National Postcodes to be introduced

TheBustedFlush

Can anyone confirm if the Eircode database has actually been issued to any non-state companies yet so they can start using it?

MBSnr

OU812 wrote: »

When you bought your gps unit, what was your process? Just go and buy one off the shelf and hope it works or get a garmin specifically so you could use Loc8?

OK let's go and assume this is not all 'tongue in cheek' from Sam, he does have an old Nokia and he doesn't have an old/new GPS device - makes no odds in this anyhow. He rightly asks how Eircode will help him get to a property being as Eircodes are not marked on the houses and he has no device to do this for him.....

Well - if every house had an Eircode marked on it, that still would not work right? You'd physically need to look at each house in the general area. I don't see that as viable option - especially if it was a rural location. Your non-unique addressing option isn't in place. This can't help you either.

So in this instance (until Google maps support direct input of Eircodes), you would have to resize the Eircode Finder window to get the 'Directions' button - see my post here. Then get google maps to display the location and work from there.

I can only equate the process to that of my parents in law if they had a property, with only the Eircode details, to find. They don't have smart phones or GPS but do have a PC. Sounds very much like your situation. Their only course of action would be to print the directions/and or a map to ensure they get to the right place. They might also use streetview to confirm. So old fashioned methods. A step back you may say. Of course this wouldn't be the case if you had a smartphone. Also the % of people who do not own a smartphone is decreasing year upon year. Physical paper maps are a thing of the past.

Also don't forget they have the Eircode, defining the property they are looking for, marked on a map to get to. Something they did not have up until a few weeks back.

plodder

irishfeen wrote: »

Just waiting on a delivery from Nightline ... Looks from the tracking ID looking at the address that they have removed the Eircode which I put in while ordering with Lifestyle Sports.

Strange one really which will make it awkward for drivers if they wanted to use their phones.

Strange, as Nightline were the only ones who said they were going to use it.

Sam Russell

MBSnr wrote: »

OK let's go and assume this is not all 'tongue in cheek' from Sam, he does have an old Nokia and he doesn't have an old/new GPS device - makes no odds in this anyhow. He rightly asks how Eircode will help him get to a property being as Eircodes are not marked on the houses and he has no device to do this for him.....

Well - if every house had an Eircode marked on it, that still would not work right? You'd physically need to look at each house in the general area. I don't see that as viable option - especially if it was a rural location. Your non-unique addressing option isn't in place. This can't help you either.

So in this instance (until Google maps support direct input of Eircodes), you would have to resize the Eircode Finder window to get the 'Directions' button - see my post here. Then get google maps to display the location and work from there.

I can only equate the process to that of my parents in law if they had a property, with only the Eircode details, to find. They don't have smart phones or GPS but do have a PC. Sounds very much like your situation. Their only course of action would be to print the directions/and or a map to ensure they get to the right place. They might also use streetview to confirm. So old fashioned methods. A step back you may say. Of course this wouldn't be the case if you had a smartphone. Also the % of people who do not own a smartphone is decreasing year upon year. Physical paper maps are a thing of the past.

Also don't forget they have the Eircode, defining the property they are looking for, marked on a map to get to. Something they did not have up until a few weeks back.

OK, so I have a non-smart phone, but I do have a modern GPS unit ( a Garmin as it happens with life time map upgrades - so I am all right there if Garmin sign up).

The benefit of Eircode will be the removal of the problem of finding the correct spelling of a townland in the country - assuming that I have the Eircode for the target address.

It does mean I have to have a full address for most places though as Eircode on its own does not find apartments.

OU812

Sam Russell wrote: »

It does mean I have to have a full address for most places though as Eircode on its own does not find apartments.

