National Postcodes to be introduced

a65b2cd · 12-12-2014 11:07pm

Plenty of strong points made by Nightline - will FTAI survive such a public lashing?

... "Naming every road and numbering every property would be potentially divisive and very time-consuming and expensive. Almost every road which we would name and number would involve a debate with the people who live there as to what it will be called and what number each house will have. The UK was the first country to introduce a postcode system. It was originally introduced in London in the 1850s, but it took until 1977 to complete the process of implementing it across the UK, with most of the work done between the 1950s and the 1970s. It took almost 20 years for the UK authorities to give everything a name and number, because it was so divisive and contentious. It was a very costly and lengthy process. With the Eircode system, whereby every property has a unique identifier, we can build new properties along a road without having to renumber or rename anything."

Leonard Shelby · 12-12-2014 11:09pm

Conflict of interest, as nonsensical as the argument is, has no effect on the postcode design, that is something the Loc8rs are obsessed about.

You've displayed your ignorance twice.

Firstly you give no context for "vector map" before giving a figure of 200 MB. What scale is the data derived from? Is it road data, lake boundaries, what? Does it have intelligence built in to the road data, including the address (every sat nav one does) which means it has a database attached.

Eircode don't have to use any compression scheme, that is for the IT people to decide when implementing in their systems. This is simple IT stuff, you obviously don't work in IT.

Eircode will be on all SatNavs next year, data size is a not an issue.

a65b2cd · 12-12-2014 11:10pm

More from Mr. Tuohy of Nightline:

"My father came from a townland near Portumna in County Galway. Everybody's surname in the townland was either Tuohy or Conroy. In the old days, when my mother wrote a letter to my grandmother in County Galway, she would write my grandfather's name and his father's name in brackets after it so that the postman would know which Tuohy family to deliver it to. The properties in that townland had no name or number. The postman knew their location by the names of the people who lived there. The roads to those properties did not have names either. The introduction of the Eircode system is a great idea because it will allow all those aspects to remain the same. There is no need to change the name of a road. The houses in a parish do not need to be numbered or given a name; they will be simply given a code. That means a courier, postal operator, appliance repair man or ambulance driver can drive straight to the door of a property without the need to change any of the attributes in terms of the address. It means that everyone with the same surname in a townland can have the same address, but the addition of an Eircode will allow us deal with the non-unique addresses. That phenomenon is quite unique to Ireland, and the addition of an Eircode will allow us to address that very well. It is particularly appropriate for Irish conditions, and this is before we talk about those areas in the Gaeltacht where addresses are in Irish and there may be particular nuances in terms of the Irish language. There is no need to change any of that; all that is needed is that an Eircode be added and everything else will remain the same. "

yuloni · 12-12-2014 11:10pm

This post has been deleted.

a65b2cd · 12-12-2014 11:13pm

... "I draw a comparison between the introduction of this system and the design of the Dublin Port tunnel 12 or 14 years ago prior to its construction. In a similar way, minority interests said the port tunnel would be too small for trucks to be driven through it. I drove through it on my way into town this morning and I can assure the members there were no trucks stuck in it. That tunnel was built to EU standards that were new at that time, but a number of minority-interest operators in the market had lorries that were built to an older UK standard, which would not fit in the tunnel. Those operators wanted us to redesign the tunnel in order that their trucks would fit through it, as opposed to redesigning their trucks to the new EU standard. The members will note the parallel I am drawing. Similarly, a small number of multinational corporations do not like our new postcode system because it does not fit their systems. They do not want to spend money changing their systems to suit it and, therefore, they will shout loudly to try to persuade us to change our postcodes to suit them."

a65b2cd · 12-12-2014 11:16pm

... "It will save us time and fuel and it will be better for the environment and everything else. I very much recommend the proposed system. It has been well thought-out and is particularly suited to Irish conditions."

yuloni · 12-12-2014 11:26pm

This post has been deleted.

ukoda · 12-12-2014 11:33pm

That was answered above. They appear to have a more modern system and the others have legacy systems suited only to perhaps the UK design and don't want to spend money. Instead they want our country to change its postcode to fit their systems so they can do things on the cheap rather than invest in a more modern IT infrastructure

Leonard Shelby · 12-12-2014 11:35pm

Talk about moving goalposts. Why would I want to have a debate with you about the size of map data on a SatNav? The charge was that the Eircode database was too big, and that charge has been comprehensively dismissed.

yuloni · 12-12-2014 11:37pm

This post has been deleted.

my3cents · 12-12-2014 11:40pm

I'll try a short sentence for you. No he didn't.

yuloni · 12-12-2014 11:58pm

This post has been deleted.

yuloni · 13-12-2014 12:17am

This post has been deleted.

ukoda · 13-12-2014 12:28am

Well they said at one point they had concerns around the random nature as it might send them to the wrong location, however it was then advised that the ECAS process is to check the address and not solely rely on eircodes (which is a prudent measure with any postcode introduced) since then they haven't said anymore and the NAS have said they will use it and it will be very helpful to them

A lot of people didn't fully understand eircode and its use / implementation when it was first announced and jumped to panic mode, (maybe they thought it was like loc8 which would mean soley relying on a code!) there was probably also a bit of "jumping on the band wagon" syndrome to bash the code

Ignorance can be a powerful thing to hinder progress and change. I wonder what they would say if asked now

yuloni · 13-12-2014 12:35am

This post has been deleted.

