National Postcodes to be introduced

SpaceTime

So, I guess I can just safely ignore these new Eircodes and continue using the actually useful Loc8 codes?

Also, I suppose these will come out at some stage before teleportation to email addresses is invented?

recedite

As of now, it is legal to get married at an outdoor venue which is "easily identifiable with an address" and open to the public. (The reason for these restrictions is to prevent weddings happening in secret, when somebody else might want to appear and voice some objection. Which is fair enough)

So if I wanted to plan a wedding on the beach at Brittas Bay, I'd have to specify which part, as its about 10 or 15 km long I think. Loc8 can easily fulfill the requirement. Eircode cannot. I wonder what the legal position will be, will the civil marriage registrar accept loc8 codes as the address?

D Trent

recedite wrote: »

As of now, it is legal to get married at an outdoor venue which is "easily identifiable with an address" and open to the public. (The reason for these restrictions is to prevent weddings happening in secret, when somebody else might want to appear and voice some objection. Which is fair enough)

So if I wanted to plan a wedding on the beach at Brittas Bay, I'd have to specify which part, as its about 10 or 15 km long I think. Loc8 can easily fulfill the requirement. Eircode cannot. I wonder what the legal position will be, will the civil marriage registrar accept loc8 codes as the address?

Wow you have a lot of time on your hands

Tow

to plan a wedding on the beach at Brittas Bay

Just use the Eircode for the jacks in the south car park and you will be fine...

recedite

Tow wrote: »

Just use the Eircode for the jacks in the south car park and you will be fine...

Does a jax have one? Eircodes were for buildings with letterboxes AFAIK.

Elmo

recedite wrote: »

Does a jax have one? Eircodes were for buildings with letterboxes AFAIK.

1101 AX

But they won't be effected with Eircode because they are in The Netherlands :pac:

recedite

Ajax FC.. very good.

Anyways, it looks like the legal position is that you must provide a loc8 code if you want to organise a wedding on a big beach or in a marquee in a field.
How else can you provide a unique identifier address for those places?

Leonard Shelby

D Trent wrote: »

Wow you have a lot of time on your hands

He's managed to "jump the shark" with that objection.

Impetus

Sam Russell wrote: »

A new minister and perhaps a new look at this fine mess that this has become. He should set up a departmental committee to revue the whole process and then look for public consultations so that a new design can be considered.

They could start by keeping it simple. At the moment you have Dublin 1 to 24 (which is largely used, though not comprehensive (eg Booterstown, Blackrock etc have no code). And you have Cork 1 to 4 (on the street signs but largely ignored).

Start by giving every address a four digit zone number (ie postal district). Let the public digest this and get used to it and see the benefit of same. Many countries of Ireland's size have this and have lived with it and have far better post and logistics services - eg Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium..... Other small countries use 5 digits - eg Finland and Sweden.

It is easy to add a few more digits later. The US added another 4 digits - nobody seems to find any need for it. The Portuguese added 3 digits. The Swiss added an additional 6 digits, which are "hidden" - ie the public don't need to use them. They are used for government and business data processing (eg statistical purposes to zoom into each entity).

Ireland already has the Geodirectory with the accurate to 1 metre co-ordinates of every building in the country. So we have a grid reference for each delivery address (which is used for example by the An Post automated sorting system), but no road and building number for each address in rural areas which account for almost half the addresses. The grunt work (in terms of geocoding) has been done. All they need to do is combine address points defined in the geodirectory within a road name. Use the townland name as the base road name with pre or suffixes where there are multiple roads in a townland.

The proposed eircode is re-inventing the wheel in terms of creating a postcode that is incompatible with all other postcodes in the world. And it is effectively throwing all the work behind the national Geodirectory in the trashcan.

It would be difficult to invent a more wasteful use of government resources!

Tow

Impetus wrote: »

They could start by keeping it simple. At the moment you have Dublin 1 to 24 (which is largely used, though not comprehensive (eg Booterstown, Blackrock etc have no code). And you have Cork 1 to 4 (on the street signs but largely ignored).

The first 3 characters are the "Routing Key" and according to their documentation are based on the principal post town as determined by the USP, of which there are 139. Dublin is D01 to D24 and D6W.

Curly Judge

Message to the new Minister:
We don't need post codes. An Post don't want one.
They already have their own.
What we need is a location code, and a good one.
One already exists that could give a unique identifier to every eight meters squared on this island.

