Colm Keaveney (Galway East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

It is clear ComReg receives its current funding from the industry it regulates. It has nothing to lose by pursuing by what can be best described as an exercise in folly in challenging An Post because An Post will pay its own costs, as well as ComReg’s. An Post’s financial position is between the red and the black. Will the Minister discover from ComReg the basis for which it arrived at a fine of €12 million? This fine will result in job losses and, invariably, the closure of rural postal services. That is a grave concern for the 400 postal workers I represent in my constituency who are very concerned about ComReg’s lack of objectivity and accountability. What advance notice did ComReg provide for An Post on how it had failed on the issue of quality of service which one would expect to receive in any professional relationship? Who established the scale of the breach? What was the metric used? Where is the independence with respect to the documentation on a breach of some standard operating procedure agreed between An Post and ComReg?

We need to have transparency. Is this some form of vendetta, the carryover from an organisation created by the former Ministers, Charlie McCreevy and Mary Harney, to pursue a neoliberal agenda and attack critically important services for rural Ireland? This will not go away; it will continue to happen week after week and we need answers. We call for accountability and documentation to be placed in the Chamber relating to the measure or metric, how the €12 million figure was reached and on what basis. How or where did An Post break some standard operating procedure on quality?

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