Yes it does & its one of the advantages over Loc8

expectationlost

anyone ever use GEOfindit a POI app based on geodirectory https://www.geodirectory.ie/Home/Media/GeoFindIt.aspx http://www.irlogi.ie/2014/06/23/2695/ https://www.geodirectory.ie/Home/Media/GeoFindIt.aspx

new feature

The GeoDirectory has assigned all 2.2 million addresses in Ireland a unique reference or fingerprint and a location code accurate to one metre. By combining this database with the Property Price Register GeoFindIT, users can access data about the prices property sold at anywhere in Ireland.

http://irishtechnews.net/ITN3/geofindit-app-gives-users-easy-access-to-property-price-register/

Aimead

oscarBravo wrote: »

How? Genuine question. If it is of no benefit, and would be an effort to implement, just ignore it completely and you're in exactly the same place you were before it launched.

We’ve already had two customers give us an Eircode and nothing else. In one of those cases it was a handwritten scrawl that only got handed to me when we were loading the van – pretty fecking useless when we don’t have a landline and even getting a mobile signal there can be a dice throw. And then we had the hilarity of a few customers (I will say they were well meaning so I don’t blame them) asking how to get an Eircode for their delivery locations, and I had to patiently explain to them that those sites don’t have (and can’t get) Eircodes (which was, quite rightly, greeted with incredulity).

Hard to ignore it given that it is actively making my job needlessly more difficult.

Another genuine question: how do you convert a Loc8 code to an actual location without looking it up online?

For myself I’m familiar enough with using it to know roughly where the area is. The key information is that I can tell where locations are with reference to each other, and with a map I can do a job. We’ve a couple of foldup maps that we’ve marked with GPS lines, Loc8 lines and OpenPostcode lines that seem to do the job pretty well (sadly, OpenPostcode never took off). Just blu-tac it to the portable holder and you’re good to go.

In practice, if the load is one of ours, we get the truck or van loaded first, and then when I’m back at the office I can send the detailed information needed to find the delivery point to the driver’s phone. If the load isn’t one of ours the information can be in, shall we say, a dire format. In that case where you have a handwritten scrawl listing deliveries you just need to be able to know where they are with reference to each other in order to plan the load – finding the specific locations isn’t our problem at that point.

There are times when I do need to break out the Excel. If we need to watch the tachograph hours, have multiple loads, have to watch weights on the pin, etc, it helps to have draft loading in a format that can do the calculations and be dragged’n’dropped for easy manipulating. I know my offsets with Loc8 are wrong, but as long as I can get Excel to tell their relative locations it can be made to work. The only reason any of this is possible is because, even if I don’t know its exact algorithm, it is fundamentally a geocode. Personally I prefer GPS since Cartesian coordinates are piss-easy to work with, but any geocode can be made work in this way.

Most of the above has been described before in this thread. People who work in the industry, who do planning or freight forwarding, know the basic mechanics involved – and I’ve yet to personally meet anyone who does this for a living who hasn’t shared my complaints of Eircode.

---

plodder wrote: »

There are pros and cons.

If only the ‘debate’ could even get to that.

Any postcode is, fundamentally, an information code. There are all sorts of things you can build into it (eg: error correction, non-similar codes when locations are in close proximity, compressibility, etc.), and each brings about its own unique set of constraints. Being a geocode is also a constraint. It then becomes a question of assigning weights to each constraint (i.e. determining how important each requirement is).

Finding the ‘best’ code in this context is a technical discussion involving group theory, computer science and information theory. Honest question – how many people in this thread would even be capable of comprehending the discussion let alone participating in it? And bonus kicker – anyone here have any confidence whatsoever that the decision-makers of Eircode even have an inkling about any of this????

---

Je_suis_Jean wrote: »

Eircode won out, it's here to stay.

Shame that the metric for ‘winning’ didn’t involve usability….

Since you seem so confident with your bold pronouncement of “Eircode gives us a modern functional postcode which will make postal and package/courier deliveries more accurate and efficient and can be used for navigational directions right to the individual address”, can you tell me how you can possible consider it the superior code when it cannot be used for addresses lacking Eircodes (something that, for example, Loc8 can do)?

The bit that really bugs me is that Eircode was a decision made by a politician, and one thoroughly unjustified by the available evidence imo, and plenty of folks will queue up to defend it – which, as Bayberry correctly notes, is exactly the sort of attitude that will allow another dogs dinner in the future.

