National Postcodes to be introduced

The Cush

Dept of Communications prees release - Minister welcomes signing of National Postcode System contract

Each address and its code will be stored in a central Postcode Address Database (PAD). Access to the geo-coordinates associated with this code will allow quick mapping of the code’s location on a variety of technology platforms and devices including computers, tablets, mobile phones, in-car satnavs, and other mapping software systems. A publicly available website will give the public free access to look up postcodes for addresses quickly and easily.


An information website will be set up by the Postcode Management Licence Holder over the coming months to answer Frequently Asked Questions, provide further information around code design, promote the uses and benefits of the national postcode, and help businesses to plan for the new system.

Timeline Information
•December 2013, the PMLH began a programme of engagment and detailed briefing seminars with various public bodies.
•Briefings in January/February with commercial state bodies. as well as private sector utilities and service companies.
•Further information on the Postcode design will be made available later this year. Work on government databases to enable them to receive postcodes will get underway.
•Later in the year, an information campaign aimed at SMEs and other businesses will help organisations to prepare for the launch date.
•Early in 2015, a public information campaign will commence. Householders and businesses will receive an individual mailing with their own postcode at that point.

Sheldons Brain

Townlands are notoriously difficult to comprehend, they can be quite small and refer to a field in the country actually away from the actual town that may have moved for whatever reason and they often wrap around other townlands and that may involve a thirty minute drive around to get the the side one may actually want.

Details on the location of houses is also needed and is now planned!

a65b2cd

The Cush wrote: »

Minister welcomes signing of National Postcode System contract

Progress on introducing postcodes seems to have reached the will happen soon stage. A lot of broad support rolled-out by the Minister: health services, IBEC; industry etc. I wouldn't be surprised if other EU countries follow the Minister's lead and modernise their location/postcode systems. The real advantage of having a dual location/postcode is that people will use it regularly and hence remember it accurately.

irishgeo

The Cush wrote: »

Dept of Communications prees release - Minister welcomes signing of National Postcode System contract

wow. surely the databases of the government have a postcode field as dublin has had postcodes for years.

irishgeo

irishgeo wrote: »

wow. surely the databases of the government have a postcode field as dublin has had postcodes for years.

Possibly not, as most databases appear to just have a drop down list of the Dublin postal districts and counties.

A new postcode field would need to be added.

yuloni

This post has been deleted.

ukoda

Condi wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

thats why they call it a postcode, its a modern postcode

if you want to create an ad hoc "meet me here" send a location link from google maps, quick and easy - doesn't need the government involved - its not of strategic national importance.

Curly Judge

a65b2cd wrote: »

Progress on introducing postcodes seems to have reached the will happen soon stage. A lot of broad support rolled-out by the Minister: health services, IBEC; industry etc. I wouldn't be surprised if other EU countries follow the Minister's lead and modernise their location/postcode systems. The real advantage of having a dual location/postcode is that people will use it regularly and hence remember it accurately.

a lot of support for postcode! - there has been a lot of support for a code which would help people find places but the people commenting are not in a position to judge the suitability of what is proposed. They naturally assume after all this time that it will be the best available - but the Minister does not understand himself so he is hardly in a position to explain that the code proposed cannot be used without access to a database which must also be kept up to date frequently - all at a cost t the user!

Also the Minister has said that using the code will be optional so not too may people will have it when needed
Finally calling the code a location code is deliberately misleading - it is not a location code as it needs he database to interpret it - Loc8 is a location code as it does not need a database!

A man using the name a65 b2cd giving the impression he is on the inside should not deliberately mislead. Finally talking about progress - there is still a new tender opened to find more consultants to establish if the proposed postcode is "fit for purpose" - There can be no progress until that significant hurdle is crossed!

I wonder what will happen when the first letter with an Irish postcode gets posted in the UK, will the UK post office system reject it or will it go to a similar (postcode) area elsewhere in the UK.

zg3409

Don't worry it will be sent by a paddy in the UK and you can guarantee they'll put

IRELAND in big block capitals to allow the UK system to ignore every other line and send it our way. Although I heard of letters from Canada life were sent to Canada instead of the address on the envelope.

I once got a package from the USA. The only country indication was

IRL

and written beside it in hand-writing was "NOT Israel, Ireland" , so I think it went to Israel first, thus confirming the need for block capitals.

zg3409

zg3409 wrote: »

Don't worry it will be sent by a paddy in the UK and you can guarantee they'll put

IRELAND in big block capitals to allow the UK system to ignore every other line and send it our way. Although I heard of letters from Canada life were sent to Canada instead of the address on the envelope.

I once got a package from the USA. The only country indication was

IRL

and written beside it in hand-writing was "NOT Israel, Ireland" , so I think it went to Israel first, thus confirming the need for block capitals.

and someone at the post office will add "southern" to avoid it going to Belfast!

