Sir, – Members of the Freight Transport Association Ireland (FTAI) carry over a third of the national parcel volume, and almost half by value. They were part of the detailed and thorough consultation carried out by the postcode board nine years ago, where both the stakeholders and the board recommended a radically different postcode to the one launched by Minister for Communications Alex White.
While we have acknowledged its strengths as an address database, Eircode is fundamentally flawed by virtue of its random structure. Ireland’s unstructured addressing presented an opportunity to impose structure through an ordered postcode. Unfortunately, in launching Eircode, Mr White has layered randomness on top of ambiguity.
Eircode was largely designed by An Post, who neither want it, nor will they use it as part of their core mails delivery.
It does not “recognise” streets, or neighbouring houses; it assumes adjacent non-unique addresses can be positively identified by GPS alone (they can’t); and it will deliver nothing to consumers by way of faster, more accurate or cheaper mails or parcels. It will of course be welcomed by the Revenue, the HSE, social welfare and utilities providers, but citizens will get no material payback for the imposition of what is effectively a PPSN number for their private address. A structured postcode could deliver €50 million a year in reduced parcel distribution costs. Eircode will not.
Saddest of all, in the twilight years of postal mail, Ireland has introduced a postcode system that function for letter boxes alone. Streets, parks, bridges, tourist sites, fields, beaches, lakes – none can be coded unless they receive post. Eircode is simply an address list behind a paywall. – Yours, etc,
NEIL McDONNELL,
General Manager,
Freight Transport
Association Ireland,
Cloghran, Co Dublin.
Sir,– Elizabeth Moloney (July 20th) informs us that she sent a letter to herself with just the Eircode written on the envelope; she received the very same letter a mere 24 hours later. Well done to all concerned.
However, I suspect An Post went out of its way to discover her full address and then relayed this information to the postman responsible for delivering the mail in her area. For given the randomness of the code, I fail to see how a postman with a sack of letters, with just the Eircode written on them, could possibly know which letter was to be delivered to which house in a particular postal district. – Yours, etc,
PAUL DELANEY,
Dalkey,
Co Dublin.