Proposals to liberalise 20 per cent of the EU's reserved area for the postal service will have a disproportionate effect in the Republic and will expose revenues of approximately £150 million to competition, an Oireachtas committee was told yesterday.

Total revenue for An Post in 1999 was £424 million, Mr John Hynes, chief executive of An Post, told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Public Enterprise And Transport. The new regulator appointed when the market is liberalised would need to be able to take the special circumstances of the Irish market into account, Mr Hynes said.