Republic of Ireland postal addresses

In Ireland, postal addresses do not use a post code system. Rural addresses are specified by the county, nearest post town, and the townland. Urban addresses are specified by county, city or town name, street name, house number, and apartment or flat number where relevant. A house name may be used instead of a number.

Responsibility for the postal system rests with An Post, a semi-state body; however, the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources retains the right to regulate addresses, and had disagreed with An Post over whether there was a need to introduce a postcode system, with An Post objecting to the proposal.

Dublin postal districts

Post-1961 Dublin street sign displaying the street name in Irish and English, with postal district number

Main article: Dublin postal districts

In Dublin city and its suburbs, a system of postal districts was introduced in 1917 by the British government, with the prefix "D", and retained after independence, without the prefix. However the use of district numbers by the public did not occur until 1961, when street signs displayed postal district numbers. Prior to that time, street signs only displayed the street name in Irish and English.

The Dublin system now has 22 districts.

An example of this type of address is the Lord Mayor of Dublins address:

Dublin City Council,
Lord Mayor’s Office,
Mansion House,
Dawson Street,
Dublin 2

Cork postal districts

Caroline St is in Cork 1; Clanrickarde Estate is in Cork 2.

In Cork, there are also numbered districts, e.g.: the 'PATRICK STREET' (Sráid Phádraig) sign will display the digit '1', but these are not encountered in postal addresses. Cork has four postal districts. District 1 covers the city centre and large parts of the surrounding city. District 2, administered from the Ballinlough sorting office, covers the south-east, District 3 (from Gurranabraher) covers the north-west while District 4 (from Togher sorting office) covers the south-west. In practice, these numbers are used only internally by An Post and rarely used on mail.

Moving towards a postcode

Main article: Postal codes in the Republic of Ireland

Current handling

An Post did not introduce automated sorting machines for mail until the 1990s. By then, the optical character recognition (OCR) systems were advanced enough to read whole addresses, as opposed to just postcodes, thereby allowing An Post to skip a generation. Consequently, mail to addresses in the rest of the state does not require any digits after the address.

Preparation for a postcode

In the light of the liberalisation of postal services and the end of An Post's monopoly ComReg, the Communications Regulator in Ireland, began considering the introduction of postcodes. A Postcode Working Group met in early 2005 and produced a report recommending the implementation of a postcode system.

On 23 May 2005, the Minister for Communications, Noel Dempsey, announced that postcodes would be introduced in Ireland by 1 January 2008. In November 2005, the National Statistics Board issued a report welcoming the decision and making recommendations as to its implementation. They supported a point-based postcode system that used grid reference/GPS technology to provide a relatively clear-cut, low cost approach to allocating a postcode to an address. This avoids trying to group households together into small area clusters. It was later announced that the postcodes would include the one- or two-character county codes currently used in vehicle registration plates, making them alphanumeric, with the existing Dublin system retained.

In June 2007, a brief to the new Minister for Communications, Eamon Ryan, stated that a memo was submitted by the Department of Communications to the Irish Government in May 2007 seeking approval for the implementation of the postcode system. It also stated that the decision arising from this submission was that the Minister would revert to Government following further analysis to quantify the benefits, which would then be followed by a public consultation process. However, in August 2007, the Minister reportedly postponed the implementation of the system "indefinitely" pending additional public consultation.

On 18 October 2007 Eamonn Ryan announced at ComReg's "Postal Services in the 21st Century" conference that "[Post] codes should be introduced as a matter of priority". The introduction was stated to be subject to cabinet approval. On 25 February 2008 the Irish Independent reported that the proposals were being presented to the Cabinet with a view to full national implementation before summer 2008. It stated that Eamon Ryan was finalising the proposals, which include a 6 character format postcode, giving a sample of "D04 123" where "D04" corresponds to the current Dublin 4 postal region and "123" is a specific group of buildings. similar to British and Dutch postcodes, which cover groups of buildings, rather than simply suburbs or towns.

On 7 December 2008, the Sunday Business Post reported results of an independent report by PA Consulting for the Department indicating that benefits of up to €22m could be achieved for public bodies through the introduction of a postcode. The PA report indicated that postcodes had greater uses beyond the delivery of mail or simple navigation services, citing the "need for efficient database based on postcodes reducing inefficient service delivery and infrastructural planning". It said that Postcodes are considered critical for "efficient spatial planning and aiding health research, education, housing social care and employment integration". Increased efficiencies for businesses would emerge; in particular, the insurance sector stated that "it would result in annual savings of around €40 million by improving their risk management assessments."

The article concluded saying that annual maintenance costs for a postcode management licence holder which would include maintaining the necessary database of buildings are estimated "at about €2.5 million" but the minister was reported as saying that "ongoing costs would be covered by income generated by the eventual licence holder".