---

OU812 wrote: »

With another layer(s) of codes which I'm sure someone will create through google maps, it's going to be easy to have codes for everywhere that doesn't receive post as well as the ones that we currently have. Once someone has mapped out the routing keys, that's it.

Not sure about that – under 500,000 locations per routing code is unlikely to be enough capacity, and even more so when you consider that Eircodes don’t actually define a specific area any coding system will be inherently arbitrary.

To do this you’d need to construct from the set of unused Eircode’s a mapping to areas of a fixed resolution. That part is certainly do-able, but it would require that no new address codes are generated by Eircode which is totally unrealistic.

The big flaw is that Eircode is tied to pre-indexed locations. Sure, Google could try to index every fixed area but I’m pretty sure the result will either have too poor a resolution or too large a fixed area to be useful.

TheBustedFlush

Aimead wrote: »

We’ve already had two customers give us an Eircode and nothing else. In one of those cases it was a handwritten scrawl that only got handed to me when we were loading the van – pretty fecking useless when we don’t have a landline and even getting a mobile signal there can be a dice throw. And then we had the hilarity of a few customers (I will say they were well meaning so I don’t blame them) asking how to get an Eircode for their delivery locations, and I had to patiently explain to them that those sites don’t have (and can’t get) Eircodes (which was, quite rightly, greeted with incredulity).

Hard to ignore it given that it is actively making my job needlessly more difficult.
For myself I’m familiar enough with using it to know roughly where the area is. The key information is that I can tell where locations are with reference to each other, and with a map I can do a job. We’ve a couple of foldup maps that we’ve marked with GPS lines, Loc8 lines and OpenPostcode lines that seem to do the job pretty well (sadly, OpenPostcode never took off). Just blu-tac it to the portable holder and you’re good to go.

How many customers a day do you have giving you GPS coordinates, Loc8 codes Open Postcodes, Go Codes, Eircodes, etc. As opposed to just addresses?

Sam Russell

OU812 wrote: »

Yes it does & its one of the advantages over Loc8

I have no interest in Loc8 - have never used it and never will. That does not mean that Eircode is likely to be used but we'll see.

I got that direction button to work when I shrank the screen to a postage stamp (sic) so why did they not highlight it through their FAQs? How many other hidden gems are there?

Impetus

Ireland’s so-called postcode looks like a dog’s dinner of left-overs from the British non-system. Neither of which are proper postcodes, as used in Europe, Asia, Latin America etc. While they use letters and numbers, the initial letters do not match geographical names. With the exception of Dublin with the D prefix. Every other town is quasi-randomly picked, quasi-proximity picked, from codes not used in GB. Designed by a British company, to fit a British agenda. A British company that does business with government agencies there that have less than clean hands.

Below is a summary of the prefix codes, compiled in a Wikipedia page.
The codes did work in Google maps for a while, but unlike GB, France, Germany, USA etc, one had to enter the name of the town as well as the
Eircode to find any place. Google is now broken when comes to Eircodes.

And I have yet to see a GPS manufacturer offer map updates, or product which incorporates the Eircode. The GPS market is competitive, and memory is tight in GPS devices. Even if map updates are made available offering the Eircode, they won’t fit in the memory space of most GPS devices.

The randomisation of the premises code (last 4 characters) makes the code even more useless, and the politician who invented this randomisation idea should resign his seat, assuming he has one. Nobody is using the code anyway. I see only one government agency using it, the CSO. Perhaps it is no co-incidence that this agency was heavily involved in creating such an illegitimate code non-system from the outset. (Rather than fixing the problem which is to give every building a road/street address and number, within a precisely defined town name boundary, prefixed by a 4 or 5 digit code that would not be a breach of privacy and easy to remember). How many of the millions of people who received the Eircode mailing can remember their Eircode – not to mind somebody else’s?

