National Postcodes to be introduced

dr.fuzzenstein

Sam Russell wrote: »

I have a code number from revenue for LPT - that has an identity number unique to my address.

I have a meter from the gas company - that has an identity number unique to my address.

I have a meter from the electricity company - that has an identity number unique to my address.

I have a meter from the water company - that has an identity number unique to my address.

I have a TV licence that has an identity number unique to my address.

I am entered on the electoral roll and have a I an identity number unique to my address.

I now have a postcode that has an identity number unique to my address.

Do we need all these numbers and codes?

Looks like the Eircode is the one to rule them all...
(I'll get me coat)

MBSnr

Sam Russell wrote: »

I have a code number from revenue for LPT - that has an identity number unique to my address.

I have a meter from the gas company - that has an identity number unique to my address.

I have a meter from the electricity company - that has an identity number unique to my address.

I have a meter from the water company - that has an identity number unique to my address.

I have a TV licence that has an identity number unique to my address.

I am entered on the electoral roll and have a I an identity number unique to my address.

Here we go again...
The above don't define exactly where your house is, if it has no name or number....
Give a delivery company any of those numbers (of a rural house) and ask them to turn up at the door...

I now have a postcode that has an identity number unique to my address.

And it shows exactly where you live.... The only one of your examples that can.

Do we need all these numbers and codes?

Yes. Live with it.

moyners

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Ah, the recurring theme "But I have three separate Dole cards, I have no intention paying for water, TV license, no way, my spouse also claims, it's no-one's business where I live, I like to be off the radar for, ahem, 'reasons' "

That really wasn't the part of the blog I was referring to. I'll grant you its written from a certain slant in that direction. I completely agree with you on that about peoples reluctance to have people know where they live although IMHO I really think they made a mistake in not including at least some granularity to allow people to give their general area rather than precise location. But look the system is there now and there's no use in going over old arguments.

But I hadn't heard about a lot of the insider knowledge and cross-connections between the players in the process, which I think do raise some valid questions.

Sam Russell

MBSnr wrote: »

Here we go again...
The above don't define exactly where your house is, if it has no name or number....
Give a delivery company any of those numbers (of a rural house) and ask them to turn up at the door...



And it shows exactly where you live.... The only one of your examples that can.



Yes. Live with it.

The Eircode only gives my location when referred to a database. The Gas company know where their meter is as do ESB Networks for their meter and so on. They all access a database with location information.

Eircode on its own offers no more than any of these. It should at least have gone down to the small areas used by the central statistics office.

Eircode has been designed to be useless without access to a paid-for database.

SpaceTime

The GPRN and MPRN actually also serve a security function when you're switching providers, much like the UAN on a landline.

To swap over, you need the MPRN or GPRN which isn't published information and thus serves as a simple, but effective measure to prove you actually have the bill.

If ESB Networks or Gas Networks Ireland just used an Eircode, anyone could mess up your energy accounts.

I can't see any of these networks deciding to swap to an eircode for this reason.

Irish Water just needed something to register people, I can't see them switching either as you'd never know we could end up with competitive water providers at some stage in the future too. It's a bit unlikely, but it's not beyond the realms of possibility and could be done in exactly the same way as electricity or gas.

As for the electoral register, you have an Elector number. That's not unique to a property, but to a person. To clean up the electoral register, they should probably have a single database possibly using PPS numbers as the key to avoid multiple simultaneous registrations.

ukoda

SpaceTime wrote: »

The GPRN and MPRN actually also serve a security function when you're switching providers, much like the UAN on a landline.

To swap over, you need the MPRN which isn't published information and thus serves as a simple, but effective measure to prove you actually have the bill.

If ESB Networks or Gas Networks Ireland just used an Eircode, anyone could mess up your energy accounts.

I can't see any of these networks deciding to swap to an eircode for this reason.

As for the electoral register, you have an Elector number. That's not unique to a property, but to a person. To clean up the electoral register, they should probably have a single database possibly using PPS numbers as the key to avoid multiple simultaneous registrations.

