Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The news on 26 June was devastating for the workers in Cork mail centre. I have raised questions about the management going down late in the evening to inform workers before the board meeting the following day, where they were going to make the official announcement that Cork mail centre was the one. I support the motion and I am glad it is being discussed in the House. I am a member of the Communications Workers' Union, CWU, and I have been talking to the union about this issue. Deputy Micheál Martin read from a circular that was sent around to An Post employees about the closure of the mail centre, and he has already dealt with some of the points I wanted to raise.

What is happening in An Post with regard to the reduction in the volume of letters being delivered is a phenomenon due to the change over to email and the change in the way people are communicating. The reality is that the volume of business has gone down to 50% and even less in some areas. I have been talking to the CWU about this over the past year and it is obviously very concerned. It knew the Labour Relations Commission recommendation from 2017 had indicated that one mail centre should close and, in essence, the four mail centres where workers were working were all fearful of the news that was going to come down the road. If it was not the Cork mail centre, it was going to be the Athlone mail centre, the Portlaoise mail centre or the Dublin mail centre. The reality is that the reduction in the volume of letters means we have to change, and the workers and the unions have to adapt in regard to building a service around the parcels business.

More of this is going to happen in the next period, for example, with regard to workers in fossil fuel industries. We will have to ensure there are strong unions so that, when changes come about in those industries, there are jobs elsewhere for those workers and redeployment opportunities.

The situation with the letters business is different from the Government's position on rural post offices in general. It was this Government that encouraged people to go online and to not go through the post office for many of the services people would have relied on, and this had an impact on postmasters and postmistress being able to keep local post offices going. There was a different policy by the Government that regard.

The reality is the mail centre has closed. I believe it should remain open pending the development of the parcels service in Cork and the distribution of that service. From talking to my union colleagues, I know there has already been agreement that An Post is going to modify the GPO in Cork to take on the extra packaging involved. I do not know how practical that is and how much room there is for the Cork post office to expand and to take in extra parcels and packaging.

The second part of the motion calls on An Post to enter negotiations with the workers' trade union representatives. That is in place. The CWU, knowing this was coming down the line, set up a monitoring group to ensure that workers would not be treated badly and that they would get options of voluntary redundancy or redeployment, and that it is not just in the Cork mail centre but around the country that those voluntary redundancies would be offered. The union has a commitment that the workers will be offered evening jobs in the parcels area in Cork. The union is confident enough at this stage that no worker will be forced to take redundancy, or at least that is its feeling at the moment. If it believes there are to be forced redundancies, it will go to the Labour Court and to the monitoring group to ensure those workers are represented from that point of view.

This is devastating for families who were last week forced to face a precarious future.

The union was prepared for this. It knew it was going to happen and how it could potentially impact on workers. Union officials visited the mail centre over the last week to talk to union members. On the point regarding a new centre that will employ workers who are not union members, the CWU will be representing its members to ensure that does not happen.

It struck me that two thirds of the 240 jobs are part-time. This shows the way work has changed over the last number of years. Permanent full-time workers are now outnumbered by part-time workers. It is important that part-time workers join a union to ensure they are represented when things change. We do have to adapt to change.

The increase in parcel services should maintain these jobs rather than result in workers losing their jobs. The union will represent the postal workers to the best of its ability. It is a bad day for people in Cork. It could have been a day for people in Portlaoise, Athlone or Dublin if the mail centres in those areas had closed as well. We have to ensure that no worker at the Cork mail centre is forced to take redundancy or give up his or her job. As I said, the union has put in place a structure to ensure that does not happen. It is confident that no worker, other than those who wish to do so on their own terms, will have to leave a job.

It is worthwhile having this debate and calling for the Cork mail centre to remain in the ownership of An Post to be used to develop the parcel service such that the current workforce can be maintained and additional workers can be recruited into the future to deliver that service. I again welcome the motion.

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