merrion street

Today the President signed into law the Communications Regulation (Postal Services) Act 2011 which transposes the EU Third Postal Service Directive and marks the final step in opening the market to full competition.

Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte said today:

the enactment of this legislation represents an important milestone in the development of the postal sector and represents a fair and balanced approach to liberalisation.

The Act introduces a number of important firsts with respect to primary legislation for the postal sector in Ireland:

• It guarantees the daily provision of a postal service to every address throughout the entire country
• It provides for challenging targets with respect to the regulation of the quality of this service
• It designates An Post as the postal operator who must guarantee this universal service for twelve years
• It provides for the framework for regulating access to the An Post delivery network by its competitors
• It provides for stronger levels of consumer protection, including means of redress, for all postal users
• It provides for additional consumer protection by requiring a price cap to be put in place for services most commonly used by individual postal users

The Minister concluded that whilst the migration away from post to electronic communications presented a significant challenge for the sector, he said he expected that An Post along, with its competitors, will deliver the range and quality of competitively priced, innovative postal services that Irish business and personal postal users are entitled to.

Minister Rabbitte said:

This is not to deny the considerable challenge facing An Post. Since 2008 the combined impact of the recession and of electronic substitution has been a reduction in traditional mail volume of almost 20%. I would like to take this opportunity to commend the manner in which management and union in an Post are cooperating to meet this challenge and diversify into new products and services