Next-day delivery performance by An Post worsened significantly last year with the postal service falling well further short of official targets than in 2024.

New figures by postal regulator ComReg show An Post delivered 78% of single piece priority mail across the State on the next working day in 2025 – a decrease of 5 percentage points on the previous year.

The rate is also far short of the regulatory standard set by ComReg of 94% for next day deliveries.

A breakdown of the latest figures shows next day delivery rates fell to just 64% for items posted outside Dublin to addresses in Dublin last year – down from 78% in 2024.

In the month of December – a typical busy period for the State’s postal service – the proportion of mail posted from outside Dublin that was delivered to the capital on the next day dropped from 52% in 2024 to just 18% last year.

The breakdown also shows that An Post achieved a next day delivery rate of 81% for the period January-November 2025 – down from 85% over the corresponding period in 2024.

The average next day delivery rate in December 2025 – a month when postal services face additional challenges due to the quantity of mail being posted – was 49%.

It was a dramatic drop of 12 percentage points on the same month the previous year.

The figures are based on quality of postal service monitor reports conducted on behalf of ComReg by Ipsos B&A which analysed delivery times on around 27,600 items of mail posted in 2025.

Next-day delivery of mail collected from businesses was considerably higher at 90% compared to post collected from post offices (74%) and post boxes (72%) – although all figures were comparatively lower than in 2024.

Similarly, the report showed performance rates for next day delivery were higher for typed addresses at 82% than for hand-written addresses at 74%.

The next day delivery of standard letters was marginally higher at 79% than for large envelopes (77%) and packets (75%).

Metered post also had a higher rate of 84% compared to stamped mail at 73%.

The report noted that two force majeure periods disrupted deliveries of mail by An Post last year – a period of heavy snow over five days on January 6-10, 2025 and the second due to Storm Éowyn on January 24, 2025.

However, items posted on or between those dates in affected areas were excluded from the analysis and did not impact on the published results.

The latest annual report by ComReg on the performance of An Post also found slippage on the separate measurement of the proportion of mail delivered within three working days.

It revealed that 96.5% of single piece priority mail items were delivered within three working days last year – down from 97.9% in 2024 – with both sets of results below the ComReg standard of 99.5%.

Delivery of single piece priority mail within the period of January-November 2025 was achieved in 96.8% of items posted but just 92.6% in December 2025.

The corresponding figures for the previous year were 98% and 95.8% respectively showing a deterioration in performance during 2025.

A spokesperson for An Post said the company took quality of service very seriously and was fully committed to meeting the standards set under regulations.

“We continue to engage with ComReg to improve transparency and understanding so as to provide customers with world class services,” the spokesperson said.

An Post said the company was recruiting an extra 350 full-time delivery staff and updating and redesigning its national delivery network with increased use of technology “to ensure compliance, process improvements and early identification of service issues.”

However, An Post did not offer an explanation for the decrease in delivery rates last year.

The annual independent monitoring of the quality of the universal postal service provided by An Post was first conducted in 2003 when just 71% of mail was delivered on the next working day.

By 2019, delivery rates had risen to 90% before the Covid-19 pandemic impacted on results over the following two years when delivery rates on the next working day fell to 82% and 84% respectively.

Delivery rates peaked in 2015 and 2017 with 91% of single piece priority mail being delivered on the next working day.