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.”