Impetus

Curly Judge wrote: »

Message to the new Minister:
We don't need post codes. An Post don't want one.
They already have their own.
What we need is a location code, and a good one.t
One already exists that could give a unique identifier to every eight meters squared on this island.

You have location codes already. The national grid reference is accurate to 1 meter or less if you wish. Not to mention lat/long.

What you need is a short code to conveniently point to a location - say the size of a Dublin postal district - but the code system must cover the entire country.

You can enter that code into a web based or computer system and it can act as a sieve, using other elements of the address (eg the first few characters of the name of the street/road/townland to auto-complete the rest of the address).

The only other item required is the building number.

Give everybody a building number and road name (which in rural areas could be derived from the townland name) and a short district postcode and you have as much or as little resolution as is appropriate for each case. Allowing the homeowner to retain as much privacy as they wish - while at the same time making it easier for visitors to find his above etc. It would also help speed up sorting of post where the address on the envelope is not machine readable, and would otherwise be delayed for human intervention to code the idem manually. While it might still require delayed manual intervention, the packet could make its way towards the appropriate delivery office before manual coding needs to take place.

Sam Russell

Curly Judge wrote: »

Message to the new Minister:
We don't need post codes. An Post don't want one.
They already have their own.
What we need is a location code, and a good one.
One already exists that could give a unique identifier to every eight meters squared on this island.

Actually, the first four digits of the telephone number would be a good place to start (dropping the leading zero).

Clearly, a bit of tydying would be necessary for some areas, but it would be a good starting point.

Proper addresses would also be a good thing to implement anyway. Think of the bailiff looking for Mr Sean Gonequickly, Ballyflybynight, Hoorstown.

L1011

Sam Russell wrote: »

Actually, the first four digits of the telephone number would be a good place to start (dropping the leading zero).

Rather problematic when you have people using non-landline or non-PSTN-landline providers that issue numbers on a sequential basis across an entire area. My 01-5xx xxxx UPC number (I can't actually remember any of it, its never used inbound) doesn't match the 628xxxx/629xxxx/601xxxx the town has on PSTN by any means.

Sam Russell

MYOB wrote: »

Rather problematic when you have people using non-landline or non-PSTN-landline providers that issue numbers on a sequential basis across an entire area. My 01-5xx xxxx UPC number (I can't actually remember any of it, its never used inbound) doesn't match the 628xxxx/629xxxx/601xxxx the town has on PSTN by any means.

Obviously I do not mean that every house has its telephone number used as a post code. What was intended was to use Eircoms number system for geographic numbers which they have used for at least 40 years. A bit of tidying would be required, but in the country and urban areas, the location of most numbers is quite certain. However, it does not work for all paople as, for example, I have an out of area number which is quite different from my neighbours, and relates to a different telephone exchange entirely due to congestion in my exchange when we got the number.

However, if the post code was based on telephone echanges rather than postal sorting offices, it would make more sense. It is only to give a locale to begin with, not exact location.

Another problem with telephone numbering is that they go from 1 to 0 rather than 0 to 9. In other words, numbers go .... 68, 69, 60, rather than 68, 69, 70.

Impetus

MYOB wrote: »

Rather problematic when you have people using non-landline or non-PSTN-landline providers that issue numbers on a sequential basis across an entire area. My 01-5xx xxxx UPC number (I can't actually remember any of it, its never used inbound) doesn't match the 628xxxx/629xxxx/601xxxx the town has on PSTN by any means.

I'd suggest a mixture of phone and existing postcodes form the base.

eg Dublin 1 to 24 would be 1010 to 1240.
Cork city 2000 range
Limerick city 6000 range
Killarney 6400 range

etc

All geographic addresses would have a postcode ending in 0
Postbox addresses might end in 9
Organisations receiving large amounts of post ending in 1 to 8.

This would help stop mail being delivered to the door when one has a PO Box (eg to prevent a mat full of letters accumulating while away).

The other issue is to keep the address as short as possible - ie
Building number Road name
Postcode Town/city name

Everybody should have a single standard mailing address and it should be notified to each household and business when the codes have been finalised.

Sam Russell

Impetus wrote: »

Everybody should have a single standard mailing address and it should be notified to each household and business when the codes have been finalised.

I presume you mean all households and businesses will be furnished with a full address that can be found without the aid of a postcode database. The postcode then being an additional part of the address.

Currently, businesses that have a PO box can have an address of AAA Ltd, PO box 39 Dublin 19 - which is not a lot of use if you want to deliver something by hand.