SpaceTime

zg3409 wrote: »

Don't worry it will be sent by a paddy in the UK and you can guarantee they'll put

IRELAND in big block capitals to allow the UK system to ignore every other line and send it our way. Although I heard of letters from Canada life were sent to Canada instead of the address on the envelope.

I once got a package from the USA. The only country indication was

IRL

and written beside it in hand-writing was "NOT Israel, Ireland" , so I think it went to Israel first, thus confirming the need for block capitals.

IRL isn't obviously Ireland to anyone who has never seen it before. You'd expect IRE or something.

For some reason our IE and IRL come from French spelling of Irlande under some international convention.

IE = IrlandE
IRL = IRLande.

It's actually more of an issue when sending items to Northern Ireland from France etc.
They'll often end up going to An Post in Dublin, Cork or wherever the aircraft comes in because they just see : IRELAND or IRLANDE and don't think about NI as a different place.

Doesn't matter if you write Northern Ireland or Irlande du Norde. They just see "Ireland".

You've nearly got to grit your teeth and write UK to ensure it doesn't get mixed up.

I'm pretty sure it's nothing political, but just the OCR scanners hunting for a country on the end of the mail item.
The UK setup's utterly weird as there's so much controversy over the country's name. You can end up with England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Britain, the UK, The United Kingdom or any of those in the local language of the country you're sending from.

Ireland's simple in comparison!

On the continent, you can actually include a country code followed by a dash ahead of the post code.

So, for example Nantes 44000
Becomes F-44000

This avoids confusion with D-44000 or any other continental 5-digit post code of a similar format.

ben101

SpaceTime wrote: »

IRL isn't obviously Ireland to anyone who has never seen it before. You'd expect IRE or something.

For some reason our IE and IRL come from French spelling of Irlande under some international convention.

IE = IrlandE
IRL = IRLande.

It's actually more of an issue when sending items to Northern Ireland from France etc.
They'll often end up going to An Post in Dublin, Cork or wherever the aircraft comes in because they just see : IRELAND or IRLANDE and don't think about NI as a different place.

Doesn't matter if you write Northern Ireland or Irlande du Norde. They just see "Ireland".

You've nearly got to grit your teeth and write UK to ensure it doesn't get mixed up.

I'm pretty sure it's nothing political, but just the OCR scanners hunting for a country on the end of the mail item.
The UK setup's utterly weird as there's so much controversy over the country's name. You can end up with England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Britain, the UK, The United Kingdom or any of those in the local language of the country you're sending from.

Ireland's simple in comparison!

On the continent, you can actually include a country code followed by a dash ahead of the post code.

So, for example Nantes 44000
Becomes F-44000

This avoids confusion with D-44000 or any other continental 5-digit post code of a similar format.

And even if you put REP OF IRELAND you still get mail that will send it to UK ,i've seen post coming from big U.S. companies like

Joe Bloggs
Main Street,
Anytown,
"Rep of Ireland
U.K.

SpaceTime

ben101 wrote: »

And even if you put REP OF IRELAND you still get mail that will send it to UK ,i've seen post coming from big U.S. companies like

Joe Bloggs
Main Street,
Anytown,
"Rep of Ireland
U.K.

However, if you ever send anything to Glasgow, England you will find it may arrive extremely wet or somewhat mysteriously mangled.

I also had someone write my phone number as +44 353 8X XXX XXXX

There's a major confusion in the US and elsewhere about what the UK is though. I find a lot of people think it's some kind of politically correct terminology for describing the British Isles.
It's extremely confusing if you're unfamiliar with it. A venn diagram helps!

Still not as confusing as trying to explain the EU, the Schengen Zone, the Eurozone, the EEA and the Council of Europe. You need a couple of hours + a very complicated venn diagram!

KCAccidental

zg3409 wrote: »

Don't worry it will be sent by a paddy in the UK and you can guarantee they'll put

IRELAND in big block capitals to allow the UK system to ignore every other line and send it our way. Although I heard of letters from Canada life were sent to Canada instead of the address on the envelope.

I once got a package from the USA. The only country indication was

IRL

and written beside it in hand-writing was "NOT Israel, Ireland" , so I think it went to Israel first, thus confirming the need for block capitals.

reminds me of the mother of an American student who was living with my friends parents years ago.

Her writing was so bad that the US postal system took Cork Ireland to be the Cook Islands and every letter she sent went on a magical voyage around the pacific for a month or so before turning up

Sam Russell

SpaceTime wrote: »

The UK setup's utterly weird as there's so much controversy over the country's name. You can end up with England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, Britain, the UK, The United Kingdom or any of those in the local language of the country you're sending from.

