National Postcodes to be introduced

BailMeOut · 24-07-2015 2:18pm

Sam Russell wrote: »

Please keep up at the back!

Again - what is Eircode not doing that it was designed to do? What am I missing?

GerardKeating · 24-07-2015 2:27pm

BailMeOut wrote: »

Again - what is Eircode not doing that it was designed to do? What am I missing?

Eircode cannot be matched to your boards user id...

SpaceTime · 24-07-2015 2:27pm

GerardKeating wrote: »

Eircode cannot be matched to your boards user id...

Yet!!

A certain senator is probably working on that issue as we speak...

Aimead · 24-07-2015 2:34pm

GJG wrote: »

If you can cite locations that you think could do with an Eircode but don't have them yet, then let's have them

Eircode is supposed to make deliveries easier right? That’s what we were told during the consultations. Just today we are making deliveries to some outhouses in Galway and Sligo that don’t have Eircodes because they are not attached to locations that receive mail. One of the locations was being prepared for laying foundations and we were delivering fencing equipment to separate it out from the rest of the field – what is the likelihood of that situation ever having an Eircode? In the end it was good old GPS to the rescue.

But the larger issue, and I feel you are still missing it, is that Eircodes only exist for locations that have been indexed in the GeoDirectory. That is a serious limitation. GPS, Loc8, etc., don’t need prior indexing to be useful. You can side step this issue again if you want, but it just emphasises how hollow claims like “I'm happy to debate the pros and cons” really are.

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.

You add a ‘height’ component (eg: which floor) to your conversion algorithm. I’ve demonstrated previously that there is plenty of capacity in a 9-digit code to do so. It may even be possible to do this in an 8-digit code, but I’d need to crunch the numbers.

I don’t think that was the point being raised though…..

BailMeOut wrote: »

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?

It helps quite a lot actually. For one, being the global standard it is compatible with almost any mapping tool you would wish to use. Also, given that Cartesian coordinate systems are piss easy to work with you could even do a decent job in excel alone if you used waypointing*. Trying to do this same thing with Eircode is…well…you’re just having to perform an extra step by converting to a usable format like GPS…..

* I don’t know a better term to describe this, but it is basically when you calculate the nearest road and then use known road distances for the routing. An example of this in action is in how Google Maps calculates driving times. Most ‘calculate shortest journey between two points’ algorithms do this.

GJG wrote: »

Oh, and that's also why adjacent properties shouldn't have identical or near-identical codes.

As someone who actually works in the delivery industry I call bollocks. The informational advantages that hierarchy gives far outweighs the supposed advantage of having unsimilar codes for adjacent properties.

Oh, and even if unsimilarity was made an absolute requirement it was still possible to have a hierarchy. That rather important point seems to be escaping quite a few people.

FishOnABike wrote: »

Conflating the benefits of a postal code with eircode is a bit of an intellectual sleight of hand.

This ^. This thread is filled with such conflations and is, I must admit, quite disappointing to see. When a poster then follows this up with “A geo only based code cannot do points 1,2 and 6 as it's not linked to a database” when other posters have already pointed out dozens of times that you can quite easily link a geocode to a database… it’s just frustrating. There comes a point where the assumption of good faith becomes untenable imo.

GJG wrote: »

…. unlike geocode systems that have many codes for one house….

I have already explained how this issue is trivially solved in a geocode.

We don't have any ill-effect from having the last four digits of our landline number randomised, the same is true of postcodes.

The house next to where I live has a phone number that differs from mine by a single digit so you may be misinformed here.

But it did give me a thought. Suppose that, instead of Eircode, it was suggested that phone numbers were used. Any property lacking a phone number could be assigned a ‘ghost’ number. Now, how would such a system compare to Eircode? Telephone numbers, while certainly not great, at least convey some information about when properties are close together. Does a telephone number really have any substantive disadvantages? The database functionality would be the same, and people would already be familiar with their own numbers.