Energy companies have no absolute requirement for MPRN OR GPRN numbers before they act on an account, they work off account numbers which are spefic to the person and not the address, they also do a series of data protection security questions before doing anything on an account. If you were looking to set up an account at an address they will just take the address from you, there's no 100% requirement for a MPRN or GPRN for that address before they set up an account for you.

The only reason they ask for the MPRN or GPRN is if they can't find the address.

They will absolutely use eircode as it will speed up their searching.

MBSnr

Sam Russell wrote: »

The Eircode only gives my location when referred to a database. The Gas company know where their meter is as do ESB Networks for their meter and so on. They all access a database with location information.

Eircode on its own offers no more than any of these. It should at least have gone down to the small areas used by the central statistics office.

Eircode has been designed to be useless without access to a paid-for database.

It didn't. It's done. Move on. Nothing to be achieved here by constantly banging on about something that can't and will not be changed.

As they say in that song in Frozen....."Let it go".

SpaceTime

ukoda wrote: »

Energy companies have no absolute requirement for MPRN OR GPRN numbers before they act on an account, they work off account numbers which are spefic to the person and not the address, they also do a series of data protection security questions before doing anything on an account. If you were looking to set up an account at an address they will just take the address from you, there's no 100% requirement for a MPRN or GPRN for that address before they set up an account for you.

That's actually not quite true.

If you're switching providers, the new provider does not have any access to the previous provider's billing systems and will only know the address. They have absolutely no access to the previous provider's security questions.

The MPRN or GPRN in conjunction with the address is the main security.

Otherwise, you're stuck with whatever provider you have at the moment who might act upon other questions like their billing account numbers.

If there's a debt on the account or a fixed term contract, the previous provider can raise a flag and refuse to allow the account to move. That's all they can do though.

For landlines, any provider issuing geographic numbers (including UPC and VoIP providers) must issue a UAN. This started out as the old eircom account number back in the day, but has morphed into a code to reference a particular number on the PSTN. So, if you're porting from say Eircom to UPC or Blueface to Goldfish and you're bringing a landline number with you, you need the UAN for security reasons.

The single biggest plus point for eircode for utilities is that it will allow a new account to be setup much more easily without all sorts of confusion about addresses.

There are often so many variants of addresses and areas, even in urban areas, that it can be hard to locate some people at all.

You get something like:

Castleboardsville
Upsidedown Road
Stillorgan
Co. Dublin

Castleboardsville
23 Upsidedown Road
Stillorgan
Blackrock
Co. Dublin

23 Upsidedown Road
Stillorgan
Dublin 18

There are tons and tons of errors and inaccuracies in addresses here.

If your database isn't able to do a Google-like fuzzy search, there's a fair chance you'll be unable to locate someone.

With my address in Cork there's a constant dispute as some utility companies stick us into the next suburb over and will actually argue the point!

Aimead

Nermal wrote: »

FTAI objections boil down to 'we don't want to pay for it'..

As someone who works in the industry and who has posted at some length in this thread about the various problems that Eircodes have, I must say that I’m disappointed to read a comment like this. If you really want to know what the FTAI wanted out of a postcode then simply read their submissions as part of the consultation process.

---

ukoda wrote: »

However the FTAI are campaigning for a code designed in the 60's ….

There is a massive irony here.

The telephone directory is a code that, afaik, has existed in Ireland since at least the 60’s. You take a code, in this case a telephone number, and check it in the directory to find the address. As the number of telephones increased this became impossible to manually. The advent of computers gave a new lease of life to it, allowing you to do the same process you could do manually in the 60’s with the dead tree version.

With the exception of some basic error correction, Eircodes work in much the same way. Type in your Eircode and the system comes back with an address. So, yeah, the Eircode system is pretty much a giant lookup directory. Hardly screams ‘modern design’ when the very same concepts has been around a lot longer than the 60’s.