The idiots who did the mailing did not even bother updating the address structure. Eg in streets with numbered houses, one does not address them as “House number 123 Any Street”. Why then do they continue to use “Unit 123” in business parks and similar – rather than 123 followed by the road name assigned to each individual road within a park.

Added to that they included county names in the Eircode database. No country with postcodes uses province or county names in the address. Even infrastructuraly creaking Britain discontinued the use of county names in addresses.

Eircode has been a massive waste of public funds, badly designed and administered. Even the eircode.ie’s design style looks like some west coast village promotional map, rather than something that should represent the entire country.

Blackrock and Monkstown share the same prefix “A” with Dundalk and Drogheda. Where is the logic in that? And there is no postcode map on the eircode website. Publishing the prefixes on a map would show how illogical the structure is. A dog’s dinner of political and permanent government messing, rolled out by a company that has demonstrated to be clueless about postcodes. The concept of assigning a postcode to each premises makes hacking easier. The first hack would appear to be a government proposal to link car registration numbers with their owner's drivers' license. (You just run the two databases into an address cleaning and postcoding system, and both end up with the postcode of each car owner and each licence holder - using the Eircode as the common denominator to perform a database join). Extract more money from traffic fines, to pay for the incompetent bureaucracy that created the eircode.

• A41 - Ballyboughal
• A42 - Garristown
• A45 - Oldtown
• A63 - Greystones
• A67 - Wicklow
• A75 - Castleblayney
• A81 - Carrickmacross
• A82 - Kells, Kingscourt, Virginia
• A83 - Enfield, Summerhill
• A84 - Ashbourne
• A85 - Dunshaughlin, Ratoath
• A86 - Dunboyne
• A91 - Dundalk
• A92 - Drogheda, Ardee
• A94 - Blackrock, Monkstown, Booterstown
• A96 - Dun Laoghaire, Dalkey, Sallynoggin, Glenageary
• A98 - Bray, Kilmacanogue
• C15 - Trim, Navan, Athboy
• D01 - Dublin 1
• D02 - Dublin 2
• D03 - Dublin 3
• D04 - Dublin 4
• D05 - Dublin 5
• D06 - Dublin 6
• D6W Dublin 6W
• D07 - Dublin 7
• D08 - Dublin 8
• D09 - Dublin 9
• D10 - Dublin 10
• D11 - Dublin 11
• D12 - Dublin 12
• D13 - Dublin 13
• D14 - Dublin 14
• D15 - Dublin 15
• D16 - Dublin 16
• D17 - Dublin 17
• D18 - Dublin 18
• D20 - Dublin 20
• D22 - Dublin 22
• D24 - Dublin 24
• E21 - Cahir
• E25 - Cashel
• E32 - Carrick on Suir
• E34 - Tipperary
• E41 - Thurles, Templemore
• E45 - Nenagh
• E53 - Roscrea
• E91 - Clonmel, Fethard
• F12 - Knock, Swinford, Claremorris
• F23 - Castlebar
• F26 - Ballina, Bangor
• F28 - Westport, Achill
• F31 - Ballinrobe
• F35 - Ballyhaunis
• F42 - Roscommon
• F45 - Castlerea, Glenamaddy
• F52 - Boyle
• F56 - Ballymote
• F91 - Sligo, Manorhamilton, Tubbercurry
• F92 - Letterkenny
• F93 - Lifford, Carndonagh
• F94 - Bundoran, Donegal
• H12 - Cavan
• H14 - Belturbet
• H16 - Cootehill
• H18 - Monaghan
• H23 - Clones
• H53 - Ballinasloe, Portumna
• H54 - Tuam
• H62 - Loughrea
• H65 - Athenry
• H71 - Clifden
• H91 - Galway, Spiddal, Headford, Ballyvaughan
• K32 - Balbriggan
• K34 - Skerries
• K36 - Malahide, Donabate
• K45 - Lusk
• K56 - Rush
• K67 - Swords
• K78 - Lucan
• N37 - Athlone, Moate
• N39 - Longford, Ballymahon, Granard, Lanesborough
• N41 - Carrick On Shannon
• N91 - Mullingar, Kinnegad
• P12 - Macroom
• P14 - Crookstown
• P17 - Kinsale
• P24 - Cobh
• P25 - Midleton
• P31 - Ballincollig
• P32 - Rylane
• P36 - Youghal
• P43 - Carrigaline
• P47 - Dunmanway
• P51 - Mallow, Rathcormac, Cappoquin
• P56 - Charleville
• P61 - Fermoy, Rathcormac
• P67 - Mitchelstown
• P72 - Bandon
• P75 - Bantry, Glengarriff
• P81 - Skibbereen, Baltimore
• P85 - Clonakilty, Rosscarbery
• R14 - Athy
• R21 - Bagenalstown
• R32 - Portlaoise, Abbeyleix, Portarlington
• R35 - Tullamore
• R42 - Birr, Banagher
• R45 - Edenderry
• R51 - Kildare
• R56 - Curragh
• R93 - Carlow, Tullow
• R95 - Kilkenny, Graiguenamanagh, Thomastown
• T12 - Cork city southside, Mahon, Passage West
• T23 - Cork city northside, Hollyhill
• T34 - Carrignavar
• T45 - Glanmire, Carrigtwohill
• T56 - Watergrasshill
• V14 - Shannon
• V15 - Kilrush, Kilkee
• V23 - Caherciveen
• V31 - Listowel
• V35 - Kilmallock
• V42 - Newcastle West
• V92 - Tralee, Dingle
• V93 - Kenmare, Killarney
• V94 - Limerick, Abbeyfeale, Newport, Killaloe-Ballina
• V95 - Miltown Malbay, Ennis, Kildysart
• W12 - Newbridge
• W23 - Maynooth, Celbridge, Leixlip
• W34 - Monasterevin
• W91 - Naas, Blessington
• X35 - Dungarvan
• X42 - Kilmacthomas, Bunmahon
• X91 - Waterford, Dunmore East, Tramore
• Y14 - Arklow
• Y21 - Enniscorthy, Bunclody
• Y25 - Gorey
• Y34 - New Ross, Fethard On Sea
• Y35 - Wexford, Rosslare