That should be an astounding realisation – that using telephone numbers might actually be a better system than the current Eircode system. That should help underscore just how piss poor Eircode really is…..

clewbays wrote: »

and I'll just point out again that many users want a unique code per address and geocode will not deliver that ….

As I have explained earlier, a geocode could indeed deliver that. Each segment (say 5mx5m) can have a height component baked into the code. Heights of ‘0’ can be generated by anyone, but the non-zero heights are a reserved range for assigning to unique addresses. I crunched some numbers and showed it is perfectly possible to achieve this with a 9-digit code with some self-correction for errors thrown in.

clewbays wrote: »

The smarter you make the unique address identifier the greater the risk that it will be changed as a result of future building developments e.g. new housing, new roads, etc. Embedding the coordinates or small areas into it has that risk.

I may be misreading you here, but unless buildings start acquiring the ability to move I fail to see any circumstance where this would be a problem for a geocode. Is there much risk of buildings changing their locations?

oscarBravo wrote: »

Given that the whole point of a postal code is to locate a premises, I'm not sure where the obsession with distinguishing adjacent doors came from.

Given that plenty of people ITT defending Eircode have made arguments relying on Eircode’s ability to distinguish different postal addresses I’d say it’s pretty obvious why this was raised.

If you can posit a solution that would have addressed every concern of every interested party better than Eircode did, then we might be on to something.

Tbh I think I already did that. A 9-digit code that is a conversion from GPS, with a height component factored and a carefully chosen algorithmic offset to produce unsimiliar* codes for adjacent locations, with space for single-digit or single character swap error correction with the non-zero heights being used for the database functionality. It may even be possible to do it with 8 but I haven’t been able to make the numbers work.

* I still think this isn’t anyway useful if you have any sort of error correction mechanism, but it could certainly be done.

So there you go. A geocode with all the claimed advantages of Eircode.

No, because its hierarchy is based on geographical squares, which makes it useless to An Post….

Yeah, this is bollocks and I think you know it is bollocks. An Post have to put the Eircode into their sorting machine, so mapping any geocode onto their routing keys would be trivial. I’m genuinely stunned you think this is an issue, and am I really struggling to believe you were being serious.

Probably not: small area boundaries change from census to census, which means that postcodes will change, which is a Really Bad Thing.

If such postcodes were tied to geocodes they wouldn’t have to change. Unless you had something like a landslide and a building physically moves its locations perhaps.

Eircode may not be perfect, but arguing against it on that basis is only rational if there is a perfect alternative…

Except the argument isn’t that ‘Eircode isn’t perfect’. Rather it is more like ‘by ditching hierarchy and/or a conversion with GPS the resulting design has lost a stack of useful functionality and has done so for piss poor reasons.’

When you have to reach for ridiculous claims such as that ‘An Post couldn’t use it’, as you have above, then it says it all really.

TheChizler wrote: »

It's also amazing how some people expect full 3rd party integration 2 weeks after it being made official.

Actually I don’t think it was unreasonable at all. If the recommendation of being an ‘open’ code had been followed, or had it been a geocode, then integration would have been almost trivial since it would have been compatible with GPS.

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

And the silence from the loc8 guys is deafening...

I’m not proposing loc8 here, but if the algorithm that generated it was made open then it becomes extremely simple to add support for it. A closed algorithm, or the even worse case we have now of using randomised digits, are a barrier for integration. If you want maximum interoperability you have to have an open code – this should be fecking obvious.

plodder · 24-07-2015 3:13pm

BailMeOut wrote: »

What are these failings? Eircode does EXACTLY what it is supposed to do.

Apart from :-

- no support on offline satnavs
- no definite plans for support on satnavs
- a hidden structure contrary to working group recommendation
- no maps of routing key areas
- no fine-grained areas in code structure
- no public consultation in the design or the requirements

.. it does exactly what it is supposed to do, which is to give every property a unique identifier and to fit in with An Post's delivery structure, but which An Post doesn't need, and the ability to enter 15 eircodes on your phone per day, and navigate to them using google maps.