Consider the extract I quoted previously from the CILT submission, and note the suggestion that any postcode system should be convertible to/from GPS. Whether you are talking about the internet, container shipping, CMR forms, etc., if there is a hallmark of being modern it is being inter-compatible. Thanks to cross compatibility your computer can talk to any other computer it is connected to. Thanks to cross compatibility any shipping container can easily pass through any port of multi-modal system. Thanks to standardised CMR forms most deliveries between international jurisdictions have been greatly simplified. Now look again at the CILT suggestion. GPS in the global standard, and any code that has compatibility with it will automatically be compatible with more apps and software you could shake a stick at. For example, I can use Google <aps as a sat nav on my phone simply because both my phone and Google Maps both support GPS.

But no, instead of being compatible with the global standard that is GPS, Eircode was instead designed around a simple lookup directory.

It. Was. An. Insane. Design. Decision.

---

GJG wrote: »

But some of these were claims of simple fact, such as that the Rock of Cashel would not get an Eircode,

There is still a massive underlying problem here – due to the very way Eircode is designed there will be countless locations without an Eircode. Any locations not in An Post’s directory will not have an Eircode (aiui). Some of the deliveries we will be doing this week will be to locations that don’t have Eircodes (we’ve looked). You can hate on Loc8 for speaking falsely, but don’t let it overshadow the merits of the underlying complaint.

---

ukoda wrote: »

…. we were told 9% of €27 million for design….

That’s 2.4 million. I find it abso-fecking-lutely insane that it cost that much to design Eircode and set up its database when you consider what it actually is – a database mapping of An Post’s directory to a code with simple error correction. Mapping 2.2 million entries to a randomly generated code with basic error correction and proximity similarity filtering should, in no universe, cost 2.4 million.

I’d love to see the detailed breakdown because, on the face of it, this just screams rip-off. Anyone here who knows a bit about database mappings and code generation see something that I’m missing?

GJG

Aimead wrote: »

There is still a massive underlying problem here – due to the very way Eircode is designed there will be countless locations without an Eircode. Any locations not in An Post’s directory will not have an Eircode (aiui). Some of the deliveries we will be doing this week will be to locations that don’t have Eircodes (we’ve looked). You can hate on Loc8 for speaking falsely, but don’t let it overshadow the merits of the underlying complaint.

I'm not hating on anyone, and my complaint was not that Loc8 made a mistake, it was that they accused people, in strident terms, of bad faith and stupidity for contradicting them. When Loc8 turned out to be wrong in fact they made no effort to correct the record, let alone withdraw their accusations.

If you can cite locations that you think could do with an Eircode but don't have them yet, then let's have them - I'm done taking seriously assertions that there exist problems that have to be kept secret.

Secondly, if such locations exist, there is nothing baked into Eircode that prevent them from being added later. I think that an obvious next step is to give codes to bus stops, ESB substations, mobile masts and anywhere else services are delivered.

In addition, Loc8 have been busy on twitter and elsewhere, for example, promoting a blog that makes claims that they either know, or should know are false.

Conradh na Gaeilge have protested, not unreasonably, that the Geodirectory, on which Eircode is based, does not contain the Irish-language version of some rural addresses. For this reason the Eircodes of these addresses can only be found by typing in their English-language address, and the English version only comes up when the Eircode is input in the website. It's a bit of a mess, but hardly something you could blame Eircode for.

Loc8 et al are winding this up to say that "50,000 rural homes [are] completely missing from Eircode", giving the clear impression that Eircode forgot to give a code to those properties.

I'm happy to debate the pros and cons, but that just isn't possible with someone who isn't willing to acknowledge the facts as they exist.

GerardKeating

GJG wrote: »

For this reason the Eircodes of these addresses can only be found by typing in their English-language address, and the English version only comes up when the Eircode is input in the website. It's a bit of a mess, but hardly something you could blame Eircode for.

For "some" address, the English language version is a mixture of English and Irish.

GJG

GerardKeating wrote: »

For "some" address, the English language version is a mixture of English and Irish.

Quite possibly, though isn't what CnaG have said - do you have a source by any chance?

But that doesn't change the fact that the claim that 50k properties were not assigned an Eircode when they should have been is entirely false.

FishOnABike

What I find most disconcerting is the number of original recommendations the current eircode fails on. Almost all of them seem to have been ignored in the interests of monetizing the solution.

