The main union at An Post has asked the Minister for Communications, Mr Dermot Ahern, to intervene in the row over the impending closure of the loss-making An Post subsidiary SDS.

The Communication Workers Unions (CWU) wants the Minister to force an apology from An Post's chief executive, Mr Donal Curtin, who the union claims misrepresented worker-directors on the An Post board.

The CWU said it was wrong for Mr Curtin to claim, during a recent radio interview, that worker-directors knew the closure of SDS was on the cards.

Last weekend, the worker-directors said the State company did not tell them of the plan to close SDS with the loss of 270 jobs until the day before it was announced late last month.

In a letter to Mr Ahern from CWU general secretary Mr Steve Fitzpatrick, the union official states: "This is the first time in the history of An Post that worker-directors have had their integrity publicly challenged by a chief executive. The three worker-directors are very long-serving members of the An Post board and have always attempted to add value to the deliberations at board level.

"The CWU expects that you, as Minister with responsibility for An Post, will leave Mr Curtin under no illusions that his utterances concerning these board members are unhelpful and that he should issue them immediately with an apology," writes Mr Fitzpatrick, who succeeded Mr Con Scanlon as head of the CWU in recent weeks.

Department sources indicated yesterday that Mr Ahern was unlikely to get embroiled in the dispute between the union and Mr Curtin.

The National Implementation Body, set up under Sustaining Progress, is set to examine the SDS issue at a meeting on Monday.