Did I miss anything?

BailMeOut · 24-07-2015 3:21pm

plodder wrote: »

Apart from :-

- no support on offline satnavs
- no definite plans for support on satnavs
- a hidden structure contrary to working group recommendation
- no maps of routing key areas
- no fine-grained areas in code structure
- no public consultation in the design or the requirements

.. it does exactly what it is supposed to do, which is to give every property a unique identifier and to fit in with An Post's delivery structure, but which An Post doesn't need, and the ability to enter 15 eircodes on your phone per day, and navigate to them using google maps.

Did I miss anything?

ah for fs - it only came out last week and you expect integration with all the private mapping systems to be already in place. This will happen but will take time. The 'infrastructure' in in place and ready and private industry will adopt (or not) starting from last week. The ground work is done and now let's sit back and watch companies and people take advantage of it. This is going to happen whether you like it or not.

It's like building a brand new road from A to B and in first week complaining that there are not enough cars using this road so the road was a waste of money. We have gone nearly 100 years with no way to properly address of find a house in most of the country and now we do. This is progress and I for one am looking forward to being able for first time ever to be able to get home deliveries to my house without a huge amount of hassle from shipping companies.

flushed busted · 24-07-2015 4:07pm

BailMeOut wrote: »

ah for fs - it only came out last week and you expect integration with all the private mapping systems to be already in place. This will happen but will take time. The 'infrastructure' in in place and ready and private industry will adopt (or not) starting from last week. The ground work is done and now let's sit back and watch companies and people take advantage of it. This is going to happen whether you like it or not.

It's like building a brand new road from A to B and in first week complaining that there are not enough cars using this road so the road was a waste of money. We have gone nearly 100 years with no way to properly address of find a house in most of the country and now we do. This is progress and I for one am looking forward to being able for first time ever to be able to get home deliveries to my house without a huge amount of hassle from shipping companies.

Allow me to repeat as blinkers appear to abound

Amazing indeed if efforts to secure participation only started 2 weeks ago. Was not the eircode design signed off and publicly announced in April of 2014?

Would not you imagine that plans for interaction with relevant technology partners were included in a tender submission & be high on the action agenda when the contract was awarded (Dec 13)

The perspective of a business analyst would no doubt be that efforts were spurned in favour of a wait and see approach. The conclusion of such an analysis could only be that a representative bedding in period will be required to complete the wait and see assessment and perception, consumer demand & ease of implementation will shape the outcomes which may not be possible until well into 2016. This no doubt will be further handicapped by the current absence of a VAR infrastructure which appears also to suggest the adoption of wait and see approach amongst wider commercial interests also.

All of this appears to be an extension of the protracted negotiations before the contract was awarded and perhaps we can expect more of the same in terms of expectations, delays & disappointments. Readers of this thread will no doubt continue to be treated to doubts, deliberations and design alternatives for some time to come.

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BailMeOut · 24-07-2015 4:29pm

flushed busted wrote: »

Would not you imagine that plans for interaction with relevant technology partners were included in a tender submission & be high on the action agenda when the contract was awarded (Dec 13)

no - not a chance is or would this ever have been a good idea at that stage. Who is going to decide who the 'relevant' partners will be and but even doing that Eircode are showing preference to some over others which is clearly unfair. You release the system, publish the schema and how it works and let them take from there (if they want).

plodder · 24-07-2015 4:40pm

BailMeOut wrote: »

no - not a chance is or would this ever have been a good idea at that stage. Who is going to decide who the 'relevant' partners will be and but even doing that Eircode are showing preference to some over others which is clearly unfair. You release the system, publish the schema and how it works and let them take from there (if they want).

if they want .... it's all a bit iffy isn't it?

The problem is that they don't have any kind of licensing terms ready for satnav licensees, even now after the launch. It shows where the priorities lie in government.