ukoda

It will fit on a sat nav or any smartphone for use offline


http://www.snoopdos.com/blog/how-big-is-the-eircode-database/

bluesteel

Impetus wrote: »

The first hack would appear to be a government proposal to link car registration numbers with their owner's drivers' license.

Great. I look forward to scoff-laws and other a**holes getting their comeuppance. Presumably you are one of these?

This has really fired the imaginations and passions of the protest everything people. I suppose Denis O'Brien is getting paid somewhere :rolleyes:

the politician who invented this randomisation idea should resign his seat,

you haven't bothered to read up on this have you?

JohnC.

I love how there are Loc8 supporters shouting from the rooftops that it's not on Google or satnavs on launch day. Ignoring that it will be.

Meanwhile, 7 years later, Loc8 is on satnavs from one particular company only with no sign of any attempt of it being adopted anywhere else.

Trouwe Ier

I was taking to someone today who sent a postcard from Adare to Dunboyne last Tuesday with a name, "Dunboyne, Co. Meath" and a verified-as-being-correct Eircode: It still hasn't arrived.

I sent one to my Limerick address last Friday from the wilds of Fermanagh. It had a first class stamp, my name, suburb name, "Limerick" and the correct Eircode and.....it hasn't arrived yet either.....mind you I didn't put "Éire" on the card

HardenendMan

Trouwe Ier wrote: »

I was taking to someone today who sent a postcard from Adare to Dunboyne last Tuesday with a name, "Dunboyne, Co. Meath" and a verified-as-being-correct Eircode: It still hasn't arrived.

I sent one to my Limerick address last Friday from the wilds of Fermanagh. It had a first class stamp, my name, suburb name, "Limerick" and the correct Eircode and.....it hasn't arrived yet either.....mind you I didn't put "Éire" on the card

Why did you do that? To be an annoying smart ass?

