Three years ago when most companies were basking in the boom, An Post was a financial and industrial basket case with mounting losses and almost weekly strike threats.

Having managed to weather the storm, the company is now in a position to benefit from the economic tsunami that has caught so many unaware.

"An Post is now in a decent state to handle the downturn," says company spokesman Angus Lafferty.

Postbank, which it set up with Dutch bank Fortis, has benefited significantly from the banking crisis when, in the midst of it, people opted for the security of a state-backed 'bank'.

"There was an uptake on all our products and money flowed in. Trust is critical in a time of crisis and people trust An Post," says Lafferty. "Postbank had no loan book, so we didn't have the toxic debt problems other banks had," he added.

The company's parcel division has also cashed in on the increasing number of people savings money by buying goods over the internet, particularly from the UK where they can avail of weak sterling prices.

"We doubled our parcel business last year and it now constitutes 14% of our business," says Lafferty.

Though a sharp drop in the number of house completions as well as company closures has meant a drop in mail volumes, Lafferty says this has been offset by the increasing number of companies using direct advertising through the post.

And the state company has plans. In the coming year Postbank will start offering loans and mortgages, link up with Vodafone to crack the mobile-phone market and continue the automation of its 1,200 branches.

"We're not whistling past the graveyard and we are not unaffected by the downturn, but it's not all negative," says Lafferty.