There was nothing to stop them from organising this 6 months before the launch and you could have had interested vendors ready with their products on the day of launch or very soon after.

flushed busted · 24-07-2015 4:42pm

BailMeOut wrote: »

no - not a chance is or would this ever have been a good idea at that stage. Who is going to decide who the 'relevant' partners will be and but even doing that Eircode are showing preference to some over others which is clearly unfair. You release the system, publish the schema and how it works and let them take from there (if they want).

Rather silly of them to have shouted out to several industries leaders in early 2014 then I suppose.

murphaph · 24-07-2015 4:51pm

I honestly don't understand why they didn't make the codes longer (you only need to remember your own really) and embed multiple levels of information... Unique location but also routing codes for deliveries down to district and street level which would be very useful for statistics purposes etc. The large routing areas make them useless for these purposes.

The fact you can't use an eircode to say search for an apartment to rent is surely a sign that it could be better.

ukoda · 24-07-2015 6:02pm

It's starting....businesses are quickly going to cop on to the fact that an eircode is all they need from the customer to get their address for delivery

https://twitter.com/munstergadgets/status/624525381777928193

By the way, I've no connection to that person or company, I just searched Twitter for "eircode" every so often and post some tweets I think are interesting

Calina · 24-07-2015 6:51pm

Can anyone actually explain why it has to be a "special postcode called an Eircode"? It's a post code. In the UK, they're called postcodes, in France, code postal, in Germany, Postleitzahl both meaning postcode.

I'm doing arguing with the hierarchical debate. However, I know want to know why it needed a brand. I haven't seen that outlined clearly anywhere yet. I mean, it's like I got a letter from eircom telling me they'd given my house a "special phone number called an eircom number".

24-07-2015 7:23pm

Branding!
Nothing more than that, as you say it's just a postcode.

clewbays · 24-07-2015 8:13pm

Aimead wrote: »

I may be misreading you here, but unless buildings start acquiring the ability to move I fail to see any circumstance where this would be a problem for a geocode. Is there much risk of buildings changing their locations?

It wasn't clearly written, I was referring to errors in the X/Y in the GeoDirectory that will require correction. If an Eircode was generated from the incorrect X/Y then people would not find the house so the X/Y and therefore the original Eircode would need to be amended. We don't know whether there are many such errors.

My main point is that I want a fairly dumb code that will not need to be changed in the future. I can extract the X/Y, the Small Area, the Parish, etc. from ECAD.

TheBustedFlush · 24-07-2015 8:15pm

Calina wrote: »

Can anyone actually explain why it has to be a "special postcode called an Eircode"? It's a post code. In the UK, they're called postcodes, in France, code postal, in Germany, Postleitzahl both meaning postcode.

I'm doing arguing with the hierarchical debate. However, I know want to know why it needed a brand. I haven't seen that outlined clearly anywhere yet. I mean, it's like I got a letter from eircom telling me they'd given my house a "special phone number called an eircom number".

a special number called LoCall

From Wiki

Postal code: The general term is used in Canada.
Postcode: This solid compound is popular in many English-speaking countries and is also the standard term in The Netherlands.
Eircode: The standard term in Ireland.
CAP: The standard term in Italy; CAP is an acronym for Codice di Avviamento Postale (Postal Expedition Code).
CEP:The standard term in Brazil; CEP is an acronym for Código de Endereçamento Postal (Postal Addressing Code).
PIN code / Pincode: The standard term in India; PIN is an acronym for Postal Index Number.
PLZ: The standard term in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; PLZ is an abbreviation of Postleitzahl (Postal code).
ZIP code: The standard term in the United States and the Philippines; ZIP is an acronym for Zone Improvement Plan.

Who knew?

clewbays · 24-07-2015 8:16pm

Calina wrote: »

Can anyone actually explain why it has to be a "special postcode called an Eircode"?

It is because it is not just any old postcode

it is a World first and leading edge

Have you not been reading Minister White's speeches?

TheBustedFlush · 24-07-2015 8:28pm

Of course, it's possible that EIR is an acronym for something.....

What could it be?

Essentially Inoperable Random Code?

Exceedingly Intelligent Rabbitte Code?

