The matter I wish to raise concerns the unreasonable delay in the entry of packages to this country by post from overseas. The information I am working on comes from large institutions who receive many such packages every day, often to libraries, laboratories and so on. There is a large volume of package post coming in from overseas and there has been a drastic slow down in the entry of them, and this has coincided to a large extent with the imposition of VAT at the point of entry. It is too much of a coincidence that this has happened not to connect up the two. There seems to be some haphazard and random method for dealing with VAT on packages at the point of entry. Whether they are being dealt with or not, whether they are being categorised correctly or not, I am here to protest at the undue delays which have been taking place recently in package post from overseas.
I hope the Minister of State can give some explanation for this delay. His predecessor in June 1978, when I raised a related problem — the problem on that occasion was the delay in the Anglo-Irish post, not just packages, all the Anglo-Irish post was delayed — gave a most enlightening explanation: the delay in Anglo-Irish post on that occasion was due to problems in the tomato industry. The Minister of State may recall what the problems were, the contract for Anglo-Irish post involved sharing a plane with a tomato-grower. There was one-fifth of a plane load per night of post going from Dublin to Britain and the tomato-grower took four-fifths of the load. The tomato-grower got into some sort of trouble and was not going to hire the plane any more. The Department of Posts and Telegraphs did not have enough mail and the planehire operation went wrong, and that was the reason for the postal delays as given by the Minister of State at the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, Mr. T. J. Fitzpatrick, on the Adjournment on 7 June 1978, as reported at columns 677, 678 and 679 of the Seanad Official Report.
There is some administrative problem which is currently holding up packages and their postal delivery. I believe it is in some way connected with the administration of the system of VAT at the point of entry, but that is only a surmise. I do not know. On the occasion that I raised a similar problem in 1978 the Minister of State said we had one of the finest postal services in the world but recently when reading some diaries of a relative who lived in East Cork 100 years ago I learned that in that area 100 years ago there was a postal delivery daily including Sundays and Christmas Day. If one posted a letter in East Cork early in the day one could be sure, in 1881, it would be delivered in London the following evening. We may have one of the finest postal systems in the world but it has not greatly improved since 1881 in that respect. What we know is that the volume of mail has increased. There have been difficulties of certain types in administration and I have the greatest sympathy with the Minister, and his officials, who are trying to deal with these. One of the things that worries me when I have to criticise an essential service such as the post is that if many people are getting the reactions I am getting and adopting an attitude similar to mine, the problem is that the important post will not be sent via our postal service. We have seen a great outgrowth in courier services between Ireland and overseas. Those services are prepared to deliver parcels or packages the next day in various foreign cities. They are expensive. I recently had recourse to one of those services. I sent a valuable document in a package, a single copy of a manuscript to be made into a book by a photographic process. I felt, not because of the timing but because of the uncertainty of the postal service, that I could not consign this to the postal service. I had to employ one of those couriers at a very hefty charge but it was worth it because one knew the package would be delivered the next day to its destination abroad. The point was that it was not the timing but I knew that it would be delivered, unless there was a plane crash or some act of God.
That problem is serious because if the organisations who have some leverage and send important mail and packages abroad, or receive them from abroad, start to short circuit our postal service it will mean a spiral of decline. It reminds me of the admission some years ago when there was an inquiry into the London transport services that every member of the London transport board had been supplied with a car by that board as a result of which no board member ever used the London transport services.
They never saw what was going on. The people who could have exerted the pressure and rectified the faults never used the service. I am worried that if our postal service in general is not straightened out, and if the problems, whether they are concerned with VAT at the point of entry on packages or other problems of administration, are not dealt with, something similar will happen, there will be a short-circuiting of our postal service by organisations with influence who could be relied on to put pressure on the politicians, and the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, to rectify the matter. The matter will lie and there will be an eventual and serious decline.
I am making this complaint on behalf of many people who have corroborated my evidence that there seems to be a serious series of delays currently. Whether it is connected with VAT at the point of entry is not clear but, certainly, there is some administrative problem. I hope by raising this on the Adjournment that the Minister of State, and his Department, will rectify these problems so that our postal service will resume its normal, reliable and efficient operation.