Eircode is the name of Ireland's new national postcode system
Posted by
Autoaddress
| Apr 29, 2014
Ireland will have one of the best postcode systems in the world when it launches in Spring 2015, says Eircode, the new Irish company that will manage the groundbreaking coding system. Eircode is also the name given to the unique location codes that will be allocated to every address in the country – 2.2m of them.
“We think Ireland will make a little bit of history next year with the launch of Eircode. We’re taking an exciting design leap in being able to give every house, office and building that receives mail its own personal Eircode. Each Eircode can be mapped to show its precise location anywhere in the country. It’s a new way of telling people precisely where you are, and how they can find you. Ireland is setting a new world standard with this design that will help bring many benefits to the daily lives of people, householders and businesses’, said Liam Duggan, Business Development Director of Capita Ireland, which is managing Eircode.
Pat Donnelly, Managing Director of Autoaddress (second from left) pictured at the launch of Eircode with (from left to right) Dermot McCrum, Strand Communications, Paul Allen - BearingPoint, Minister Pat Rabbitte - DCENR, Niall O'Reilly - BearingPoint and Liam Duggan - Capita.
Mr Duggan said that the general public do not have to do anything about the new Eircode right now or be concerned about it. It would be provided free to every household next year and Eircode will be issuing more information to the public about the system early in 2015.
Pat Rabbitte T.D., Minister for Communications, Energy & Natural Resources, welcoming the completion of the design phase of Eircode said:
“Eircode is much more than just a postcode. It's a smart code for all Irish addresses. By giving an Eircode to each address, it will make it easier for various community and business services to locate households. It'll also help in the planning and delivery of health, social and education services by local and national government. Furthermore, it fits in well with many of the initiatives set out in the Medium Term Economic Strategy and Action Plan for jobs. "
The Government has now officially agreed the technical design of Eircode and the company will get its operations underway to create an Eircode database of all 2.2m addresses and their unique Eircodes. They’ve already begun working with a number of government departments to encode the addresses in their databases.
Each Eircode has two parts – a 3-character Routing Key to help with mail sorting, and a 4- character Unique Identifier that identifies the exact address. More details on the design are available onwww.eircode.ie.
An Post, as the country’s designated Universal Service Provider, is making preparations to use Eircode across its systems. Donal Connell, CEO of An Post, said that:
“An Post supports the development of this key piece of national infrastructure and will play its part in the implementation of the programme; we are carrying out extensive work in preparing our mails processing systems for the launch of Eircodes in Ireland,” said Mr Connell.
A number of businesses and industry groups, including Ibec and the Small Firms Association, have already welcomed the introduction of Eircode, highlighting the benefits it will bring to their business and to their customer services.
“We want to reach out to the business community during this year to let them know about the Eircode system, how it works, the address database that we’ll be creating that they can license to use, and the preparations that they may want to make. We’d encourage them to start their preparations early,” said Liam Duggan.
Mr Duggan said that Eircode would be issuing more information for businesses in the coming weeks and would be available via the company’s website. He said that Eircode would welcome hearing from businesses and organisations that wanted to help support and champion the introduction of Eircodes next year.
One of those is Geoff Scully, MD of Littlewoods Ireland, one of Ireland’s online department stores:
“The move to introduce Eircodes by the Government is a positive step as it will aid our industry to drive planning efficiencies. Our planning has already started for the introduction of Eircodes. We have a project team already looking into the integration requirements to our systems and we would hope to be able to use Eircodes as part of our registration process from the first day they go live. From a marketing point of view, Eircodes will help with segmentation and help us to deliver more relevant communications through various channels to our customers,“ said Mr Scully.
Brendan O’Neill, CEO of DPD Ireland, an Irish logistics and delivery company, said the current problem of 35% of houses not having a unique name or number posed a challenge for the delivery industry:
“Our drivers have great knowledge of the areas in which we’re delivering, but without a doubt, finding addresses can sometimes be difficult! To be able to refer to an Eircode that will pinpoint a location quickly and easily, means we can get the product to the customer more efficiently. We’ve already started planning– we want to be involved right from the outset. It will take time to get our technology ready for the launch. Obviously this means investment on our part but we’re confident that this will be returned in increased delivery efficiency and overall customer satisfaction. Ongoing communications to the householder pre-launch is very important to the successful rollout. DPD will support the government’s efforts by communicating directly with our own customers with regard to the benefits for both the shipper and the consumer,” said Mr O’Neill.
Eircode will be providing more details about the project in the coming months.