Emergency Incident Response Code?

Endlessly Inscrutable Rorshasch Code?

Any suggestions?

Calina · 24-07-2015 8:50pm

clewbays wrote: »

It is because it is not just any old postcode it is a World first and leading edge Have you not been reading Minister White's speeches?

No, the one thing I have not been doing is reading Alex White's speeches. I'm not finding much leading edge about it at all.

clewbays · 24-07-2015 9:04pm

Calina wrote: »

I'm not finding much leading edge about it at all.

Well what qualities are you looking for from a postcode?

FishOnABike · 24-07-2015 9:43pm

Calina wrote: »

Can anyone actually explain why it has to be a "special postcode called an Eircode"?

Because it was designed by 'eirheads'?

larchill · 24-07-2015 10:31pm

It's finally arrived, the green envelope, the North East must be the last to receive them. The southern part of Louth including Ardee is A92 xxxx. Dundalk & North Louth is A91 xxxx. Pity the routing codes are so scatty. If only they were more local.

Trouwe Ier · 24-07-2015 10:38pm

While trying to nod off, I did a search for "Limerick V94" and noted that a fair few businesses are now listing their codes.

Top marks to the Council for including their codes in their contacts page too.

I presume they were advised to do so???.

I got a bill from Bórd Gáis Energy but my address was not coded.

Jack180570 · 24-07-2015 10:51pm

God Help us ukoda, that is awful misfortune, its a terror what can happen to a clever intelligent person like yourself... I downloaded the point 8 app and its free and it works... i put in the Loc8 Code into my sat nav and it works... I dont use google maps while I am driving as it is an offence to use my phone while Im driving... oh and I was able to use Loc8 Code in my satnav from the day I bought it.... I must be the luckiest person in the world and you must be the most unlucky....

ukoda wrote: »

Did all mapping and navigation support loc8 from day one? Were you able to drive that car out of the garage of day one with support for everything alr day there? No.

So it's been 5 years since loc8 launched, it's great you can just pop it into google maps now....oh wait, you still can't? After 5 years!

I'll just put it into my new TomTom...oh wait, can't do that either, after 5 years!

But don't worry!! Loc8 is a FREE code and costs me nothing to use, so I'll just download the point8 app....oh wait, that costs €5....and I can't use it to navigate?! After 5 years!

Jack180570 · 24-07-2015 10:58pm

It doesnt allow me to enter the postcode into a satnav and drive to where I want to go. BIG FAIL

BailMeOut wrote: »

What are these failings? Eircode does EXACTLY what it is supposed to do.

24-07-2015 11:13pm

Jack180570 wrote: »

It doesnt allow me to enter the postcode into a satnav and drive to where I want to go. BIG FAIL

Patience grasshopper, it will come to those who wait, unless you want to code it yourself! :P

Jack180570 · 24-07-2015 11:16pm

Wow, thats a pretty detailed and intelligent assessment of Eircode and its shortcomings. Thank you for taking the time and effort.

Aimead wrote: »

Eircode is supposed to make deliveries easier right? That’s what we were told during the consultations. Just today we are making deliveries to some outhouses in Galway and Sligo that don’t have Eircodes because they are not attached to locations that receive mail. One of the locations was being prepared for laying foundations and we were delivering fencing equipment to separate it out from the rest of the field – what is the likelihood of that situation ever having an Eircode? In the end it was good old GPS to the rescue.

But the larger issue, and I feel you are still missing it, is that Eircodes only exist for locations that have been indexed in the GeoDirectory. That is a serious limitation. GPS, Loc8, etc., don’t need prior indexing to be useful. You can side step this issue again if you want, but it just emphasises how hollow claims like “I'm happy to debate the pros and cons” really are.

You add a ‘height’ component (eg: which floor) to your conversion algorithm. I’ve demonstrated previously that there is plenty of capacity in a 9-digit code to do so. It may even be possible to do this in an 8-digit code, but I’d need to crunch the numbers.