For the postal service to start delivering mail with just eircodes / sparse info would involve huge operational changes and massive cost increases (staff need to lookup eircode, probably over label etc).

The purpose of the eircode is to provide ADDITIONAL information to deliver companies that otherwise would have trouble finding you.

Jeez some people.

Trouwe Ier

HardenendMan wrote: »

Why did you do that? To be an annoying smart ass?

For the postal service to start delivering mail with just eircodes / sparse info would involve huge operational changes and massive cost increases (staff need to lookup eircode, probably over label etc).

The purpose of the eircode is to provide ADDITIONAL information to deliver companies that otherwise would have trouble finding you.

Jeez some people.

a) Because I had stamped one envelope too many
b) It was starting to rain, I had nowehere else to put the envelope as I was on foot and wearing PPE
c) I couldn't get the stamp off, and
d) I remembered my curisosity about whether or not a letter so addressed would reach its destination.

So I stepped into the adjacent bus shelter and addressed the envelope to myself.

There was and is no intention to annoy people!

Sam Russell

Why would anyone get annoyed to find out that Eircode is insufficient to get letters to addresses - have I not been saying that for ages?

Eircode is close to useless for nearly all users of it as it is a poor design - intended to fail. It will help the government collect taxes and water charges but beyond that -- well we will see in the next decade. Because no attempt was made to solve the non-unique address problem (some have it that it is the solution), then it will be a long time before it aids the postal service.

Even if it is accepted that the design is OK, then it is the implementation that is faulty. Why only 139 routing codes? Why non contiguous routing codes? Why random codes for individual houses? And why all the secrecy - still no maps of routing codes?

Eircode are PPS numbers for houses - no more and no less.

TheChizler

Sam Russell wrote: »

Why would anyone get annoyed to find out that Eircode is insufficient to get letters to addresses - have I not been saying that for ages?

Eircode is close to useless for nearly all users of it as it is a poor design - intended to fail. It will help the government collect taxes and water charges but beyond that -- well we will see in the next decade. Because no attempt was made to solve the non-unique address problem (some have it that it is the solution), then it will be a long time before it aids the postal service.

Even if it is accepted that the design is OK, then it is the implementation that is faulty. Why only 139 routing codes? Why non contiguous routing codes? Why random codes for individual houses? And why all the secrecy - still no maps of routing codes?

Eircode are PPS numbers for houses - no more and no less.

All of those points have been addressed multiple times, yet from that post you'd be forgiven for thinking they weren't.

dr.fuzzenstein

Sam Russell wrote: »

Why would anyone get annoyed to find out that Eircode is insufficient to get letters to addresses - have I not been saying that for ages?

Eircode is close to useless for nearly all users of it as it is a poor design - intended to fail. It will help the government collect taxes and water charges but beyond that -- well we will see in the next decade. Because no attempt was made to solve the non-unique address problem (some have it that it is the solution), then it will be a long time before it aids the postal service.

Even if it is accepted that the design is OK, then it is the implementation that is faulty. Why only 139 routing codes? Why non contiguous routing codes? Why random codes for individual houses? And why all the secrecy - still no maps of routing codes?

Eircode are PPS numbers for houses - no more and no less.

Eircode is the ONLY code that is sufficient to get a letter to an address on its own. There is no other code in the world that will do that. I would argue that in that regards Eircode is far ahead of any other postcode in use anywhere.
Yet you complain vice versa. Is it opposite Thursday or what am I missing?

Sam Russell

Trouwe Ier wrote: »

I was taking to someone today who sent a postcard from Adare to Dunboyne last Tuesday with a name, "Dunboyne, Co. Meath" and a verified-as-being-correct Eircode: It still hasn't arrived.

I sent one to my Limerick address last Friday from the wilds of Fermanagh. It had a first class stamp, my name, suburb name, "Limerick" and the correct Eircode and.....it hasn't arrived yet either.....mind you I didn't put "Éire" on the card

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Eircode is the ONLY code that is sufficient to get a letter to an address on its own. There is no other code in the world that will do that. I would argue that in that regards Eircode is far ahead of any other postcode in use anywhere.
Yet you complain vice versa. Is it opposite Thursday or what am I missing?

