Non-unique addresses in Ireland

Sam Russell

threeiron wrote: »

Surely property numbers are the only option. Names are too personal and next owner wants to change.

Well you would think that but how do you number houses randomly located across a townland and not on neat urban roads, and in a townland with no name for the road and no notion which end is the start. At least a name will uniquely identify the house within the townland. Numbering can came after the road names are agreed, and assigned. So what if the new owner wants it changed - same rules apply - it just has to be a unique name within the townland. At least house names only need agreement within that house, road names need agreement across the neighbourhood.

If you cannot get agreement within a household on such a minor matter, what chance agreement across a whole townland as to road names! Anyway, they could choose numbers for their 'name' but who takes number 1?

However, if this is adopted, the name has to be visible from the road otherwise it is pointless.

marmurr1916

And somehow this is supposed to be easier to implement than eircodes?

Introducing road names and property numbers could take decades and they might never win public acceptance in rural townlands.

Eircodes are ideal for addresses in rural townlands where there are no road names and no property numbers - i.e. about 35% of Irish addresses.

Eircodes are a done deal.

The fight, if there ever really was one, is over.

Sam Russell

When I see a considerable number of houses (like even 10%) with plaques displayed outside them with their Eircode clearly displayed then I will agree with you.

There is an advert for Eircodes airing currently with a country type character in a rural setting trying to guide his delivery towards him with no success. How would Eircode help him, there is no way to know which house is the right one when you get there. [I presume satnavs will eventually incorporate them, but even then will it identify randomly placed houses].

Every house needs to be identifiable from the road, and Eircode does not do this. House numbers can as can house names in rural areas. At least asking someone where is 'The White House' or 'Burkes' or 'number 67' will get a response but where is A86 H9U7 will be met with a 'Wha....'.

marmurr1916

Sam Russell wrote: »

There is an advert for Eircodes airing currently with a country type character in a rural setting trying to guide his delivery towards him with no success. How would Eircode help him, there is no way to know which house is the right one when you get there. [I presume satnavs will eventually incorporate them, but even then will it identify randomly placed houses].

Yes it will. Satnavs can be as accurate as within 5 metres of a geographical location.

Give it up - you're not just flogging a dead horse, you're flogging a dead horse that's been cremated! :P

tadcan

Sam Russell wrote: »

There is an advert for Eircodes airing currently with a country type character in a rural setting trying to guide his delivery towards him with no success. How would Eircode help him, there is no way to know which house is the right one when you get there. [I presume satnavs will eventually incorporate them, but even then will it identify randomly placed houses].

Even now, with a 3g mobile connection you can check the eircode and get a map of the area around the house.

I used to live in
North Lodge
Parish Name
Local Village
County

after us, another family moved in and a friend of mine called it Smiths house. It didn't matter the house had a name since the 1800's.

Eugene Norman

My parents moved down the country and have an isolated house. I searched for its name ( no number), road, nearest town and county and the eircode was spot on. The map was exact. Reverse look ups would also work with the eircode -> map.

justbored

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Sam Russell

justbored wrote: »

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I live in Dublin 4 but have many relatives and friends who live in the country.

One relative put a name on his house over thirty years ago and it can be found on Google maps using that name. His neighbours houses are not named.

Alun

tadcan wrote: »

Even now, with a 3g mobile connection you can check the eircode and get a map of the area around the house.

Yes, the mobile version of the eircode finder page has a "Use my location" button directly under the search box, so that anyone can easily find the eircode of a building they're near to.

MBSnr

Sam Russell wrote: »

I live in Dublin 4 but have many relatives and friends who live in the country.

One relative put a name on his house over thirty years ago and it can be found on Google maps using that name. His neighbours houses are not named.

Most people who live around us who name their houses tend to be English.... That's not a dig or implying anything BTW - just what I've noticed. I've seen people in England name their houses even though they have house numbers.

The Irish don't seem to go in for house names.

Alun

MBSnr wrote: »

The Irish don't seem to go in for house names.

Zoom in far enough in Google Maps in many areas, in S Dublin for example, and you'll discover that's not true.

E.g. https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.2828706,-6.1124157,17z?hl=en

Sheldons Brain

Alun wrote: »

Zoom in far enough in Google Maps in many areas, in S Dublin for example, and you'll discover that's not true.