I don’t think that was the point being raised though…..

It helps quite a lot actually. For one, being the global standard it is compatible with almost any mapping tool you would wish to use. Also, given that Cartesian coordinate systems are piss easy to work with you could even do a decent job in excel alone if you used waypointing*. Trying to do this same thing with Eircode is…well…you’re just having to perform an extra step by converting to a usable format like GPS…..

* I don’t know a better term to describe this, but it is basically when you calculate the nearest road and then use known road distances for the routing. An example of this in action is in how Google Maps calculates driving times. Most ‘calculate shortest journey between two points’ algorithms do this.

As someone who actually works in the delivery industry I call bollocks. The informational advantages that hierarchy gives far outweighs the supposed advantage of having unsimilar codes for adjacent properties.

Oh, and even if unsimilarity was made an absolute requirement it was still possible to have a hierarchy. That rather important point seems to be escaping quite a few people.

This ^. This thread is filled with such conflations and is, I must admit, quite disappointing to see. When a poster then follows this up with “A geo only based code cannot do points 1,2 and 6 as it's not linked to a database” when other posters have already pointed out dozens of times that you can quite easily link a geocode to a database… it’s just frustrating. There comes a point where the assumption of good faith becomes untenable imo.

I have already explained how this issue is trivially solved in a geocode.
The house next to where I live has a phone number that differs from mine by a single digit so you may be misinformed here.

But it did give me a thought. Suppose that, instead of Eircode, it was suggested that phone numbers were used. Any property lacking a phone number could be assigned a ‘ghost’ number. Now, how would such a system compare to Eircode? Telephone numbers, while certainly not great, at least convey some information about when properties are close together. Does a telephone number really have any substantive disadvantages? The database functionality would be the same, and people would already be familiar with their own numbers.

That should be an astounding realisation – that using telephone numbers might actually be a better system than the current Eircode system. That should help underscore just how piss poor Eircode really is…..

As I have explained earlier, a geocode could indeed deliver that. Each segment (say 5mx5m) can have a height component baked into the code. Heights of ‘0’ can be generated by anyone, but the non-zero heights are a reserved range for assigning to unique addresses. I crunched some numbers and showed it is perfectly possible to achieve this with a 9-digit code with some self-correction for errors thrown in.

I may be misreading you here, but unless buildings start acquiring the ability to move I fail to see any circumstance where this would be a problem for a geocode. Is there much risk of buildings changing their locations?

Given that plenty of people ITT defending Eircode have made arguments relying on Eircode’s ability to distinguish different postal addresses I’d say it’s pretty obvious why this was raised.
Tbh I think I already did that. A 9-digit code that is a conversion from GPS, with a height component factored and a carefully chosen algorithmic offset to produce unsimiliar* codes for adjacent locations, with space for single-digit or single character swap error correction with the non-zero heights being used for the database functionality. It may even be possible to do it with 8 but I haven’t been able to make the numbers work.

* I still think this isn’t anyway useful if you have any sort of error correction mechanism, but it could certainly be done.

So there you go. A geocode with all the claimed advantages of Eircode.
Yeah, this is bollocks and I think you know it is bollocks. An Post have to put the Eircode into their sorting machine, so mapping any geocode onto their routing keys would be trivial. I’m genuinely stunned you think this is an issue, and am I really struggling to believe you were being serious.
If such postcodes were tied to geocodes they wouldn’t have to change. Unless you had something like a landslide and a building physically moves its locations perhaps.
Except the argument isn’t that ‘Eircode isn’t perfect’. Rather it is more like ‘by ditching hierarchy and/or a conversion with GPS the resulting design has lost a stack of useful functionality and has done so for piss poor reasons.’

When you have to reach for ridiculous claims such as that ‘An Post couldn’t use it’, as you have above, then it says it all really.

Actually I don’t think it was unreasonable at all. If the recommendation of being an ‘open’ code had been followed, or had it been a geocode, then integration would have been almost trivial since it would have been compatible with GPS.