Doesn't appear to work. Did no-one tell An Post?

Aimead

TheBustedFlush wrote: »

How many customers a day do you have giving you GPS coordinates, Loc8 codes Open Postcodes, Go Codes, Eircodes, etc. As opposed to just addresses?

For stuff like house furniture or deliveries to urban areas we’d usually just be given an address. But for stuff like farm equipment, building supplies and other materials for locations that are down a country road we generally wouldn’t get an address most times – in those cases we’d either be given directions or one of the above. People generally know when a delivery location is going to be hard to find, and will generally try to give us something we can work with.

An example that we got in today involves GPS and directions with “follow the electric lines to the middle of the field, and drop off beside the pole”. What’s happening is that they are building an outhouse and have been advised by the ESB that by putting it beside the electric pole they won’t have as steep a connection fee.

So to give rough figures, during the winter our deliveries tend to be urban so mostly addresses while during the summer we’re mostly delivering to farms and new build sites so we’d get mostly GPS, etc.

---

Kahless wrote: »

I love how there are Loc8 supporters shouting from the rooftops that it's not on Google or satnavs on launch day. Ignoring that it will be.

It is staggering just how many submissions during the consultation recommended a geocode for reasons of interoperability. Had Eircode been a geocode it would have been on Google Maps from launch day.

I don’t understand why this sort of logic is ignored with a snipe at Loc8…..

---

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Eircode is the ONLY code that is sufficient to get a letter to an address on its own. There is no other code in the world that will do that.

And had Eircode being based on a geocode you’d be able to say the exact thing. As it stands you cannot say that Eircode is all that is needed to make a delivery to every address since any address not in the geodirectory can never be covered by Eircode – but you could have been able to say that had the (repeatedly made) recommendation of being based on a geocode been followed.

Btw, there is indeed a code that is capable of doing what you say above – telephone numbers and the telephone directory. All you’d have to do is assign a ghost number to any property lacking a telephone and you’ve got exactly the same functionality you’ve championed above.

But let me point out the underlying strawman at the heart of the statement “Eircode is far ahead of any other postcode in use anywhere”. None of those postcodes were designed to be unique identifiers for individual properties. Instead they were designed to be a hierarchical geolocator, and in that respect they thoroughly outperform Eircodes in that area for reasons I’ve explained in depth previously (see the comparison I made with NI postcodes for example). In some countries, such as Germany with the whole history of the Gestapo, any proposed postcode that uniquely identified properties would have been a total non-starter. Trying to use Eircode’s identification of individual properties, while ignoring you could do the exact same thing with a geocode base, and then comparing to other postcodes, which were never designed to identify individual properties (in Germany’s case deliberately so), is a nice sound bite I suppose despite how flawed the argument actually is.

Bray Head

I spotted that the Department of Social Protection have added a postcode field to their forms. It will be extremely useful for fraud and error prevention though I suspect the less honest you are the more likely you are to leave the field blank!

You cannot deal with DSP or Revenue anymore without a PPS number. I suspect in due course they'll extend this to postcodes.

As of last week ebay would not let me include a postcode when I told them the country of delivery was Ireland. I got on to their support people and they claimed to be aware of the issue and said they were working on it.

dr.fuzzenstein

Sam Russell wrote: »

Doesn't appear to work. Did no-one tell An Post?

Put it this way, it does work for anyone who could be arsed doing it if the only thing on the envelope is the code. If there is no address on the envelope, the letter will have to be taken aside, someone will have to look up the Eircode and write the address on the envelope or print out a label with the full address on it.
This will of course take time and that would apply to ANY postcode, if the full and proper address wasn't filled in. I would guess the reason being is that while for routing and sorting An Post uses the code, Postie on the ground won't be able to take out his portable electronic pocket computer (or at least not for every letter) and check up the address.
Give it time, it will get there.
This will NOT work in, for example, Germany. If you were to put nothing but 64646 on the envelope, your letter would get binned.
Of course there will be delays, because the postcode is for verification, not just on it's own. And again, this would be true for ANY postcode.

