An Post 'spent €2m on PR during staff pay freeze'

AN POST spent at least €2 million on external consultants last year while insisting it could not give staff overdue pay increases, an Oireachtas committee heard yesterday.

It also emerged that ex-financial director Ronan Byrne a member of the team that overestimated the company's profits by close to €50m two years ago has been on paid sick leave since autumn 2003.

But while, addressing the Oireachtas Communications Committee yesterday, An Post's chief executive Donal Curtin declined to comment, when questioned by Labour's Tommy Broughan, on the fact that An Post's chairperson Margaret McGinley succeeded in more than doubling her salary to €50,000 last year as worker wage increases went unpaid.

With industrial relations continuing to worsen at An Post, both sides are due to enter Labour Court discussions next week.

The committee agreed to ask Communications Minister Noel Dempsey to develop "a strategic vision" for post offices in bid to break the impasse.

However, the Association of Higher Civil and Public Servants (AHCPS) general secretary Sean O'Riordan described negotiating with An Post as "like going into a black hole".

Mr Curtin said he felt the company was "in the final stages" of recent industrial relations trouble.

But he added: "At times I wondered whether the amount of time we were spending on industrial relations was having a serious impact on the business."