ess 17.11-3 won't install on Ubuntu 16.04

Hello,
Attempting to install ess (17.11-3xenial0) on our Ubuntu 16.04 systems
is failing with an error message.


root at kore:/home/eva# apt-get install ess
[...]
Install ess for emacs24
install/ess: Handling install for emacsen flavor emacs24
ERROR: install script from ess package failed
dpkg: error processing package ess (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 ess
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


Installing the previous version worked perfectly.  The relevant
sources.list line is

deb https://cloud.r-project.org/bin/linux/ubuntu xenial/

What is causing this error and how can it be fixed?
Thanks,
Eva.