Vibrators and blue movies among items at lost letter office

SEXUAL devices including vibrators, condoms, dozens of blue movies and saucy pictures of girlfriends are among about 15,000 items of lost post which end up in Limerick every week.

Each day, 3m items of mail are delivered around the country by An Post, but thousands of items are undeliverable.

They end up in An Post’s national “returned letter” centre on the Dock Road in Limerick.

As St Valentine’s Day and St Patrick’s Day approach, the centre’s 17 staff, supported by a smaller operation in Roscommon, are again preparing to be inundated with undeliverable mail.

“Funnily enough we never get calls about those items,” said Adrian Gordon, operations manager at Limerick.

He said they received a lot of “unmentionable” items which would be more commonly found in adult stores. However, regardless of the contents, they try to return all post to the original sender.

Mr Gordon was speaking to highlight the importance of putting the sender’s return address on the outside of the item so that it can be returned in certain circumstances.

Some people, he explained, send a letter with just “John and Mary Murphy” on it and nothing else to mark its intended address.

Others fill only part of the address, such as “Mary Murphy, O’Connell St”, which could be destined for any number of O’Connell Streets around the country.

Mr Gordon said he had seen “everything and anything” pass through their doors, but the items which recently raised eyebrows were two objects relating to the Nazi era — a cigarette case bearing an SS mark, denoting Hitler’s secret police, and a military compass bearing a swastika.

While some items are only kept for a maximum three-month period before they are handed over to charities or destroyed, An Post intends to keep these historically important items in their possession indefinitely to see if the owner comes forward.

Among the other items undeliverable items locked in their storage include wedding veils.

“You’d wonder did the bride go up the aisle without the veil or what happened? So much of this stuff is hugely sentimental to people but we can’t return it to people without a proper address... Unfortunately we can’t reunite everything with the sender. We’re only as good as the address that’s written down,” he said.

“We are the only people authorised to do this and it’s done under very controlled conditions. For anyone else it’s a sackable offence.”

Items which may contain personal details go through a shredder.

Money, however, is held indefinitely and cheques are returned to the issuing bank.

“We have seen a growth in business to Canada and Australia not seen during the Celtic Tiger years. The change in economic circumstances is reflected in what we see as well — Barry’s tea, Tayto crisps and mammy’s fruitcake, as well as parents sending their children $100 Australian dollars for Christmas or their birthday.”