P&T (Post and Telegraphs) were possibly one of the most useless organisations in history.

It's a good thing they discovered something !

They were abolished in the early 1980s due to their complete inability to do either of their core functions. The mail was always late and the phones never worked.

Despite their tens of thousands of employees (there were only a few people who didn't work for P&T) they were taking up to 2 years to install a phoneline. Businesses were going bust because they couldn't get access to decent telecommunications infrastructure. Phone charges were astronomically high and they were on strike most of the time.

It reached a national crisis level by the early 1980s and the whole organisation was scrapped. Telecom Eireann (now eircom) established and the whole network digitalised in a very short space of time.

So, obviously "the lads" were out digging holes in the ground and doing amature geology when they were suppoed to be putting up a phoneline!

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Apparently a team of at least 3 guys would arrive to install an extension socket.

There was a theory in the late 1970s that P&T actually had more employees than working telephone lines!

[This message has been edited by djk (edited 05-14-2005).]