BailMeOut

FishOnABike wrote: »

What I find most disconcerting is the number of original recommendations the current eircode fails on. Almost all of them seem to have been ignored in the interests of monetizing the solution.

do you have some examples?

MarkK

Sam Russell wrote: »

Eircode has been designed to be useless without access to a paid-for database.

So the same a Loc8 and same as the UK postcode system.

You have to pay for the UK postcode database too:
http://www.postcodeaddressfile.co.uk/

The UK postcode system is does let you find a specific addresses without referring to some sort of database either.

FishOnABike

MarkK wrote: »

So the same a Loc8 and same as the UK postcode system.

You have to pay for the UK postcode database too:
http://www.postcodeaddressfile.co.uk/

The UK postcode system is does let you find a specific addresses without referring to some sort of database either.

You don't have to pay for UK postcode location information. Code point open, available free to download from the UK ordnance survey provides location information for every UK postcode.
https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/code-point-open.html

I'd like to see eircode provide the same eircode to location information free of charge. While a second best to implementing a geo-code based solution in the first place it would go some way towards addressing some of the complaints about the closed nature of the eircode postal code system.

FishOnABike

FishOnABike wrote: »

What I find most disconcerting is the number of original recommendations the current eircode fails on. Almost all of them seem to have been ignored in the interests of monetizing the solution.

BailMeOut wrote: »

do you have some examples?

The link in moyners earlier post lists nine original recommendations of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources.

moyners wrote: »

Interesting blog appeared today and is doing the rounds. Can't comment on the validity of some of the claims but they won't help public acceptance.

https://medium.com/@beyourownreason/how-greed-cronyism-and-vested-interests-are-serving-anyone-but-the-irish-public-4e80bfdfc85

While I think the claims made about eircode's shortcomings in all of the nine recommendations are a bit of a stretch in places eircode does appear to fail more of the recommendations than it meets. As I said, almost all of them.

Trouwe Ier

GJG wrote: »

Conradh na Gaeilge have protested, not unreasonably, that the Geodirectory, on which Eircode is based, does not contain the Irish-language version of some rural addresses. For this reason the Eircodes of these addresses can only be found by typing in their English-language address, and the English version only comes up when the Eircode is input in the website. It's a bit of a mess, but hardly something you could blame Eircode for.

I agree that they had a point about the the GeoDirectory not containing the Irish Language version of some rural addresses. For my own urban address, the Irish Language version is shown as:

"<Number> Bothar <Road Name in English>
<Suburb Name in English>
Luimneach"

Both the road name and suburb name can be translated into Irish relatively easily.

However valid their point, one of my abiding memories from last Monday night's media coverage of the launch was the sight of C na G protestors dressed like extras for "The Irish R.M." smiling awkwardly as they strutted along the footpath with their placards: images that did nothing for the language and probably reinforced some prejudiced stereotypes.

One other point I would make is that in recent years, there is a laziness about the Irish media, for example, apart from Joe Leogue (much of whose coverage of this topic I wouldn't necessarily agree with), no journalist seems to have bothered to investigate the pros and cons of Eircode, the claims of either side of the argument or any of the rationale behind the system. Some papers just published claims willy-nilly, ascribed them to various sources and.....job done e.g. the "Oirish Daily Mail" last Monday.

Another off-topic example is what was said on an early morning news bulletin on RTÉ Radio 1 over the weekend: "The Tennessee gunman who opened fire on a military base in Tennessee......". Everything just seems to be copied and pasted and proof reading is minimal.

Eircode didn't cover themselves in glory either and should have anticipated some of the banana skins that many of us on this thread were discussing for months.

clewbays

One week in what are people’s highs and lows. I have listed my top and bottom 5 in order below.

Highs
1. Accuracy of An Post delivery
2. Quality of map data on Eircode finder
3. Number of hits on Eircode Finder
4. Creation of maps by Boards members
5. Discussion on concept of an address

Lows
1. ECAD and ECAF not yet on sale
2. Some very large routing keys
3. Not yet supported by Google maps and no official map
4. Lack of information on how to raise a query on address and coordinates
5. Continued resistance by FTAI and Loc8 fans

recedite

clewbays wrote: »

2. Quality of map data on Eircode finder

That is the OSI map. A pre-existing map which has been overlaid with eircodes.
If you look at the original version here..
http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/#V2,578432,756724,0,10
at least you can pick up on the xy co-ordinates shown at the bottom left and then enter them into a satnav as the GPS point location, but the eircode finder does not give that facility for some reason.

