An Post cannot deliver post to your door any more; it cannot make money on its monopoly over mail deliveries; but it can make a complete and utter fool of itself trying to close the nuclear fuel processing plant at Sellafield, even as it loses €60 million in two years.
Look at the word, An Post. Okay, it's the usual kind, self-consciously fey neologism which semi-States like to foist on us: take a word in English, put a cawbeen on its head, pop a clay pipe in its mouth, and pretend that it's some indigenous Irish word.
But with or without the Hibernian regalia, we know what we mean by the post. We pay to have letters delivered. Nothing more, nothing less. We don't expect An Post to carry our letters free to the Government, instructing it to solve the traffic problems of Dublin, to the governor of California urging him to cure the San Andreas fault now, or to Kofi Annan, telling him to get his finger out and to stop global warming.
Public money
An Post is supposed to be simply a messenger. It is Hermes, and its job is to pass the word. It is not to promote certain causes over others, and lose bucket-loads of public money as it does so. Yet last year An Post sent 10 zillion postcards to 10 Downing Street demanding the closure of Sellafield, and no doubt they arrived punctually; but then it was unable to deliver over a million Christmas cards on time.
In the private sector, people get sacked for that kind of idiocy. But not of course in semi-Stateland, where piety so often takes the place of the balance sheet, especially if it's decked out in nuclear-free Riverdance clobber.
An aside here. Why does Sellafield cause such paranoia in Ireland, as if it had been placed there in order to kill the Irish people and poison our waters? At least 30 million British people live within that same radius from Sellafield which encompasses Dublin: and since the prevailing winds are from the west, in the event of something nuclear going bang in the night, it's most likely to be goodbye Newcastle United and the Bishop of Durham, and possibly no more Eurovision fun from Norway. But An Post will still be An Posting.
Not that I like Sellafield. I am - or so I am assured - as mortal as the next man, and I have no ambition to glow in the night or sprout antlers and gills. But the options for Sellafield were closed long ago. It is has become a historical fact, just as Mount Etna is a historical fact, and the British government can no more close it down than can Signor Berlusconi abolish inconvenient volcanoes.
Irish Sea
But even if it were just about possible to shift all that plutonium, where would it go? And how? What route would the vessel carrying the nuclear waste take? No doubt An Post would object to it passing through the Irish Sea. So tell me, Irish postal experts, who left a million cards in their sorting boxes over Christmas, what solution do you see for the dilemma of Sellafield? Or can you understand that sometimes in life you can't solve certain problems?
Of course, the reliably pious placardistas have been demanding that the British government close Sellafield down. Which is fine. But why did a semi-State business whose single duty is to transmit mail become involved in such a know-nothing campaign, even as it loses money like a burst dam gushes water? (According to an An Post official, the Downing Street write-in was financially self-supporting; but he would say that anyway. Which is correct, by the way: "to an An Post official" or "to An Post official"? Both are gibberish, of course, merely proving that the cawbeen and the clay-pipe are meaningless linguistic tokens.)
The amazingly reassuring aspect of this for John Hynes, the chief executive of An Post, is that there are no demands for his head because of it. How strange, to run a publicly-owned company which loses money in such vast amounts and no-one complains. How wonderful, to run a futile campaign demanding the closure of the uncloseable - next: An Post shuts down Krakatoa - without public rebuke. How marvellous that this farce will be followed by retirement this year in - no doubt - a blaze of glory.
Do you know what that is? That's the public service. And for those of you too young to remember, that was the norm in Irish life until the Ryanair revolution.
Rural Ireland
And now, instead of people getting angry over the genuinely infuriating, they're getting hysterical over An Post's perfectly reasonable proposal for roadside letter-boxes. Senator Jim Higgins, in those shrill, insincere tones that suggest a Fine Gaeler desperately hunting for an issue - any issue - has pronounced that the move is "another blow to rural Ireland".
This is claptrap. Rural Ireland is in rude health. Many of us who live in the country already have our post-boxes on the road, and are pleased to lessen the workload of that splendid individual, the postman. (Why are postmen - I don't exclude women from this, but I will brush my teeth with a plutonium pile before I solemnly write postperson - always such efficient, friendly, happy people?) I can't think of a better individual, and it makes eminent sense to ease his lot.
So why the frenzy over a rational decision, and almost a universally assenting silence over one that was perfectly asinine? Why? Our old friend fat-headed sanctimony again.