E.g. https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.2828706,-6.1124157,17z?hl=en

He said it was an English thing and you used S Dublin as an example! Hardly a perfect refutation. Perhaps the people in Westminster Lawns do name their houses!

MBSnr

Alun wrote: »

Zoom in far enough in Google Maps in many areas, in S Dublin for example, and you'll discover that's not true.

E.g. https://www.google.ie/maps/@53.2828706,-6.1124157,17z?hl=en

OK. The Irish don't seem to go in for rural house names.

Sam Russell

MBSnr wrote: »

OK. The Irish don't seem to go in for rural house names.

Well, my relative that named his rural house is Irish and spent most of his 90 year life within 10 miles of his home, and never lived abroad. He put the name on about 50 years ago.

My neighbour in Dubin 4 has a name on his house, in Irish, and he too is Irish.

So much for generalisations.

marmurr1916

There are no non-unique addresses in Ireland any longer. Eircodes have solved the problem.

MBSnr

Sam Russell wrote: »

Well, my relative that named his rural house is Irish and spent most of his 90 year life within 10 miles of his home, and never lived abroad. He put the name on about 50 years ago.

My neighbour in Dubin 4 has a name on his house, in Irish, and he too is Irish.

So much for generalisations.

Two examples.... Seriously?

Overall most people in rural areas do not name their houses. So my generalisation is correct. I live in a rural environment. You live in Dublin. You may say this makes no odds but your insistence that people should just name their house to resolve an issue (that is now addressed) over looks the fact that a large % of rural people think house naming is a pretentious thing.

justbored

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Sam Russell

justbored wrote: »

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It is only snobbery if you call your house 'Mon Repose' or 'Dun Roamin'. If you give your house the name it is generally known as - like 'Burkes' because the Burkes live there, how is that pretension.

I would prefer numbers but how do you number houses randomly positioned in a Townland with no proper road structure and road names? At least names would be a start.

Eircode is a way of giving names or numbers (depends on how you look at them as they are a mixture of numbers and letters) to every house, but it is not much of an improvement if they too are secret. How many will put their Eircode on a plaque outside their homes? How do you know you have arrived at the house you seek? How does the postie know?

justbored

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SpaceTime

justbored wrote: »

We are just on different wavelengths. I don't want my house to be identifiable from the outside. If I wanted to live in a neat row of numbered houses I wouldn't have moved here.
A nice bottle if whisky for the postie at Xmas is all you need to make sure he knows ur address.
DHL, USP, the bin men never 'loose' the house either. I put that down to their Xmas present too..... Or maybe they just know the current unnumbered, unnamed ununique address.

So basically you're saying rather than proper addresses just bribe delivery workers ?!?

I don't see an issue with names on houses but I do see a major issue with just non identified properties.

In most countries the postal service simply wouldn't know what to do with your letters and wouldn't deliver them.

At the end of the day, this is a big part of the reason why postal services and courier services for deliveries to Ireland are about twice the price of everywhere else.

A scattered population is one problem but it's made 100X worse by lack of useful addresses.

It means a courier wastes half the day trying to locate inpossible to find, unlisted places and that time is money.

An Post itself has some damage by allowing this situation. It's inevitably increased their cost base and made flexibility impossible. If a postman goes out sick in my area the post is completely messed up because we've about 250 homes without numbers on his route!

You don't need a near row of numbered houses. France for example has plenty of scattered homes but you can find them if you have an address!

If you gave a name and townland your parcel would most likely end up in the recycling eventually as they'd have no interest in conducting a detective operation to solve the cryptic puzzle many Irish people think is an address!

threeiron

justbored wrote: »

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An Post need to promote the future importance of the Eircode routing key and give that priority in their mail sortation systems. That would encourage use of Eircodes and allow people to start using their geographical text addresses while still facilitating An Post's delivery systems. I expect Shannon, Co. Limerick will become a thing of the past for all mail with an Eircode.

Some years ago a letter came from American Niece addressed to Aunty X and Uncle Y (No surname), Townland, Town, County, Ireland. The card arrived safe within days of being posted. The following year, she sent a Christmas Card to our kids again only putting their first names and again it arrived at our non unique country address!

