MR. FIELDI beg to ask the Postmaster General if he will explain why no reply has been sent to the Memorial of the entire sorting staff of the General Post Office, Dublin, re the triple duty arrangement recently established there, forwarded in May, 1892, although a reply was asked for some months after its being forwarded, and the late Postmaster General promised in the House of Commons to have the matter in dispute fully inquired into; whether a similar system of duty has been abolished in the Cork Post Office; whether the Postmaster General will abolish this duty, as it presses severely on the health and constitutions of the sorting clerks; and whether it could be avoided by a readjustment of the staff and a slight expenditure?
§ MR. A. MORLEYA scheme for the revision of the Dublin Post Office is now under consideration and the Memorialists will receive an answer to their Memorial, when a decision upon this scheme has been arrived at. It has not, however, been found possible to abolish triple duty entirely in this office, though it is confined to only 15 sorters out of a staff of 260, and the turn of these men only comes round to each officer one month in six, while the total attendance of the month only amounts to 7¼ hours a day. It is the fact, as the hon. Member states, that triple duty has been abolished in Cork so far as the Established Staff is concerned, though the work at Cork, and the hours of arrival of the mail, have no comparison with the duties in Dublin.