Impetus

Sam Russell wrote: »

I presume you mean all households and businesses will be furnished with a full address that can be found without the aid of a postcode database. The postcode then being an additional part of the address.

Currently, businesses that have a PO box can have an address of AAA Ltd, PO box 39 Dublin 19 - which is not a lot of use if you want to deliver something by hand.

Yes. If you have a building in Ireland it should have a building number (preferably metric – but doesn’t have to be so in an already numbered urban street), and a postcode and town name. Under EU law every website is supposed to have an Impressum page which shows the street address of the organisation responsible.

If someone has a PO Box they get a separate notification of the postal address for that po box.

If you are a big user of the post – eg a bank credit card centre, you receive a non-geographic postcode in your address notification.

In many countries on the continent, most companies have two addresses. A street address (for visitors and deliveries) and a mailing address.

In France for example a lot of companies have mail processing centres in varying towns – like call centres. They might send out bills to 20 million people and there will be a lot of incoming mail. Many of them are located in places many people never heard of eg Blois or Issy-les-Moulinex. Most people have no reason ever to visit these addresses.

A street address might be

23 rue du Docteur LOMBARD,
FR-92130 ISSY-LES-MOULINEX

Or the organisation might have a PO Box or just be a large user of the post when their address might be

XYZ SA
FR-92133 ISSY-LES-MOULINEX

Most companies publish both a visiting address and a mailing address, which can be separate or identical, depending on the circumstances.

If you go to maps.google.com and use FR-92130 as your search keyword, the map will zoom in on Issy. Or FR-41000 is probably a better example, because BLOIS is not buried in Paris suburbia.

The French system is very user-friendly. The centre of every city ends in 0, 00 or 000, the more zeros the more important the town centre. 000 is the “county town” ie the main town in the department. This would be the equivalent of Dublin 1 or 2 – depending on where one’s view of the centre is. No postcode in the French system overlaps a department (county) boundary.

The Swiss system is even better. You can refer to Zurich for example online or at a ticket machine as 8000. There is no 8000 district – it is just a user-friendly pointer to the general area in question. Each kreis (postal district/zone) has its own code in the 80 range in and around Zurich. A big organisation like www.eth.ch (one of the best universities in the world) is 8092 Zurich. Advertisements that feature a list of dealers have the dealers listed in postcode order - because if you live in 3002 you will be looking for a dealer whose postcode is ideally in the 30** range.

It is very important to have a link between spatial location and the number of the postcode. Alphanumeric codes fall down in this. Like the British telephone area codes. They were based on alphabetics rather than everything beginning with 02 is in Cork city or county. This made it extremely difficult for the authorities to expand the numbering space. eg +44 1292 is in Ayr in Scotland and +44 1296 is in Aylesbury in the South of England. This is because they both begin with "AY". The Eircode will impose a similar shooting oneself in the foot penalty on Ireland if it goes ahead as planned.

Impetus

In the previous posting on French postcodes, I neglected to point out that the French system is not perfect. Napoleon required every street to be named and every house to have a number, and he numbered each county (department) from 01 up. Unfortunately it was done in alphabetic order - 01 is Ain (which is just across the border from Geneva), 06 is around Nice, and the next door the department of Var is 83.

It would be much better if they used the system used in Switzerland, Germany etc - in Germany postcodes basically follow railway lines, and all postcodes in Bavaria begin with 8 and all codes around Frankfurt begin with 6. Spain made the same mistake as France. There is no spatial relationship in the numbering plan in either Spain or France.

Sam Russell

Impetus wrote: »

In the previous posting on French postcodes, I neglected to point out that the French system is not perfect. Napoleon required every street to be named and every house to have a number, and he numbered each county (department) from 01 up. Unfortunately it was done in alphabetic order - 01 is Ain (which is just across the border from Geneva), 06 is around Nice, and the next door the department of Var is 83.

It would be much better if they used the system used in Switzerland, Germany etc - in Germany postcodes basically follow railway lines, and all postcodes in Bavaria begin with 8 and all codes around Frankfurt begin with 6. Spain made the same mistake as France. There is no spatial relationship in the numbering plan in either Spain or France.

Which is why the phone system numbering is a good place to start. 1 is Dublin, 2 is Cork, 3 is unused, 4 is around, but outside Dublin, 5 is Wexford, Waterford, Carlow , Kilkenny, 6 is Limerick and the Southwest, 7 is Sligo and the NW, 8 is NI, 9 is Galway and the West. The next digit is a subdivision, and so on.