SpaceTime

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Some years ago a letter came from American Niece addressed to Aunty X and Uncle Y (No surname), Townland, Town, County, Ireland. The card arrived safe within days of being posted. The following year, she sent a Christmas Card to our kids again only putting their first names and again it arrived at our non unique country address!

That's great but if it was more than a few exceptional items the system wouldn't work.

Still doesn't negate the need for addresses.

Sam Russell

justbored wrote: »

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So a bottle of whiskey costs €25 to €30. There are 2.2 million addresses in Ireland of which 35% are non-unique. So to solve the problem you suggest our posties are given 750,000 bottles of whiskey at a cost of €18.7 million per year, divided among the rural population. No wonder you are in favour of Eircode as it is only costing €27 million over 10 years, and being paid for by everyone.

Mind you no-one has pointed out how postie will find your house if it does not have a plaque with the Eircode on it, but that is a different point altogether.

Carawaystick

Saw a few approaches to rural addressing over the summer holidays.
In one part of rural france, there were little fingerpost signs with individual house names on them.
In a different part of France, there were no addressing sign posts and some houses had the house name on their letterbox/gateway ; but not all. Very like rural Ireland. You would have to know where you're going to get there.
In Spain, there were addresses handed out on flyers with the
name of the place
road number, kmxxx,y

something like
Casa Carawaystick
C123 km23,4

Meaning it was at chainage 23.4 on the road C123

Not very precise, but you're getting a 100m linear position.

The roads in Spain and France have "mileposts" every km and in France anyway show the direction of increase.

marmurr1916

All these proposed solutions would cost a lot more time and money than eircodes. Ireland now has a system whereby there are no non-unique addresses. Either use the system (and it can be used for navigation with Google Maps by using the mobile version of Eircode Finder) or don't. If you choose not to, then don't whinge.

marmurr1916

Sam Russell wrote: »

So a bottle of whiskey costs €25 to €30. There are 2.2 million addresses in Ireland of which 35% are non-unique. So to solve the problem you suggest our posties are given 750,000 bottles of whiskey at a cost of €18.7 million per year, divided among the rural population. No wonder you are in favour of Eircode as it is only costing €27 million over 10 years, and being paid for by everyone.

Mind you no-one has pointed out how postie will find your house if it does not have a plaque with the Eircode on it, but that is a different point altogether.

Have you used the Eircode finder in conjuction with Google Maps? It shows the precise location of houses when eircodes are used to identify them. There's absolutely no reason for eircodes to be displayed at the front of houses since the maps bring you right to the house.

Carawaystick

marmurr1916 wrote: »

All these proposed solutions would cost a lot more time and money than eircodes. Ireland now has a system whereby there are no non-unique addresses. Either use the system (and it can be used for navigation with Google Maps by using the mobile version of Eircode Finder) or don't. If you choose not to, then don't whinge.

Ok, so I want to get to a non-building such as a pitch or car park. The road number,km system works, but eircodes dont

Sam Russell

marmurr1916 wrote: »

Have you used the Eircode finder in conjuction with Google Maps? It shows the precise location of houses when eircodes are used to identify them. There's absolutely no reason for eircodes to be displayed at the front of houses since the maps bring you right to the house.

Unless of course it is an apartment.

Bray Head

I would argue it makes sense to write your eircode on your letterbox if you live inside an apartment building. It will probably cut down on human error at postal delivery worker level. It also makes sense to write your surname too, but people in Ireland don't do this.

marmurr1916

Sam Russell wrote: »

Unless of course it is an apartment.

Apartments tend to be in buildings. Kind of hard to drive into the average apartment. As long as the eircode brings you to the apartment building, all you need to know is the apartment number within the building, which you can look up using the eircode since each apartment has its own eircode...

marmurr1916

Carawaystick wrote: »

Ok, so I want to get to a non-building such as a pitch or car park. The road number,km system works, but eircodes dont

So? Eircodes are post codes for postal addresses, not location codes for every single possible location you could want to travel to. How much would it cost to add signs and km markers at every possible location that a person could travel to? Would we need to put them outside every single field at the side of every single road? You might not want to travel to a particular field but someone else might. Better to be safe and put the markers up outside every field entrance. Good luck getting councils to do that, good luck getting them to maintain the signs, good luck getting property owners to agree to the erection of the signs, good luck getting the money for the signs. Good bye and good luck! :P