I suppose you could open the two versions of the map on different pages of your browser, and then by comparing the same location, get the co-ords from the original OSI version. Then enter into satnav. But if you're going to do that, you may as well open the loc8 map and get a loc8 code, which is shorter and less error prone than using full GPS co-ords.

clewbays wrote: »

5. Continued resistance by FTAI and Loc8 fans

Down with the Gombeen men and their Golden Circle. Vive La Resistánce!!

GerardKeating

GJG wrote: »

Quite possibly, though isn't what CnaG have said - do you have a source by any chance?

Eircode "H91 PF97"

As Gaeilge is

• EASTAT TIONSCAIL NA TULAIGH
• AN TULAIGH
• BAILE NA HABHANN
• GAILLIMH

As Bearla is

• EASTAT TIONSCAIL NA TULAIGH
• TULLY
• BALLYNAHOWN
• GALWAY

All the Eircodes in this Business Park are like, this. A few others in the same area, but i cannot remember them.

GJG wrote: »

But that doesn't change the fact that the claim that 50k properties were not assigned an Eircode when they should have been is entirely false.

Not entirely false, I doubt if eircode it 100% accurate, as many as 50 properties might have no eircode.

GJG

GerardKeating wrote: »

Eircode "H91 PF97"

As Gaeilge is

• EASTAT TIONSCAIL NA TULAIGH
• AN TULAIGH
• BAILE NA HABHANN
• GAILLIMH

As Bearla is

• EASTAT TIONSCAIL NA TULAIGH
• TULLY
• BALLYNAHOWN
• GALWAY

All the Eircodes in this Business Park are like, this. A few others in the same area, but i cannot remember them.

Not sure what the error here is, but I'm guessing the Irish name for the estate is in the English entry? Baile na hAbhainn is a Gaeltacht Area, it's not unusual to find locations that have no English language version of their name.

GerardKeating wrote: »

Not entirely false, I doubt if eircode it 100% accurate, as many as 50 properties might have no eircode.

Hang on, 50 properties or 50,000 properties?

Conradh na Gaeilge have said that 50,000 addresses (not properties, many addresses cover more than one property) have missing or incorrect Irish-language versions. A mess, but nothing to do with Eircode

Loc8 and their cheerleaders have misunderstood and mangled this and claim that 50,000 properties have no Eircode, and they give CnaG as their source for this nonsense. (CnaG have specifically refuted this said they support Eircode.)

I'm sure there might be 50 or more recently-completed properties that haven't been entered in the database yet, but that is orders of magnitude different to 50,000 properties.

If what Loc8 are saying is true, I'm sure they will have no difficulty listing the first, say, 1,000 properties they refer to. If it's not true then it seems to fit a pattern of extravagant claims made by Loc8 that fall to pieces once they are examined.

plodder

MarkK wrote: »

So the same a Loc8 and same as the UK postcode system.

You have to pay for the UK postcode database too:
http://www.postcodeaddressfile.co.uk/

The UK postcode system is does let you find a specific addresses without referring to some sort of database either.

You can buy more detailed maps of each of those postcode areas. The ones for central London look like this:



You have to pay for the hi-res versions (120 UKP). So, they are obviously useful.

Had our postcode been designed in a similar way, you can imagine the small area map of (say) Westport (routing key F28) having two character codes AB, AC etc for each of the small areas.

sesswhat

Got the letter yesterday to my rural address.

The address on the envelope was in the format

Occupier
<My full name>
<Postal address>
<Eircode>

while the letter itself omitted the name.

bluesteel

http://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/letters/getting-used-to-eircode-1.2291278

Irish Times Letter

Sir, –
Members of the Freight Transport Association Ireland (FTAI) carry over a third of the national parcel volume, and almost half by value. They were part of the detailed and thorough consultation carried out by the postcode board nine years ago, where both the stakeholders and the board recommended a radically different postcode to the one launched by Minister for Communications Alex White.

