Postcodes Page

A Postcode for Ireland
The Universal Postal Union describes the Postcode as the fundamental, essential element of an address, and a unique, universal identifier, which unambiguously identifies the addressee’s locality and assists in the transmission and sorting of mail items. Therefore, one wonders, if it is so fundamental, why it has not been introduced by the Irish Post Office. The main reason given is that there is no need for a Postcode because optical character readers are used in the sorting of mail. However, only approx. 60% of all mail is capable of being read by the machines and even these automated sorting machines use an internal code to read and sort mail.

There has been a continuous demand from the business community for many years now to introduce a Post code in Ireland. Many other groups and individuals have also expressed a desire to see this happen. From a business prospective Postcodes can be used to determine such things as goods distribution, defining marketing areas, route scheduling and in the organisation of after-sales service. They can also be used to select geographic areas for mail shots, market research, surveys, etc.

Addresses in Ireland are based on townlands, streets and postal districts. There is no national address gazetteer available for consultation so that addresses are determined mainly by reference to the locality, street, etc in which a person resides. The fact is that a great deal of these addresses are ambiguous and cause confusion within the postal system e.g.

Blackrock, Co. Louth with Blackrock, Co. Dublin or Blackrock, Cork

Riverstown, Co. Sligo with Riverstown, Co. Cork

Passage East, Waterford with Passage West, Cork

Sandford Road, Dublin 6 with Sandyford Road, Dublin 16

As the Regulator (ComReg) has stated in the Regulations of Postal Services document of 6^th November 2002 “ the use of a simple Postcode can help to reduce such confusion and also speed up the sorting process”. She also states that 105 Universal Postal Union member countries uses Postcodes as part of their addressing systems and that apart from Greece, Ireland is the only European member state that does not use a postal coding system.
Proposal
AddressIreland.com is a location-based website which is due to be officially launched in January 2005. Its main purpose is to provide correct address information at street, townland and locality level. Currently, there are over 80,000 such addresses on the website which allows users to query specific locations and generate correct address formats. Even before its official launch it is generating a lot of interest from both ordinary users and the business community.

AddressIreland has now developed a Postcode for Ireland which will simplify many of the address issues raised above. It is a 5-digit numeric code which has been designed to accommodate not only the needs of the Irish postal system but will also be suitable for identifying geographic areas for commercial purposes. When developing the Postcode An Post’s national mails network was taken into account to ensure that the Postcode would facilitate the distribution of mail throughout the country. As the “county” is the only permanent geographic structure it has been used as the basis of the code rather than a postal district. The overall structure of the proposed code is as follows:

Click Postcode Map to see the proposed Postcode for Ireland