Eircode - its implemetation (merged)

chewed wrote: »

I wonder will Google Maps eventually be able to display the actual house number/name when an Eircode is searched, once it's fully rolled out? Currently it just seems to display the town land and town.

Well it can't do any more than that for rural townland addresses anyway. But it would be handy if at least gave the street name in urban areas.

Sam Russell

Maybe if Google start giving the accurate geographical address [Shannon Airport, Co. Clare] maybe An Post might drop their insistence on the so-called postal address. Once Eircode becomes normal and the various apps make it popular, the Google maps will be the usual way people check addresses.

Why would An Post need a 'postal' address as Eircode has it already embedded? Shannon Airport will then be back in Co. Clare for good.

Sam Russell wrote: »

Maybe if Google start giving the accurate geographical address [Shannon Airport, Co. Clare] maybe An Post might drop their insistence on the so-called postal address. Once Eircode becomes normal and the various apps make it popular, the Google maps will be the usual way people check addresses.

Why would An Post need a 'postal' address as Eircode has it already embedded? Shannon Airport will then be back in Co. Clare for good.

Shannon airport never left Co. Clare

oscarBravo

Sam Russell wrote: »

Maybe if Google start giving the accurate geographical address [Shannon Airport, Co. Clare]...

Google Maps tells me Shannon Airport is in Lismacleane, County Clare. What's it telling you, and why is it telling us different things?

Sam Russell wrote: »

Maybe if Google start giving the accurate geographical address [Shannon Airport, Co. Clare] maybe An Post might drop their insistence on the so-called postal address. Once Eircode becomes normal and the various apps make it popular, the Google maps will be the usual way people check addresses.

Why would An Post need a 'postal' address as Eircode has it already embedded? Shannon Airport will then be back in Co. Clare for good.

They don't insist on the postal address. It's use is optional. Just as Royal Mail in the UK don't insist on the postal addresses for the many addresses in the UK, including Gatwick Airport, which have a geographic address that differs from its postal address.

The Eircode Finder site now shows the geographic address as the default address when you enter an Eircode.

In most cases, the postal address is the same as the geographic address.

For historical reasons, mainly because the Irish postal system copied many features of the British postal system before independence, a relatively small number of Irish addresses have an An Post preferred postal address (the use of which is not insisted upon by An Post) which differ from their geographic addresses, just as in the UK.

It's never been a big deal before (i.e. people living in Co. Kilkenny never seem to have objected when their postal addresses included the line 'via Waterford') but there seems to have been some effort in the media and on social media to make a big deal out of it since Eircodes were launched.

I don't know why a system that's been used since the mid-19th century without any major controversy should have suddenly become a big deal since Eircodes were launched.

Although I suppose it could be something to do with efforts by certain parties to undermine Eircodes and by the tendency of the 'only in Ireland' brigade to try to make a big fuss about something which is actually a feature of the British postal system too, and has been since the system was developed in the 19th century.

chewed

Yesterday I had to use an eircode in Google maps on my phone to find the address of a house in the arse end of Cavan. It worked a treat! Bring it on I say!!!

BoatMad

when did the support for eircode get added to google maps, I missed any announcement

" and a raspberry to the detractors "

chewed

BoatMad wrote: »

when did the support for eircode get added to google maps, I missed any announcement

" and a raspberry to the detractors "

I asked the same question in an earlier post. No announcement yet as it's still in beta. Some codes still don't work properly.

MBSnr

BoatMad wrote: »

when did the support for eircode get added to google maps, I missed any announcement

" and a raspberry to the detractors "

Nothing official. I just noticed by chance 2 wks back. Some things don't work correctly as of yet, as in this thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=101087769

BoatMad

MBSnr wrote: »

Nothing official. I just noticed by chance 2 wks back. Some things don't work correctly as of yet, as in this thread http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=101087769

works for my address, even if if displays a slight odd address ( mind you round me , lots of funny names and spelling exists)

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/collapse-in-irish-property-prices-more-severe-than-previously-thought-1.2799482

Another use for Eircodes - geographical analysis of house prices within the Residential Property Price Index:

[font=Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif]Ireland s property market crash was more severe than previously thought while cash buyers are paying significantly less for property than other buyers, according to the new Residential Property Price Index.[/font]

[font=Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif]...[/font]

[font=Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif]The figures, which also use a range of locational information based on Eircodes, reveal a massive variation in the average price paid for property across Dublin, and between the capital and the rest of the country.[/font]

sondagefaux wrote: »

