Vol. 523 No. 1
323 Mr. Gormley asked the Minister for Public Enterprise if she has satisfied herself that the postal service here compares favourably with other EU countries; the steps she has taken to improve the service; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [20187/00]
It is not possible to gauge with accuracy how well the quality of the postal service in Ireland compares with that in European countries given that there is no uniformity of approach in terms of measuring this among EU member states.
An Post is committed to continually improving the quality of its mail delivery service, which is measured independently against a standard of next day delivery using a comprehensive and statistically valid system to monitor the service quality of all mail streams.
Since the end of the Christmas 1999 peak period, an overall average of 90% of letters posted for delivery within Ireland are being delivered on the next working day after the day of posting.
My Department's statement of strategy contains a target in this regard of at least 95%, and I am confident that recent major investments in new mail processing centres will enable significant progress to be made towards meeting this target in the near future.
