An Post apologises to West Cork village left without service

An Post spokesperson apologised to customers on the Glengarriff postal route area for some disruption to deliveries in recent days 'due to a higher than normal level of staff absence' affecting one postal route. Picture: Dan Linehan

An Post has apologised for disruption on a West Cork postal route but has rejected claims a village was without service for a week.

The company was responding to claims Glengarriff was left without a postal service for a week.

Cllr Caroline Cronin raised the issue on C103FM on Monday and said many people depend on the postal service for important documents and packages and that because of issues with deliveries in the Glengarriff area last week, people were left waiting for bank cards and for postal confirmation of medical appointments.

She said one woman whose bankcard expired had to ask for store credit in her local shop to get her groceries because her replacement card was stuck in the post for over a week.

Another caller to the radio station said they were left waiting for their motor tax disc to arrive.

“I believe that this is an issue that has come from the changes that were made last September when the sorting office in Glengarriff was relocated to a new sorting unit in Bantry,” Cllr Cronin told Patricia Messenger.

This relocation has led to a lot of changes for the postal workers, their daily routes have changed and also the times that post is delivered to homes and businesses has changed as well. 

Some locals blamed the disruption on changes within An Post’s sorting office network in the West Cork region, while Ms Cronin said she believed annual leave in the company may be to blame.

But An Post said claims the route has had no deliveries for a week were “absolutely untrue”.

A spokesperson apologised to customers on the Glengarriff postal route area for some disruption to deliveries in recent days "due to a higher than normal level of staff absence" affecting one postal route.

“Every effort has been made to cover as much of the affected route as possible by relief staff and these efforts are continuing this week,” she said.

“All other postal routes in West Cork are operating as normal, with delivery staff operating out of a modern, custom-designed delivery depot in Bantry which replaced a number of antiquated, no longer fit-for-purpose local depots last autumn.

“All delivery operations have additional staff in place to cover sick or other absence.

Unfortunately, on the very rare occasion when a number of staff are unavailable for work due to illness, services may be disrupted.

“Local management and staff are doing everything possible to resolve the problem as quickly as possible and restore the high- quality of service usually provided to Glengarriff customers.” 

ComReg, the national regulatory authority for postal services in the State, has issued directions to An Post setting a delivery standard of 94% for delivery within one working day of posting and a standard of 99.5% for delivery within three working days of posting “domestic single piece priority mail”.