THE company that was awarded the household charge leaflet delivery contract has admitted it could only guarantee to deliver to “86-94pc” of all houses.
That means as many as 280,000 houses will not have had a leaflet telling them about the charge. (Based on 86% of about 2 million houses)
The delivery contract was given to City Post instead of An Post – probably because it was cheaper.
City Post do not deliver as many letters to rural areas – wheras An Post would be making deliveries to every corner of teh country every day of the week.
The tender put out in December was for delivery of the leaflets to “each residential address” in the State.
It could have been worse – the company chosen to print the household charge leaflets were in examinership since 2010 – and they went into receivership last month – just after it completed the leaflets.
It’s as if whoever was awarding these contracts – didn’t want the leaflets delivered. Choosing a firm in trouble to print them and a delivery company with very little track record of nationwide delivery – was asking for trouble.
The lack of leaflets will not help boost registration for the household charge – which was only as high as 230,000 this week (about 12%)