Portlaoise mail centre staff are helping Santa Claus this Christmas

Santa has lots of helpers in Laois this Christmas at An Post's two massive depots in Portlaoise, and they are as busy as his North Pole workshop with nearly 600 workers on duty.

One centre collects and sorts all the deliveries for Laois, and the other processes all the mail and parcels for a third of Ireland.

From Santa letters to strange parcels like a recently stamped banana, car parts and kayaks, they see it all.

They are getting increasingly busy every year, as online shopping continues to soar in popularity.

The staff however still make time for social fun and charity donations.

This week the Leinster Express / Laois Live paid a visit to both centres, on Fr Brown Avenue next to O'Moore Park.

The Portlaoise Delivery Service Unit has 85 staff, 65 of them are postmen and women, and they all mostly work at night sorting all the letters and parcels destined for Laois. Then they take off on 65 routes around the county on deliveries.

Robbie Hansard is its manager.

Clare Carroll with Robbie Hansard, Manager in the Portlaoise Delivery Services Unit.

"We are getting into our peak and this Christmas will be the busiest peak ever. Last Saturday we sorted 6,500 barcoded items, mostly parcels, that was astonishing. Our biggest ever was 7,330. On an average week we process 2,500 to 3,000 barcoded parcels and 25,000 letters a day," he said.

The old days of post being sorted at each post office by the postmaster or mistress is gone. Now all the postmen, and women - now one in ten - work in the Portlaoise unit, sorting their post and then delivering it, scanning each barcode item for traceability. 

One of them is John Laffan from Portlaoise.

"I'm into my 26th year now. It's crazy busy, in my time it's gone from being busy with letters to parcels now. It's a great job. You're your own boss for the day. It's a healthy job, you get to meet people and talk to them. I start at 5.45am and finish at 2pm. It's great for families, I'm home to pick the kids up from school and help with homework. It's Monday to Friday so the work life balance is perfect," he said. 

John Laffan, Portlaoise postman.

Robbie said rural people and GAA club members make great post men and women.

"If you are new, rural areas are toughest, every house has its quirk. If you're from a rural area its easier to train. Young staff involved in GAA are brilliant, they know everyone or know a contact for them," he said.

Next door, the Portlaoise Mail and Parcels Centre is a sight to behold inside. It is the second biggest of An Post's three centres in Ireland, after Dublin and before Athlone, processing items mailed in the Midlands excluding Dublin, and in Cork and Kerry. For the Christmas season, the staff numbers double from 250 to 500.

A new €6 million conveyor belt runs down its centre at full pelt for 20 hours a day, through a tunnel that reads and measures every parcel then kicks them off left and right at 200 drops along the belt. There staff wait to pack them neatly into green containers destined for 40 foot lorries to deliver to 192 countries worldwide.

Another machine for letters channels them into a 'washing machine' tumbler that reads addresses, verifies if stamps are fake and funnels them into the right slot. 

The centre's staff process everything from Santa letters to huge parcels like kayaks, ready to send out across the world.

Aileen Donohue from Durrow is Plant Manager, having worked her way up from joining as a part-timer for Christmas 2000.

"I came in in the evenings, on what we call 'auxi hours'. My dad was a mail contractor, Johnny Delaney from Ballyroan. I loved coming in, meeting women my age, we reared our kids together, most of us are still here.

"An Post are good employers. People stay. We have a lot of students in college here, it's great to see them graduate and come back and progress in the company. We have a lot of new staff here now because of the new machine, it has secured our place in Portlaoise for a while," she said.

Plant Manager of the Portlaoise Mail and Parcel Centre, Aileen Donohue from Durrow, with staff Robert Wall and Anthony Dunne.

The social club is well attended, with a singing competition due to take place later in the week for hamper prizes. Proceeds of the staff Christmas hamper raffle will be given to Kolbe Special School, while the Portlaoise An Post Christmas Dinner Dance is a glittering affair all look forward to just before Christmas.

Anna McHugh, An Post's Head of Corporate Communications, said the company invested its own money into the new technology.

"It's the next generation on from the Dublin parcel hub. It measures every parcel and reads every barcode, dropping them into the right area for packing into vans. This is about building for the future.

"This is the gateway to the world for all parcels leaving Ireland, including personal and business customers. That includes a huge number of small and medium enterprises and startup businesses.  We send them to 192 countries. Since Black Friday, it's been a full-on Christmas rush," she said.

She describes how business has changed hugely in the past decade.

"Mail declined by 50% in the past decade and it's still down 5% a year. Payslips, bank statements, they all moved online. Covid forced online purchases and it's flying now. It's good to see Irish businesses taking back a lot of the online business that was going out of the country. People know they can trust them. 

"Letters are declining rapidly but there is a rapid increase in e-commerce, it's up by 20% every year. The circular economy is the biggest growth sector, Vinted has just launched in Ireland and it's already huge. Younger people are more conscious of airmiles," she said.

"People also take our Christmas stamps very seriously. It's the time someone has taken to write a personal card, and for people living abroad there's nothing like it. I've cards myself I kept from my late mum, it means so much just to see her handwriting. Some people give a charity donation instead of posting cards but I say do both.

"We also help Santa send out 130,000 replies to Santa letters. It would be more but some children do not put on a return address," she said.

"Prices have gone up because of the cost of air fuel and freight. A lot of other parcel companies pay per parcel or per day, with zero hours contracts. An Post have said no to that. We will never be the cheapest but we subscribe to 'decent work' with a career path, health and safety, fair wages. We are a commercial semi-state company but we pay our way, we get no subsidies," she said.

Ned Hayden, Head of Processing, urges customers to pack parcels securely, post everything early, and write a clear address including a return address.

"People send back glasses or carkeys that someone forgot and they can fall into the machine, we have to extract them with a metal detector," he said.

"We try to get people to post early, because of things like storms. We can see when Christmas stamps are bought but sometimes there's a delay in getting the letters here, because there's good weather, people put off writing them," Anna said.

Paul Flanagan and Glai Galindez on the Christmas post sorting line.

Some parcels cannot be delivered, because of unclear addresses, and no return addresses on them. 

"We have a centre in Limerick. We have a team of postal detectives. In a secure environment, they are allowed to open the parcels and look for identifying letters. It would break your heart to see the presents, like hand knitted jumpers. We keep them for three months, then where appropriate we donate them to charity shops. The rest, like food, is dumped, and we file a report," she said.

Among the 250 Christmas casual workers in the Portlaoise Mail and Parcel Centre is singer and photographer Ross Molloy from Stradbally. He sums up why he does the seasonal work.

"Firstly, it's always busy so the time flies. The pay is good and the craic is good," he said.