Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I run a small post office down the country. While I do not presume to know all the workings of An Post, even in the mail sector, I would like to put this on the record. My post office is approximately 240 miles from Dublin, so it is at the challenging end of the universal postal service obligation with regard to achieving deliveries. An Post is the designate for the public service obligation. How many other service providers are there throughout the country? In facilitating competition under the Acts, how many disputes have been brought to the attention of ComReg, and how many of these have been resolved with regard to An Post facilitating competition from other service providers in the use of its facilities?

I understand An Post has made an application for a price increase on some of the basic items and services it provides, including a rise in the cost of stamps. Can the delegates indicate when a decision is due to be taken in that regard?

In regard to the hierarchy of ComReg's objectives and priorities, as set out on page 2 of its submission, there is a suggestion that different weightings were applied, which is rather curious. Will the delegates clarify whether different weightings are applied and, if so, what their effect is in terms of prioritising objectives? I do not recall any discussion of weightings when we debated the legislation. Is this an initiative ComReg has implemented off its own bat?

I might be nit-picking here, but the graph Mr. Chisholm pointed out includes no information on volumes, even though he himself made reference to volumes several times in the course of his presentation. The graph does include information on GDP and GNP, which is interesting. While we all accept that volumes have reduced, it would be useful to have those data clearly set out.

On the quality-of-service indications, I am aware that ComReg has always placed great emphasis on An Post achieving the 94% next-day delivery standard. We are always hearing about plus and minus percentages and attainment levels in the mid to late 80s. I come from a challenging part of the country in terms of the next-day delivery obligation. In my local office, however, the entirety of the mail we accept is either delivered or there is an attempted delivery, one or the other. It would be interesting to know the locations of the blockages that were identified by the external consultants engaged by ComReg to assess the quality of service. Are they arising in the main sorting offices, for example, or in either rural or urban post offices? Are the blockages arising at the transport end, because of problems with the rail or road network? After all the years of gathering that information - which is paid for by the service providers, as I understand it - ComReg must surely have identified where the problem lies. We have not been able to find it out.

When we have put ComReg's complaints regarding the quality-of-service level to An Post management and operators, we are told that there is no co-ordination in terms of how those measurements are derived, the methodology used and so on. Will the delegates confirm whether that is the case? Part of ComReg's mandate under the legislation is to engage with service providers in a co-ordinated and co-operative way.