While we have acknowledged its strengths as an address database, Eircode is fundamentally flawed by virtue of its random structure. Ireland’s unstructured addressing presented an opportunity to impose structure through an ordered postcode. Unfortunately, in launching Eircode, Mr White has layered randomness on top of ambiguity.
Eircode was largely designed by An Post, who neither want it, nor will they use it as part of their core mails delivery.

It does not “recognise” streets, or neighbouring houses; it assumes adjacent non-unique addresses can be positively identified by GPS alone (they can’t); and it will deliver nothing to consumers by way of faster, more accurate or cheaper mails or parcels. It will of course be welcomed by the Revenue, the HSE, social welfare and utilities providers, but citizens will get no material payback for the imposition of what is effectively a PPSN number for their private address. A structured postcode could deliver €50 million a year in reduced parcel distribution costs. Eircode will not.

Saddest of all, in the twilight years of postal mail, Ireland has introduced a postcode system that function for letter boxes alone. Streets, parks, bridges, tourist sites, fields, beaches, lakes – none can be coded unless they receive post. Eircode is simply an address list behind a paywall.
– Yours, etc,

NEIL McDONNELL,
General Manager,
Freight Transport
Association Ireland,

plodder

sesswhat wrote: »

Got the letter yesterday to my rural address.

The address on the envelope was in the format

Occupier
<My full name>
<Postal address>
<Eircode>

while the letter itself omitted the name.

I got one too. This suggests that when the letters left Eircode, they technically didn't have the occupier's name, and that information was (technically) added by An Post. That would have been the safest way to do it from a DP perspective.

oscarBravo

... it assumes adjacent non-unique addresses can be positively identified by GPS alone (they can’t)...

I'm trying (and failing) to reconcile this claim with the argument that we should have had a code based solely on GPS co-ordinates.

SpaceTime

plodder wrote: »

I got one too. This suggests that when the letters left Eircode, they technically didn't have the occupier's name, and that information was (technically) added by An Post. That would have been the safest way to do it from a DP perspective.

That's how eircode explained it on a radio show I heard on west cork.

People were complaining about getting letters to "Pat" instead of "Patrick" and eircode explained they've no database of names and the local knowledge was added by an post on a one off basis to ensure accurate delivery of codes.

SpaceTime

GJG wrote: »

Not sure what the error here is, but I'm guessing the Irish name for the estate is in the English entry? Baile na hAbhainn is a Gaeltacht Area, it's not unusual to find locations that have no English language version of their name.



Hang on, 50 properties or 50,000 properties?

Conradh na Gaeilge have said that 50,000 addresses (not properties, many addresses cover more than one property) have missing or incorrect Irish-language versions. A mess, but nothing to do with Eircode

Loc8 and their cheerleaders have misunderstood and mangled this and claim that 50,000 properties have no Eircode, and they give CnaG as their source for this nonsense. (CnaG have specifically refuted this said they support Eircode.)

I'm sure there might be 50 or more recently-completed properties that haven't been entered in the database yet, but that is orders of magnitude different to 50,000 properties.

If what Loc8 are saying is true, I'm sure they will have no difficulty listing the first, say, 1,000 properties they refer to. If it's not true then it seems to fit a pattern of extravagant claims made by Loc8 that fall to pieces once they are examined.

Maybe CnaG could help by encouraging people to update their details by emailing eircode ? It shouldn't be a major ordeal to solve it would just take a few months to process all the changes.

I don't think this is something the government needs to slash more cash on.

BailMeOut

oscarBravo wrote: »

I'm trying (and failing) to reconcile this claim with the argument that we should have had a code based solely on GPS co-ordinates.

How would a GPS system work with buildings where you have a different address on each floor of the same building?

Also how does a GPS post code help with computerized 'routing' where two locations are adjacent to one another but from a transportation and delivery point of view are a very long way away. e.g. addresses on opposite side of a river, peninsula or mountain?