An Post, the Irish post office, charge EUR 5.00 to send a registered letter (signature on delivery, and web tracking number) anywhere on the Island of “Ireland”.
We would expect the charge to send a regsitered letter abroad to be higher, but infact it is cheaper. The charge for “Great Britain”, “Europe” and “Rest of World” is just EUR 4.93.
Looking past this current irregularity lets just look at the price within Ireland, EUR 5.00. It is quite expensive, when we consider a normal stamp is EUR 0.55, and that registered post is no faster. So why is the price so high? Well I content it is because An Post have a monopoly in this area. Various Government Acts and Statutory instruments specify the “Mode of service” of notices.
For example
RESIDENTIAL INSTITUTIONS REDRESS ACT 2002, Registration of Deeds and Title Act 2006
These say a notice can be served by the writer delivering it to the receiver’s hand, or sometimes just at his address, or having it delivered by “Registered Post”
For the obvious temporal and economic reasons most notices are sent via the latter “Registered Post”. In keeping with the practice of vagueness that keeps the courtrooms whirring legislation does not specify what exactly is meant by “Registered Post”, so rather then use a Private Post Provider and risk it being judged an invalid service it is the practice to use only An Post.
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