Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

Where did the Minister get the information on work practices? Was it not disgraceful that in the middle of this delicate dispute, the Minister threatened An Post workers and communities throughout the country with immediate privatisation and liberalisation? He said a few weeks ago that he would do that if necessary. That was the Minister's way forward. When politicians meet our constituents who are postal workers or when we call into post offices, is it any wonder that we find they are hopping mad and very upset because they believe the Minister, as their guardian, and the media have not given them a fair crack of the whip and have presented this dispute in outrageous black and white terms when everybody knows there are issues to do with electronic substitution and deregulation which have not been presented. The Minister has performed badly in this dispute.

My final point relates to management. This management has created a poisonous industrial relations climate, one of the worst I have ever seen. It has created a logjam but instead of the Minister telling the chief executive and chief operations officer that it is time for him to make changes in the management of An Post, he ensured they got bonuses. They destroyed the universal service obligation and reduced it by approximately 20%——

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