On 20 September 2009 RTÉ reported that tenders for the design and implementation of the system will be issued shortly and that the system will be, according to the Minister for Communication, comprising digits and letters and be introduced in 2011. Minister Ryan said the cost would be a fraction of the €50 million cost estimated four years previously. The Communication Workers Union claimed that the new system could not be introduced by 2011, and that An Post would have to have to develop a whole new type of software to make its machinery read the new postcodes. However, in a Seanad debate on 21 October 2009, the Minister reiterated that the proposed new system would be introduced by early 2011 at the latest. Liz McManus, opposition spokeswoman for communications in the Labour Party, has since called for the plan to be revoked due to job losses in An Post, the projected costs and fears of junk mail.

In Dail question time on 2010-01-26, Simon Coveney challenged Minister Eamon Ryan's apparent rejection of a GPS based postcode system. Eamon Ryan refuted this saying that he fully supported a postcode system that had geo-coordinates at its centre. The system chosen would depend on the tenders received. Coveney pointed out that a system that pinpointed 20-50 houses would only slightly improve what is there at present and would be of little help to an ambulance, a courier or a postman that does not know the area.

On 1 February 2010 the tender process to select consultants was announced, with a view to having the postcode system operational by the end of 2011.

In April 2010, the Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources published a report criticising some of the proposals listed above, recommending instead that any postcode implemented must be capable of supporting "developing technologies such as internet mapping, google maps and iphones", applying a unique identifier to each property. It suggests that the previously mentioned D04 123 model will not satisfy this requirement and may, in fact, make matters worse.

On 15 April 2010 the tendering process to select a consultant to advise the Minister on the implementation of a postcode was cancelled.

According to the Irish Independent a serious but unspecified technical error in the tendering documents led to the cancellation of the tender issued in February 2010.

An Post's position

An Post had previously claimed that a nationwide public postcode system was unnecessary, stating that it was "a 1960s solution to a 21st century problem", that it would be expensive, and that its existing system was superior. However, they now support the introduction of a national postcode, according to the Irish Times. Courier services and direct mail companies complained that the absence of such a system put Ireland at a disadvantage compared with other European countries.

An Post does use a system of three-digit sort codes, similar to the Mailsort system used by Royal Mail in the United Kingdom, for pre-sorting mail in bulk. There are two levels, Presort 152, which has 152 codes for large volumes of mail, and Presort 61, which has 61 codes for smaller volumes.

It corresponds to Dublin postal districts, e.g.; Dublin 1 is 101, etc., except for Dublin 10 and Dublin 20, which both have the same code 110, and Dublin 6W, which is 126. Cork has codes for four each of the delivery offices, Ballinlough (901), North City (902), Little Island (903), and South City (903).

Townland concerns

Concerns were also expressed by traditionalists that postcodes would undermine the use of historic townland names. (Royal Mail in the UK approached the problem of postcodes in rural Northern Ireland by naming previously unnamed roads after the townlands through which they passed, and assigning numbers to houses. The naming of roads was initially refused by Fermanagh District Council, resulting in a solution (unsatisfactory to some) of a postcode being assigned to each townland.)

Those advocating an Irish postcode system point out that many people living in rural (and even some urban) areas share the same postal address, particularly confusing when there are people with the same surname living at different addresses within the same rural townland. This also creates problems for people unfamiliar to an area trying to find an address such as delivery drivers, the emergency services, and visitors (especially since in such areas it is rare for roads to be named or houses to be numbered, and there is limited signage indicating where townlands begin and end).

Language issues

Conradh na Gaeilge, an organisation advocating use of the Irish language, has expressed concern over postcodes or postal abbreviations being based solely on English language place names, e.g. D for Dublin (Baile Átha Cliath in Irish) or WX for Wexford (Loch Garman in Irish) as is the case with vehicle registration plates. It has advocated that postcodes should either consist solely of numbers, as in many other bilingual countries, or be based on Irish language names instead. In the UK, postal abbreviations are based on names in English, rather than Welsh, e.g. CF for Cardiff (Caerdydd), and SA for Swansea (Abertawe), or Gaelic, e.g.: HS for Outer Hebrides (Eileann Siar) and IV Inverness (Inbhir Nis).

See also

• An Post
• Dublin postal districts
  • List of Dublin postal districts
• Universal Postal Union

External links

• RTE News Postcodes
• An Post - PrecisionAddress
• ComReg - Commission for Communications Regulation
  • ComReg’s Symposium on Postcodes, Nov 2003
  • Consultation Paper: Follow up on ComReg Postcode Symposium, Nov 2003
  • ComReg Report on Postcodes, Jan 2005
  • ComReg Report shows broad support for the introduction of Postcodes in Ireland (Press Release), Jan 2005
• Postal addressing system for Ireland
• Oireachtas Report On Postcodes March 2010