Most countries take their country name from either the name of their soccer team or the name printed on their stamps. For example France is used for both. Italy is used for both (Anglicised). We have a problem because our soccer team is call 'Republic of Ireland' and our stamps are 'Eire' and neither is correct. The English version of this countries name is Ireland - not Southern Ireland or any other version.

In the UK's case, they have neither as they have four soccer teams, and they put nothing on their stamps except a little head. That is why they have given rise to this confusion. They add to the confusion by refering to Wales, England, Scotland as countries. Countries issue passports which none of those do, and countries are sovereign, which none of these are - hence the confusion.

SpaceTime

SpaceTime wrote: »

There's a major confusion in the US and elsewhere about what the UK is though. I find a lot of people think it's some kind of politically correct terminology for describing the British Isles.
It's extremely confusing if you're unfamiliar with it. A venn diagram helps!

Uk / GB / British isles etc etc all explained below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10

SpaceTime wrote:

Still not as confusing as trying to explain the EU, the Schengen Zone, the Eurozone, the EEA and the Council of Europe. You need a couple of hours + a very complicated venn diagram!

and here's the EU explained in just under 6 mins

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O37yJBFRrfg

Both of the above are among the most informative, best reasearched videos I have ever seen on youtube, and highly recommend them to everyone curious about the above topics

and just so this is an actual on topic post, it beggars belief that Ireland is about to become part of the OGP while at the same time locking down the as-yet unreleased post codes. The release of these is one of the main metrics of OGP

I shudder to think what kind of a site they are going to set up to be able to tick the box to say they have given citizens "access" to post codes

Sam Russell

Above description of UK,Britain, etc. is good. However, ..........

The name of this country in the English language is IRELAND. Not as many say 'Republic of Ireland'. Other than that, he is correct.

Of course, Wales is a principality - not a country, and Northern Ireland is a province - not a country, but I'll let that go.

SpaceTime

Sam Russell wrote: »

Above description of UK,Britain, etc. is good. However, ..........

The name of this country in the English language is IRELAND. Not as many say 'Republic of Ireland'. Other than that, he is correct.

Of course, Wales is a principality - not a country, and Northern Ireland is a province - not a country, but I'll let that go.

Actually Northern Ireland's a little ambiguous. The UK doesn't have provinces and the Province of Ulster is a historic Irish entity that includes several counties that are not in the UK.

So, I suppose technically speaking it should really be referred to as a 'quasi-autonomous region' within the UK or something like that. It gets referred to as Ulster as a sort of a shorthand for Northern Ireland.

The UK's just a total political minefield when it comes to what you call various bits of it as it's just so oddly structured. Even UK citizens get it pretty badly wrong a lot of the time. it's very easy to trip up and use the wrong name to describe some bit of it and cause anything from slight annoyance to major offence. Sometimes (as in referring to Derry) you just have to accept whatever you call it you're going to annoy one side or the other.

Sam Russell

SpaceTime wrote: »

Actually Northern Ireland's a little ambiguous. The UK doesn't have provinces and the Province of Ulster is a historic Irish entity that includes several counties that are not in the UK.

So, I suppose technically speaking it should really be referred to as a 'quasi-autonomous region' within the UK or something like that. It gets referred to as Ulster as a sort of a shorthand for Northern Ireland.

The ambiguity extends to dial codes.

If you want to contact a NI number, you have a choice. For a (028) xxxxxxx number, you can dial 004428xxxxxxx or you can dial 048xxxxxx. I am not sure if they carry the same charges.

Perhaps the same will extend to postcodes.

SpaceTime

Sam Russell wrote: »

The ambiguity extends to dial codes.

If you want to contact a NI number, you have a choice. For a (028) xxxxxxx number, you can dial 004428xxxxxxx or you can dial 048xxxxxx. I am not sure if they carry the same charges.

Perhaps the same will extend to postcodes.

Charges are supposed to be the same regardless of what way you dial it.

The 048 thing might actually get abolished by the EU as its a bit of a political rather than technical thing. There used to be loads of UK/Ireland short codes.

Britain was 03 from Ireland. Dublin was 0001 and Cork 0002 etc from the UK.

They probably made sense in the 1970s when exchanges were electromechanical as Ireland - UK calls were routed almost like as if they were regular national long distance instead of going through international switching centres.

Routing in those days was often done step-by-step as the number dialled - the system wasn't intelligent or computerised to any extent do the routing was basically hard codes in the number. Each digit dialled connected to a different step along the route through the exchange. The system was just mechanical components that moved and selected paths as you dialled.

So you had to build the numbers to suit the switching system.

Later systems like crossbar switches (the basis of the pre digital system in Ireland, but not in the UK) were sort of intelligent but all their logic (software) was programmed in mechanical relays that figured out the routing. They later got replaced by computers and then by fully digital technology.