There is no suggestion that a persons telephone number is to be used as a post code, merely that the geographic nature of telephone numbers be copied into the post code.

It has a number of benefits.
1. It is numeric, so no snob (D6W) type post codes.
2. No rude words.
3. only 10 variations for each digit instead of 30 (ish) making errors less and machine readability easier.
4. Since it mimics the phone number, easier to remember. (Everyone knows that Cork is 2 and Galway is 9)
5. Can be introduced as a basic system of 5 digits and expanded later for more precision if required.

I think it has more merit than the proposed random numbers.

Impetus

Sam Russell wrote: »

Which is why the phone system numbering is a good place to start. 1 is Dublin, 2 is Cork, 3 is unused, 4 is around, but outside Dublin, 5 is Wexford, Waterford, Carlow , Kilkenny, 6 is Limerick and the Southwest, 7 is Sligo and the NW, 8 is NI, 9 is Galway and the West. The next digit is a subdivision, and so on.

There is no suggestion that a persons telephone number is to be used as a post code, merely that the geographic nature of telephone numbers be copied into the post code.

It has a number of benefits.
1. It is numeric, so no snob (D6W) type post codes.
2. No rude words.
3. only 10 variations for each digit instead of 30 (ish) making errors less and machine readability easier.
4. Since it mimics the phone number, easier to remember. (Everyone knows that Cork is 2 and Galway is 9)
5. Can be introduced as a basic system of 5 digits and expanded later for more precision if required.

I think it has more merit than the proposed random numbers.

Mentioning 3 - you always need a spare number for expansion or changes. The phone system has it - and if Ireland ever decided to get rid of area codes - as has been done in many countries - eg Denmark, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Monaco, Luxembourg, France etc, the 3 would come in handy.

Population and geographic growth in an area needs to be planned for. This is the one issue that forced the Germans to move from a 4 digit PLZ to a 5 digit PLZ - ie when the Berlin wall fell. Up to that point the largest country in Europe was working very efficiently with a 4 digit postcode.

Carawaystick

Impetus wrote: »

In France
...
A street address might be

23 rue du Docteur LOMBARD,
FR-92130 ISSY-LES-MOULINEX

Or the organisation might have a PO Box or just be a large user of the post when their address might be

XYZ SA
FR-92133 ISSY-LES-MOULINEX


The French system is very user-friendly. The centre of every city ends in 0, 00 or 000, the more zeros the more important the town centre. 000 is the “county town” ie the main town in the department.

As you mentioned in your follow up post, Napoleon decreed a street name and number for every building.
If you have this, then the postcode becomes almost irrelevant, apart for Towns with non-unique names.
In your example above the address is basically

23 Dr. Lombard St,
Issy-les-Moulinex,
Co. Hauts de Sine

Where 92 is the numeric code for Hauts de Seine in the almost alphabetic list of counties or Department.

I think the real thing the French have nailed down is the limits of Issy-les-Moulinex commune, and the streets in that commune. Though you will probably need a map or A-to-Z to find the street (or satnav), if you are physically present and trying to find the address, or a postman will know all the streets in their commune for letters.


In Ireland, every road has a name or number (Lsomething) but the L numbers are not widely published.
It would be simple to publish a free and open map of L roads, and define a direction( off the top of my head, each road would start at the junction with the lowest road number, or for cul-de-sacs, at the open end;
so L30405 joining L3456 to L3589 would start at L3456.)


But as I've said repeatedly upthread, what Ireland needs is an addressing system, not a postcode.

Schadenfreudia

Longest/oldest thread in the history of Boards!

No intention of reading it...so can anyone give me the shortcut answer.....when are the new postcodes being introduced?

Schadenfreudia

Schadenfreudia wrote: »

Longest/oldest thread in the history of Boards!

No intention of reading it...so can anyone give me the shortcut answer.....when are the new postcodes being introduced?

Here's the official answer, but when will people start using them ????

http://eircode.ie/overview.html
Every address in Ireland will receive its unique Eircode in Spring 2015.

Geuze

Carawaystick wrote: »

But as I've said repeatedly upthread, what Ireland needs is an addressing system, not a postcode.

Yes, I have often thought we need a national address database.

Every building to have a number.

Every road to have a name.

Sam Russell

Impetus wrote: »

Mentioning 3 - you always need a spare number for expansion or changes. The phone system has it - and if Ireland ever decided to get rid of area codes - as has been done in many countries - eg Denmark, Norway, Spain, Portugal, Monaco, Luxembourg, France etc, the 3 would come in handy.

