Postal codes in the Republic of Ireland

There are no postal codes in Ireland aside from the Dublin postal districts system. While the national postal service, An Post, has stated that the addressing system and sorting technologies preclude the need for postcodes for mail delivery, it has been suggested that other services (such as direct mail providers) would benefit from a national system.

Attempts at introduction of a national system

In 2005 it became the policy of the Government of Ireland to introduce a national scheme of postcodes. The process of developing post codes is underway.

In May 2005, Noel Dempsey, the Minister for Communications announced that postcodes would be introduced by 1 January 2008, His successor as minister, Eamonn Ryan, announced in August 2007 that he was delaying the project pending additional consultation and investigation into the need. However, on February 24, 2008 The Sunday Times reported that Ryan was finalising the system and hoped to bring the plans to cabinet before the summer of 2008, for introduction in 2009. The proposal was reported as being a six character alphanumeric system, with examples given for Galway city as GAL 123 and for Maynooth as MYN 123, where the numeric part would be different for each specific address. It was also to link with the existing Dublin postal districts with an example given for D4 becoming D04 123. An Post was quoted as saying "it would be at the heart of the introduction" and the report of PA Consultants indicated that An Post should be paid over €27 million for its involvement.

Following further delays, in September 2009 the cabinet agreed to go ahead with the project. It was to be put out to tender with the end of 2011 given as the date by which postcodes should be assigned. In January 2010 Minister Ryan stated in the Dáil that the exact nature of the code would not be decided until the implementation tender process had been completed but that a Location Code with GPS coordinates should be part of the system implemented. On 29 January 2010, a tender to select consultants to assist the Minister for Communications in deciding on the way forward was issued.

The project was again delayed, but in December 2010 the government agreed to seek tenders for procurement of national postcodes, with an estimated cost of €15 million, with the contract to be awarded in the summer of 2011 with the codes introduced by the end of that year. According to the Pre-Qualification Questionnaire the contract was to have been awarded in August 2011, with work to begin on 1 September. The Department published an update in September 2011, however, that the "procurement milestones given in the PQQ are indicative. The procurement process is still ongoing."

Proposed format

In announcing the procurement tender, Minister Ryan gave guidelines on the format of the codes. He stated that an important factor of the codes should be "memorability". Codes should be alpha-numeric.

The first part of the code should indicate the geographical location indicated by letters of the alphabet, similar to the codes used on vehicle number plates. For this purpose the country would be divided into approximately 200 post towns or postal sectors, each indicated by letters. Examples given were: GLY (Galway), CK (Cork) and KKY (Kilkenny). The existing Dublin districts would be adapted to form the first part of the code, Dublin 7 becoming D07 and so on. Representations were received from Irish language organisations that the alphabetical codes should relate to the Irish names of the post towns, rather than the English. Accordingly, Ryan stated that Irish language names should be used in Gaeltacht areas, and in the remainder of the country would take precedence "insofar as it did not lead to difficulties in disseminating the postcode to the public".

The second part of the code would consist of a series of numerals to identify the individual property, based on its GPS location. This was described in a departmental briefing as a hybrid model.

Legislation

Legislation to "provide for the establishment, operation and maintenance of a system of postcodes" - the Communications Regulation (Postal Services) Bill 2010 - was introduced in November 2010. The bill was enacted in August of the following year, with Part 3 of the act dealing with the establishment of a National Postcode System. Postcodes are defined in the legislation as "a code consisting of numbers or other characters or both numbers and other characters that identifies the locality of an address and, where appropriate, the geographic location of an address". The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources is empowered to award a contract for "the development, implementation and maintenance of a system... for the allocation, dissemination and management of postcodes for the purposes of, or relating to, the provision of postal services and the use of the national postcode system by other persons for such other purposes as the Minister considers appropriate".

See also

• Republic of Ireland postal addresses

External Links

• DCENR Postcode information page