So you can imagine how difficult and restrictive it was to have things controlled by mechanical logic circuits that had to be programmed physically. It made a lot of sense to just get the end users to do their own routing using complicated dialling codes.

That doesn't apply today and hasn't since the 80s. The system is totally digital and analyses the full number before deciding how to connect and bill you for the call. Its even more complex than that as people can move networks or have calls diverted. So, it's more like going to a URL on the internet these days. The number you dial is just a digital address.

Bit of topic for postal codes though! But, just thought I would explain how it came about.

I would hope though that we don't select a post code system that's based around what other countries were stuck with due to the technology that was around in the 1950s and 60s.

Old mail sorting systems would have used similar pre computer era logic.

Sam Russell

Considering alternative dialling codes, will aternative post codes be available? For example, will those who live near a transition of post code be allowed to choose which side of the border they live on? An issue rose up during the house building boom regarding Tallaght/Templeogue where the boundary moved towards Tallaght, as people wanted the Templeogue address rather than the Tallaght one. There was also the Dublin 6W fiasco, as those affected wanted a single digit postcode, not a double digit one.

No wonder political types are frightened of postcodes.

SpaceTime

I don't think it will make much difference if the codes are unique to each house.

But, humans being humans, there'll be politics!

They probably made sense in the 1970s when exchanges were electromechanical as Ireland - UK calls were routed almost like as if they were regular national long distance instead of going through international switching centres.

Routing in those days was often done step-by-step as the number dialled - the system wasn't intelligent or computerised to any extent do the routing was basically hard codes in the number. Each digit dialled connected to a different step along the route through the exchange. The system was just mechanical components that moved and selected paths as you dialled.

If you knew the route, you coule make a local call from London to Glasgow just by dialling the local hop number to the next town.

you ended up dialing a number that had about 50 digits.:eek: but it was a "local" call and billed as such.:P

Sam Russell

Deleted User wrote: »

If you knew the route, you coule make a local call from London to Glasgow just by dialling the local hop number to the next town.

you ended up dialing a number that had about 50 digits.:eek: but it was a "local" call and billed as such.:P

Probably not from London as it was a 'directory' system. You dialled the same code from every exchange within the London system.

SpaceTime

For some reason the UK pinned its hopes on British-designed electronic and digital technology way too early and it resulted in it not investing in intermediate technologies like crossbar exchanges (Swedish, French and American technology). The digital stuff arrived much later than they anticipated. They had rather unsuccessful experiments with it through the late 60s and into the 70s. Their home-grown digital "System X" didn't arrive until the early 1980s.

So, right up until the late 1995 there were still some "Strowger" step-by-step exchanges in use in the BT network. It was an incredibly outdated technology from the 1930s that had largely been abandoned everywhere else during the 50s and 60s.

The last analogue exchanges here in Ireland were semi-computerised crossbars from the 1970s. So, I don't think you'd have been able to chain calls here using short codes.

We actually went to digital before the UK did and much more rapidly, largely because the older parts of the Irish network were so bad it was ridiculous. So, we didn't have an option. Old step-by-step exchanges and manual exchanges went to digital first, and more high tech crossbar exchanges switched over last.

The UK designed System X didn't export well either. It was hardly used outside of the UK. Telecom Eireann didn't even buy any, instead opting for Alcatel & Ericsson digital stuff which was much more developed by then.

However, it's WAY off topic

Biggest issue I'm concerned about with the post codes is that we don't lock ourselves into some 1950s British model.

BTW : for anyone interested : that's one of the very last local crossbar exchanges in Ireland : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lAkv_F1G3g being taken out of service back in 1999 and cut over to digital. Not sure who put the video up, but it's just a bit of Irish communications history captured.

TheBandicoot

Deleted User wrote: »

Uk / GB / British isles etc etc all explained below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNu8XDBSn10

I'd argue even that is wrong. He claims that 'Ireland' is just a geographical term and that 'Republic of Ireland' is the country, when the first line of our constitution says that no, the country is called Ireland.

SpaceTime

See! This is exactly why a lot of people are confused about "These Islands".

Every single word you could possibly use for them has a political connotation!

+44 and +353 seems safe enough lol

Sam Russell

SpaceTime wrote: »

See! This is exactly why a lot of people are confused about "These Islands".

Every single word you could possibly use for them has a political connotation!

+44 and +353 seems safe enough lol

Heaven help the postcode system then, unless they go for completely random letters and numbers.

ardmacha

The obvious solution is for NI to adopt this new approach to postcodes, which gets around disputes about townlands and the like. They should at least make sure that there is some space for the 6 counties in the scheme, even if this is not implemented at present.