If this lasts, we could lose hundreds of thousands of euro

A FANCY dress business is facing tens of thousands of euro worth of losses as a result of the postal stoppage.

For TheCostumeShop.ie, which is beside the main An Post depot in Portlaoise, Co. Laois, the stoppage comes as it faces the crucial Halloween period.

Owner Ronan O’Brien said: ‘Financially this could set us back tens if not hundreds of thousands of euro assuming the strike goes on for a week or so. I’m hoping we get a call to say everything is back to normal because it’s just crazy to have such a small number of people shutting down the postal service.

‘On Friday morning we had all our cages ready to load onto the An Post trucks when we got the call to say the trucks weren’t coming and these are not just Irish but worldwide deliveries.’

Mr O’Brien said his firm had to put a contingency plan in place due to the size of the business and worldwide deliveries.

‘ We have dif f erent couriers arranged that will collect all our packages on Monday to ensure our customers are not left waiting but obviously this has increased our costs quite dramatically. In some cases we have had to increase the cost on international deliveries.

‘Customers looking to make a purchase are asking why our costs have increased for shipping.

‘In Ireland we haven’t increased the prices for delivery as we are hoping that the strike will be called off. We decided to take the personal hit but for the US we would have been charging €23 for delivery but that is now increased to €30 because of having to outsource to other couriers.’

Mr O’Brien said he was ‘extremely worried’ about the postal strike continuing.

He said: ‘A lot of other businesses like ourselves will also be going to the other couriers and asking can they handle the extra capacity. In our case it’s very unlikely that they will have 40ft trucks available to handle our shipping needs.

‘We’re lucky we have a good relationship with other courier companies but a lot of smaller businesses won’t have this and that’s very concerning for them and a lot of these could face bankruptcy if a strike continues.’