AN POST has confirmed that it has begun disciplinary proceedings against a number of employees after a racist e-mail was circulated within the company.
An Post said it was taking the matter seriously and had begun an internal inquiry.
“The e-mail in question, which did not originate in An Post, was received from an external source by a member of staff. The e-mail was subsequently forwarded . . . to a number of external addresses. It had limited circulation internally,” a spokeswoman for An Post said.
She said all An Post employees who use e-mail in the course of their job sign up to a strict code of conduct for e-mail usage.
This explicitly prohibits use of the company’s e-mail system for sending anything other than work-related communications.
The e-mail had been “very cleverly composed” and had circumvented the e-mail filter system.
It came to light once it was passed on to RTÉ and the Vincent Browne programme on TV3.
Mr Browne drew attention to its contents on Thursday night’s programme.
The e-mail stated: “If you cross the North Korean border illegally, you get 12 years hard labour. If you cross the Iranian border illegally, you are detained indefinitely. If you cross the Afghan border, you’re shot. Saudi Arabian border you’ll get jailed. All sorts of terrible things will happen to you if you cross almost every other border except the Irish border.”
“If you cross the Irish border illegally you get a job, a driver’s licence, social insurance card, money from the social security, food stamps, credit cards, subsidised rent or a loan to buy a house, free education and free healthcare.”
Comparing the asylum system to a game show, it noted: “We’ve already given away hundreds of millions of euros . . . courtesy of the sponsor, the Irish taxpayer.”