Leonard Shelby · 13-12-2014 12:42am

That is a misreading of the FTAI statement. What they said, as reported in the Examiner, is

They aren't claiming they were not met, but that their demands for a sub-optimal postcode design to lower their IT costs haven't been met.

ukoda · 13-12-2014 12:45am

They didn't want consultation tho did they. They wanted to design the code in a way that suited their interests and only their own interests. eircode were paid to design an independant system that could work across ALL areas and uses and then they took the design to the relevant parties

Shur we'd be screaming blue murder if eircode didn't bother designing anything and went in to meet the parties going "so em guys....what should we do?"

yuloni · 13-12-2014 12:47am

This post has been deleted.

ukoda · 13-12-2014 12:50am

As above. It was eircodes job to design the code

yuloni · 13-12-2014 12:53am

This post has been deleted.

Leonard Shelby · 13-12-2014 12:53am

That is their first statement. The latest accusation against eircode is that they didn't meet the FTAI or its members again recently as they stated.

Leonard Shelby · 13-12-2014 1:00am

By the end of next year it will be appearing on significant percentages of post, it will be in use by most government departments as part of their routine interaction with citizens, every Insurance company will be using it, etc. etc.

But let's forget about that. By the end of next year the public will have wholeheartedly embraced eircodes because they see the benefits to themselves. That will be the ultimate judgement on fit-for-purpose, and it will be a landslide decision. Loc8 arguments can only survive in a vacuum, when the evidence that it works is in front of peoples faces then their misinformation will be ignored.

yuloni · 13-12-2014 1:12am

This post has been deleted.

Leonard Shelby · 13-12-2014 3:47pm

The source of most anti-Eircode rhetoric is Loc8, either directly or indirectly. I take it from your profile "Location: Loc8: AK6" that you've bought the Loc8 is brilliant argument.

An Post are upgrading their systems to make full use of postcodes
Nightline will be doing the same
If you want to live in a country where "no one else will bother with" postcodes then you'll need to move outside the OECD before the end of next year. I'd hate to see your Christmas ruined next year with all those cards arriving at your house with Eircodes on them, from people you thought were your friends! Happy Christmas.

plodder · 13-12-2014 5:27pm

Eircode seems to solve the unique address problem, but it's a disappointment in other respects, all the more so because there was no public consultation involved in the design process. It wasn't supposed to be a hidden or technical code, yet what they've designed is basically 60% hidden (or random). Other than identifying specific addresses, random codes are no use for anything else.

I can see the point of using random characters at the lowest level, but I think it would have been better to have a second level of structure to the code, below the routing key (first three characters). If the next two characters identified a small area within the post town area, then the code would have been useful for so many other purposes.

For instance, small businesses who want to know roughly where their customers are, say a take-away delivery guy or 'man with a van', grouping his deliveries at the start of the day. Most postcodes allow you to do that, just by looking at the code itself, but Eircode can't do it unfortunately.

In fairness, that's a strange analogy to be using. The fact is we spent billions on a fantastic motorway network with a standard bridge height of 5.5 metres. And then what did we do, right at the entry point to this network? Build a tunnel with only 4.65metres clearance. And then what did we do? Ban the trucks that would have needed higher clearance than 4.65 metres. Strange backward way of doing things..

antoinolachtnai · 13-12-2014 7:15pm

eircode doesn't really 'solve' the unique addresses problem except in the most theoretical way. Like Loc8, eircode is theoretically very plausible, but no practical means of rolling it out has yet been revealed or explained.

Leonard Shelby · 13-12-2014 7:21pm

An Post are delivering each unique Eircode to every non unique address. The coordinates and address for each one is stored in the database. The plan is sound.

antoinolachtnai · 13-12-2014 7:30pm

How are the unique eircodes going to be delivered accurately to every non-unique address? How is the correct delivery going to be verified?

Leonard Shelby · 13-12-2014 7:39pm

I don't see how that poses an unsolvable problem for An Post. There are a number of ways for them to do this. Risk of reputation damage should be enough to concentrate their minds to ensure accuracy.

my3cents · 13-12-2014 7:39pm

If An Post can get your mail to you now without an Eircode why can't they do the same with an Eircode?

National Postcodes to be introduced

Comments