FishOnABike

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Eircode is the ONLY code that is sufficient to get a letter to an address on its own. There is no other code in the world that will do that. I would argue that in that regards Eircode is far ahead of any other postcode in use anywhere.
Yet you complain vice versa. Is it opposite Thursday or what am I missing?

But it isn't.

While it might be an amusing distraction to post something with only an eircode on it I wouldn't be in a hurry to post anything important without a full postal address on it. An Post have managed 98% next day delivery without an eircode up to now and say the eircode is optional so it is not that significant a benefit to An Post's delivery.

An eircode on its own is next to useless. With an address / geolocation / eircode database and something to look it up it is useful to locate a postal delivery address. An encoded coordinate (ITM, OS National Grid, Lat/Long) based postal code would have been far more useful.

dr.fuzzenstein

FishOnABike wrote: »

But it isn't.

While it might be an amusing distraction to post something with only an eircode on it I wouldn't be in a hurry to post anything important without a full postal address on it. An Post have managed 98% next day delivery without an eircode up to now and say the eircode is optional so it is not that significant a benefit to An Post's delivery.

An eircode on its own is next to useless. With an address / geolocation / eircode database and something to look it up it is useful to locate a postal delivery address. An encoded coordinate (ITM, OS National Grid, Lat/Long) based postal code would have been far more useful.

But it is.
An Eircode on it's own is sufficient to find an address. Of course it shouldn't be used on it's own, because postie will still need a name and address on the envelope to deliver it, so there will be delays while someone digs up the proper address based on the code. Again, true for every code.
And it is useful for me, because now matter how carefully I spell my address to people outside Ireland, what arrives is the equivalent of Mrs Chanandeler Bing, but once the code is right, it should get here.

Bayberry

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

Put it this way, it does work for anyone who could be arsed doing it if the only thing on the envelope is the code. If there is no address on the envelope, the letter will have to be taken aside, someone will have to look up the Eircode and write the address on the envelope or print out a label with the full address on it.

And what exactly will An Post write on that label, if the eircode is for one of those 30% of addresses that don't have a unique address?

antoinolachtnai

Bayberry wrote: »

And what exactly will An Post write on that label, if the eircode is for one of those 30% of addresses that don't have a unique address?

The eircode identifies every dwelling but it doesn't identify what area the building is in.

The UK and other postcodes don't identify the individual dwelling (though combined with a house number the UK one does) but it does identify what area the house is in.

Eircode could have done both jobs. But it doesn't.

dr.fuzzenstein

Bayberry wrote: »

And what exactly will An Post write on that label, if the eircode is for one of those 30% of addresses that don't have a unique address?

Whatever address the database throws out, what else? An excerpt from Ulysses?
If everyone in Ireland thought like you, no letter would ever be delivered.

TheBustedFlush

Trouwe Ier wrote: »

a) Because I had stamped one envelope too many
b) It was starting to rain, I had nowehere else to put the envelope as I was on foot and wearing PPE
c) I couldn't get the stamp off, and
d) I remembered my curisosity about whether or not a letter so addressed would reach its destination.

So I stepped into the adjacent bus shelter and addressed the envelope to myself.

There was and is no intention to annoy people!

Out of continuing curiosity, what bit of your address did you leave out, if any?

Number and street name?

You had your own name, a suburb name and Limerick and an Eircode. Would the Eircode address database have provided any further detail to the address you wrote on the envelope? And was it your address at which post is usually delivered with your name on it?

ukoda

Aimead wrote: »

It is staggering just how many submissions during the consultation recommended a geocode for reasons of interoperability. Had Eircode been a geocode it would have been on Google Maps from launch day.

I don’t understand why this sort of logic is ignored with a snipe at loc8

Isn't loc8 a geocode? They've had 5 years to get it on google maps and they haven't.

<snip>