Nurturing lifelong literacy and numeracy
An Post is committed to supporting reading, writing and numeracy, ensuring equal opportunities for all. Through partnerships with key organisations, we help raise awareness of unmet literacy needs and support programmes that make a tangible impact:
• As the headline sponsor of Business in the Community Ireland’s Time to Read and Time to Count programmes, 36 An Post volunteers provided over 400 hours of paired reading and numeracy support to 56 children across four schools in 2024.
• We continued our long-standing support of Children’s Books Ireland, delivering over 3,500 books to charities on World Book Day and sponsoring the Pride Reading Guide.
• The Dolly Parton Imagination Library remains a cornerstone of our literacy work, providing free books to children from birth to age five in Dublin and Cork. In 2024, we reached a major milestone in Dublin, delivering our 300,000th book since 2019. By the end of 2024, a total of 350,339 books had been delivered to 14,497 children across Dublin and Cork.
• The An Post Junior Handwriting Competition continued to thrive, with over 8,000 entries from 300+ schools, encouraging children to write letters envisioning a better Ireland by 2030.
• Through the An Post Irish Book Awards and our BookTok Book Club, we promote reading nationwide. In 2024, our BookTok community grew to over 12,000 members, with 16 million social media views. We also launched New Voices: 20 Best New Irish Writers, spotlighting emerging talent through nominations from publishers, booksellers, and librarians.
• During December, An Post helped Santa design, print and post 130,000 free replies to children in Ireland who had sent letters to him. We have partnered with Vision Ireland Library Access Service since 2009 to help Santa produce and distribute replies to letters he receives from visually-impaired and blind children. With our support, Vision Ireland produced 50 braille, 100 audio and 150 large print replies, helping to bring the magic of Christmas to life whilst ensuring equality and dignity for children across the country.