Population and geographic growth in an area needs to be planned for. This is the one issue that forced the Germans to move from a 4 digit PLZ to a 5 digit PLZ - ie when the Berlin wall fell. Up to that point the largest country in Europe was working very efficiently with a 4 digit postcode.

There is also '0' (zero) that is unused. In a post code system this could be used for non-geographic addresses such as Revenue, Government generally, very large companies, and any public body having huge post, etc.

Impetus

Carawaystick wrote: »

As you mentioned in your follow up post, Napoleon decreed a street name and number for every building.
If you have this, then the postcode becomes almost irrelevant, apart for Towns with non-unique names.
In your example above the address is basically

23 Dr. Lombard St,
Issy-les-Moulinex,
Co. Hauts de Sine

Where 92 is the numeric code for Hauts de Seine in the almost alphabetic list of counties or Department.

I think the real thing the French have nailed down is the limits of Issy-les-Moulinex commune, and the streets in that commune. Though you will probably need a map or A-to-Z to find the street (or satnav), if you are physically present and trying to find the address, or a postman will know all the streets in their commune for letters.

I agree. Virtually every country on the continent has a defined list of streets/roads that are part of a commune. Within each street the buildings all have house numbers - usually odd on one side and even on the other. No mention of province, "county", department or region names - it is implicit in the postcode. When you are driving along the road, in many countries you will see the name of the commune with a diagonal line through it - indicating that you are leaving the town's limits. Underneath that might be the name of the next commune x with say a 3km distance indicator, indicating that the next place on this road is x.

Also every town name in France is unique. While you have several towns called Aix, they are named Aix-en-provence, Aix-les-Bains, Aix-Noulette. Perhaps a bit of this could be used in creating townland names in Ireland (adding a suffix named after a local river, mountain, forest, or other natural feature etc) in addition to north, south, east and west.

With this in place there is no "stretching the boundaries of Ballsbridge" to make a house sound more expensive etc. It also means that deliveries and visitors trying to find your address will not end up in confusion, having to ask people, who probably haven't a clue themselves.

Carawaystick wrote: »

In Ireland, every road has a name or number (Lsomething) but the L numbers are not widely published.
It would be simple to publish a free and open map of L roads, and define a direction( off the top of my head, each road would start at the junction with the lowest road number, or for cul-de-sacs, at the open end;
so L30405 joining L3456 to L3589 would start at L3456.)


But as I've said repeatedly upthread, what Ireland needs is an addressing system, not a postcode.

The L road numbering in Ireland is appalling. It is not published (aside from random road signage, and a few mentions in Open Street maps and Google maps). There is no sequential logic. eg driving down the N7 (random number choice), the first L road might be L2233. The next one won't be L2234 or similar - it is more likely to be L923781.

If it was logically laid out, it could be the basis of rural route road addresses - eg

400 ROUTE L2019
4500 NAAS

This house would be 400m from the start of the L2019 which is its intersection with the R410. The start of a road can simply be indicated by putting a KM 0 appendage on the L2019 sign.

Map: http://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/2049465#map=14/53.2109/-6.6280

If someone builds a house next to this is won't have to be shoehorned in as 400A - because it will have a natural metric number - eg 440 or whatever.

Whoever signed off on this mess should be handcuffed to his office chair and 10 litres of gasoline poured on the ground around him, while electrodes are attached to his body delivering varying voltages to his skin - while someone nearby starts lighting matches and throwing them on the ground . S/he should also forfeit one year's pension for each scream, shout etc.

If you tot up all the time wasted, fuel wasted and added delivery costs etc hunting around to find a particular address, delivery delays, etc this is a serious issue that can't be ignored, and will not be fixed by squirting postcodes over the countryside, as one might spread grated Parmigano on one's pasta!

Sulla Felix

I love reading the OP every and now and then and the grumbling at this taking until 2011 to get up and running. Oh to be so lucky!

Elmo

Sulla Felix wrote: »

I love reading the OP every and now and then and the grumbling at this taking until 2011 to get up and running. Oh to be so lucky!

Its the department they couldn't even make a simple decision on the move of RTÉjr from RTÉ TWO, couple with the fact that the Postal Division and Broadcasting Division is now merged as the Postal and Broadcasting Division :rolleyes:

ardmacha

400 ROUTE L2019

In a country with a rich heritage of placenames, who wants to live at 400 Route L2019?
The postcode should serve the people, not require reorganisation of the population to suit the postcode.