a lot of time and effort for everyone in the long run.”