An Post's former special projects manager told the High Court today the company had written to builders and architects in the mid-1990s about health and safety problems encountered by postal workers delivering letters through low-level letter boxes.
Some entire housing estates of between 300 and 400 houses had these letter boxes, Mr Michael McCabe said. There was an obligation of An Post to deliver mail and a postal worker who refused to deliver was liable to disciplinary procedures.
An Post sent letters in 1995 to the Irish Home Builders's Association and the Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland outlining the serious problems associated with low level boxes and asking that this practice cease.
They also circulated 5,600 brochures to door and porch manufacturers in 1996 and Global Windows was on that list. An Post had details of eleven incidents - three of them backstrain - between 1990 and 1993, he added.
Mr McCabe was giving evidence in an action in which a Dublin postman, Mr Anthony Clabby (40), of Woodlawn View, Santry is suing Global Windows Ltd, with registered offices at Lagan Road, Dublin Industrial Estate. Global Windows had joined An Post as a notice party.
On March 27th, 1996, while delivering mail at Cooltree Park, Beaumont, Dublin, Mr Clabby claims he bent down on his hunkers as, he claimed, he had been shown by An Post inspector, lifted the letter plate with one hand and pushed a letter through with the other hand. When he straightened up, he experienced severe back pain. He claims he has suffered from soreness, discomfort and general upset to his life as a result.
Global Windows and An Post deny Mr Clabby's claims.
The President of the High Court, Mr Justice Finnegan, said it seemed to him it was up to Mr Clabby to say what steps Global Windows should have taken in relation to the letter box between 1993 and the date of the accident in 1996. He was struggling to see what reasonable steps a manufacturer of such doors could have taken in that interval.
Mr John Trainor SC, for Mr Clabby, said Global Windows could have made contact with the persons to whom such doors were supplied and could have said they would help by perhaps inserting "blanks" where the boxes were located.
If the manufacturer had notified the householder of the risk and offered co-operation in removing the risk then the manufacturer would have done his duty.