The Workers’ Party has called for urgent government intervention to prevent the closure of An Post’s Cork Mail Centre at Little Island which has reportedly been earmarked for closure with the loss of up to 200 jobs.
Cllr. Ted Tynan (WP)
Workers’ Party Cork City councillor Ted Tynan said the closure of the Little Island facility would not only cause the loss of hundreds of jobs but would inevitably affect the reliability of postal services in the region and could potentially threaten local delivery offices in Cork city and county.
Cllr. Tynan said it made no sense to close the Cork mail centre or the other regional centres and he predicted that rather than helping An Post to achieve stability, the closure would result in further erosion of its role as the national postal authority.
He said: “The threat to the Cork mail centre is a direct result of the ideologically driven de-regulation of mail delivery in Ireland at the behest of the government and the European Union. So-called competition is assisting private operators with an anti-union and low-pay agenda to undermine the public postal service”.
The Workers’ Party councillor said that once again the public service role of state owned utilities such as An Post was being abandoned in the continuing race to the bottom. He called for a united campaign of opposition to the closure of the Cork Mail Centre and said that it was incumbent on individuals and the trade union movement to step up to the plate to prevent this from happening.
The 100,000 square foot facility sorts and distributes up to 500,000 pieces of mail daily throughout Cork, Kerry, Clare, Limerick and Waterford.
An Post’s Cork Mail Centre at Little Island