Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

At 10 p.m. on Wednesday last, workers at the Cork mail centre in Littleisland were told that An Post will shut the centre by March of next year with the loss of all 240 jobs. The news came as a bombshell to the workers. Some had taken out mortgages on the strength of their wage packets from the centre. More than one worker went home crying in their cars that night. An Post stated that the closure is inevitable and that the demand for An Post letter delivery services is down 7% year on year. However, the decline in demand for letter delivery is only part of the story. Demand for An Post parcel delivery services is up 60% in the past two years. This is part of a global phenomenon. In Bremen, Germany, Amazon is building a logistics centre which can house 280 delivery vans. In October, Australia Post will open the largest superhub ever built in the southern hemisphere. The challenge facing An Post should not be one which involves closing hubs and axing jobs. Rather, it should involve transitioning from a letter delivery company which handles parcels to a parcel delivery company which handles letters without resorting to job losses.

An Post has consistently refused to publish the McKinsey report which advised it on the future of its business. The report should be published. There should be no secret reports, especially when they are being kept secret to protect senior Cork politicians. I wish to state for the record that I am opposed to the closure of the Athlone mail centre as an alternative, even if that is recommended in the McKinsey report.

No An Post worker should have to go through what the Cork workers are going through this week. The real point about the McKinsey report is that it is out of date now. McKinsey was hired in 2016 before An Post went back into parcel delivery and before the company experienced a 60% growth in demand for the service. I repeat: the plan must be to transition to parcels without job losses.

In the United Kingdom, Royal Mail recently closed three mail centres but then reopened all three as parcel hubs. Royal Mail is also introducing a second daily delivery of mail. The An Post history of planning for the parcel boom is remarkably poor. The decision in 2004 to shut SDS, the An Post parcel delivery service, must rank as one of the most short-sighted business decisions in the history of the State. Having gifted private operators a free run for more than a decade An Post got back into parcel delivery in 2017, but there is still no comprehensive plan in place. This is shown by the inability of An Post to handle the volume of parcel mail last Christmas, when mail centres were literally over-flowing with parcels and packages. It is shown on a week-to-week basis by the backlog in delivering what is known in the company as the Asian mail, in other words, the mail order packages from Asian suppliers. Instead of closing the only mail centre in the south of this country, An Post should talk to worker representatives and negotiate a plan for expanding parcel services rather than resort to redundancy.

There are other grounds for asking how much planning went into this decision. The Government Project Ireland 2040, the national development plan and the national planning framework all project a Cork city population of between 320,000 and 360,000 by 2040. Cork is projected to be the fastest-growing city in Ireland in the 2020s and the 2030s. How much of this was taken into account by An Post before it made the decision and by the Government before it decided to back the An Post decision?

The Government recently announced the climate action plan. The plan aims to reduce carbon emissions across every Department. How much was this taken into account by An Post when it made the decision and by the Government before it decided to back the An Post decision? Does the Minister know that millions of letters that would have been sorted in Cork will now have to be transported by truck to Portlaoise? There will be dozens of extra trucks on the roads and they will have a major environmental impact. The Government is about to invest €3 billion of the people's money in rural broadband. This will surely add to the parcel boom. Rural households will be able to order packages more easily and rural businesses will be able to sell parcel products more easily. How much did An Post factor in these points before it made the decision? How much did the Government factor this in before it supported the An Post decision?

Workers at the Cork mail centre have had few questions answered so I wish to ask some questions of the Minister today on their behalf. Will the Minister see that McKinsey is published? Who made the decision to shut the Cork mail centre? Was it the chief executive officer or the board? Did the chief executive officer inform the Tánaiste of the decision before the board meeting? Will the Minster rule out selling the building to a private sector competitor? Has the building already been sold? Does the Government stand over the An Post proposal that redundancy payments will decrease on a sliding scale per year for employees aged over 60 years? Does the Government share my view that this is actually illegal? If the Cork mail centre is shut, will the workers be transferred over with wages and conditions intact, including the medical scheme, when new hubs are opened? Will one-day delivery have to be abandoned for County Cork or even for the Cork city area?

I wish to comment on the Sinn Féin, Government and Labour Party amendments. The Sinn Féin amendment is friendly and we will support it. The Government amendment supports closure and we will be opposing it. As for the Labour Party amendment, it is disgraceful. The Labour Party amendment takes out of the motion the call on the Government to ensure that the Cork mail centre is kept open. Workers at the mail centre will be gobsmacked to see that the amendment has been signed by Deputy Sean Sherlock. It seems the Deputy has decided to fly the white flag of surrender before the battle has even had a chance to start. Instead, the Labour Party has called for the publication of McKinsey and for improved redundancy and redeployment terms. The Labour Party knows that we support all these demands, but it is trying to force us to choose between a call to keep the centre open and improved redundancy or redeployment terms. The workers know that we will fight for the best possible terms for workers in every circumstance, but we are calling for a vote against this disgraceful amendment as it means throwing out the call to keep the Cork mail centre open.

I have made some observations about the role of the Government in all of this. Before I finish, I wish to make some points about the role of Fianna Fáil and, in particular, Deputy Micheál Martin. Deputy Martin has registered his opposition to the An Post decision. He correctly says it is a strategic error. He said he intends to raise the issue with the Tánaiste, the Minister and the chief executive of An Post. He was due to raise the issue with the chief executive of An Post yesterday. Many workers at the mail centre take all of this with a pinch of salt. They are fully aware that the mail centre would not close if Deputy Micheál Martin were to demand of the Government that it should stay open. The workers are acutely aware of the fact that he has consistently refused to do so. They may not be aware of the fact - I am making them aware of it now - that both Fianna Fáil representatives on the Joint Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment agreed this week to a proposal to excuse An Post from answering questions before the committee this week. An Post representatives will have breathed a sigh of relief at that and they have Fianna Fáil to thank for letting them off the hook.

I put my faith in the workers of the mail centre and the workers of An Post to fight this closure and protect jobs rather than rely on resolutions passed by Dáil Éireann. You know and I know, Acting Chairman, that the Government can choose to ignore a resolution of Dáil Éireann. My colleague, Deputy Coppinger, will outline some ideas on how the workers might fight this closure. Will the Government act on the motion if it is passed tomorrow? I am warning the Government that if the motion is passed but it does not act, then the moral authority of a Dáil vote will strengthen the case of those workers who decide to fight this unjustifiable closure.

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