I’m not proposing loc8 here, but if the algorithm that generated it was made open then it becomes extremely simple to add support for it. A closed algorithm, or the even worse case we have now of using randomised digits, are a barrier for integration. If you want maximum interoperability you have to have an open code – this should be fecking obvious.

oscarBravo · 24-07-2015 11:53pm

Jack180570 wrote: »

I dont use google maps while I am driving as it is an offence to use my phone while Im driving...

I guess the government switching from Eircodes to Loc8 codes is a simpler solution than you getting a phone holder for your car.

dr.fuzzenstein · 25-07-2015 12:48am

oscarBravo wrote: »

I guess the government switching from Eircodes to Loc8 codes is a simpler solution than you getting a phone holder for your car.

Well, some of those phone holders are as much as 10 euro! And having to go to a website and hit get directions is too much for some.

Irish Steve · 25-07-2015 1:22am

I've been watching the antics for a number of days, and the question that hasn't been asked in relation to GPS systems is quite simple.

For a GPS to be able to navigate to a location based on Eircode, EVERY code will have to appear in the data that is held on the device, as the fundamental requirement is that the GPS operates without any data connection to a mobile phone network or similar. Yes, smartphones can communicate with mobile networks, but the serious limitation there is that roaming mobile data costs an arm and a leg, to the extent that most users will not use roaming data, and that won't change any time soon, and for a dedicated GPS Sat nav, there is NO capability to use external data services, so the data has to be within the device

So, based on the information from EIrcode's site, apparently, there are 2.2 Million address codes for the country, and each code is 9 characters, and to be capable of navigating to the code location, there then has to be some form of Lat Long associated with each Eircode, so that's going to need somewhere in the region of 27 characters per code, so if we then work on 2.2 Million locations, the database for that is going to require 2.2 Million x 27, which is over 60 Mb of data storage, which would mean that the GPS can navigate to the location of the eircode. That's just doubled the size of the database for Ireland based on the GPS system that I have on my smartphone, and if the overall database gets to be too large, it won't fit the memory capacity of the device, that's already the case with some of the older Garmin devices, the database for Europe had grown over time, and no longer fits a significant number of older devices, which means that to update the device is not just a case of connecting to a server and it happens, the Europe database has to be downloaded to a suitable computer, and then the GPS has to be updated from the computer by choosing the specific countries that are required.

It's also going to require that the sat nav providers are able to do a sensible deal with the Eircode licence holder for access to the entire database on an ongoing basis, and previous history with GPS is NOT good in this area, it was years before the GPS systems were able to navigate with any sort of accuracy in Ireland because the prices being demanded by Ordnance Survey for the digital data needed by the sat nav systems was too expensive for them to take it on board, to the extent that some sat nav suppliers digitised their own database structure from alternate sources, and now, by using a code system that has a randomised method of allocating codes to addresses, we've made it massively complex for the sat nav suppliers to implement Eircode into their products.

I used to do a lot of delivery work delivering fresh flowers to pretty much most of the Dublin area, and East Meath, and the reality is that Eircode will make some of those types of delivery a LOT easier, but it will still require a lot of effort to determine where the delivery is going, because the key code areas are large, and unless there's a sensible deal for look up, the codes will be useless without a computer to determine where the code relates to.

For peak periods, we used to pre sort the deliveries into multiple runs, but the reality is that at present, Eircode won't help that process at all, the UK type code could be presorted without a computer, based on the granularity of the areas, the Eircode areas are so large, with no local factor, without looking the codes up on a computer, and then converting to an alternative location code, allocating orders to an area is going to be an expensive additional cost to businesses that are already under pressure.

I'm going to stick my neck out here, and say that I will be surprised if Garmin has Eircodes on their system before Summer 2016, given that the Eircode suppliers seem to have not yet decided on how they are going to licence their information to Sat Nav suppliers, and even when they do, that data then has to be incorporated into the system wide structure. I suspect that other providers will be similarly slow in putting Eircodes into their systems.

National Postcodes to be introduced

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