Another use for Eircodes - geographical analysis of house prices within the Residential Property Price Index:

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/collapse-in-irish-property-prices-more-severe-than-previously-thought-1.2799482

Eircode routing keys (the first three characters of the Eircodes) are used in the new index to better account for locational differences between dwellings. Only county level information was available in the original index outside of Dublin

Eircode routing keys are a terrible yardstick for making comparisons outside of Dublin. In the West of the country routing key areas are massive, eg the one that straddles Galway, Clare and Mayo. Obviously, if you have an Eircode license then you can use small areas. But, then again, if you want to relate the stats to areas that the public can identify with, then maybe you are stuck with routing keys anyway.

[Deleted User]

plodder wrote: »

Eircode routing keys are a terrible yardstick for making comparisons outside of Dublin. In the West of the country routing key areas are massive, eg the one that straddles Galway, Clare and Mayo. Obviously, if you have an Eircode license then you can use small areas. But, then again, if you want to relate the stats to areas that the public can identify with, then maybe you are stuck with routing keys anyway.

What about using the small area sub codes that were discussed up thread (I can't be arsed to find them!).

Deleted User wrote: »

What about using the small area sub codes that were discussed up thread (I can't be arsed to find them!).

The CSO have published statistics before that were indexed by routing key. I'm not sure why they do it, as obviously they could use small areas. Except if the reason is relating the stats to public identifiers, which routing keys are.

plodder wrote: »

sondagefaux wrote: »

Another use for Eircodes - geographical analysis of house prices within the Residential Property Price Index:

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/collapse-in-irish-property-prices-more-severe-than-previously-thought-1.2799482

Eircode routing keys (the first three characters of the Eircodes) are used in the new index to better account for locational differences between dwellings. Only county level information was available in the original index outside of Dublin

Eircode routing keys are a terrible yardstick for making comparisons outside of Dublin. In the West of the country routing key areas are massive, eg the one that straddles Galway, Clare and Mayo. Obviously, if you have an Eircode license then you can use small areas. But, then again, if you want to relate the stats to areas that the public can identify with, then maybe you are stuck with routing keys anyway.

It doesn't say that the information is classified by routing key areas alone - prices can still be broken down by county and town for example.

byrnefm

Received my AIB credit card bill yesterday.. with Eircode on it

So it does appear you can get it added on to your address with them, if you call them.

Finally, one regular bill with an Eircode.. they certainly don't make it easy!

On a related note, a relative is switching over to Airtricity and the form asked for the Eircode and usef it to auto-populate their address. A genuinely useful reason for it, especially for those with long addresses.

Bray Head

The CSO's updated residential property price index is an extremely high-quality product: http://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-rppi/rppi16/cd/

You get monthly price and transactions data for a wide variety of dwelling types and locations.

The CSO also construct a hedonic price index by matching the Revenue price data with the dwelling characteristics from SEAI's BER database. This is at the frontier of best practice internationally.

From the release:

What benefit are there to using Eircodes? There are three uses for Eircodes in the new RPPI. Firstly, as an important pillar in the National Data Infrastructure, Eircodes help to match the stamp duty data to the Geodirectory. Secondly, the first three digits of the Eircode (which are known as routing keys) are used as a price-determining variable in the model in order to help explain the change in residential property prices over time. Thirdly, the CSO is able to present new statistical outputs on volume, value and average price of residential property classified by Eircode routing keys. There are 139 Eircode routing keys.

For the doubters, this approach would have been completely impossible without a unique ID for every dwelling in the country tied to a database.

No code can of course solve every user's need, but the unique ID + database approach chosen for eircode has made this kind of excellent geo-spatial data product possible.

sondagefaux wrote: »

It doesn't say that the information is classified by routing key areas alone - prices can still be broken down by county and town for example.

Then the point is that eircode doesn't add much. It's true that eircodes as unique identifiers means you can cross reference different datasets, which is useful, but the claim you repeated was that classifying statistics by routing key is some big improvement. It might be in some parts of the country, eg County Dublin and Cork city, but it definitely isn't in other parts like Galway. It's not much help to a Galway estate agent to have one combined statistic that includes East Galway, Galway city, most of Connemara, and North Clare. They would prefer to see separate statistics at a finer level of detail. Another example of why it was wrong to base routing keys on the very strange historic delivery structure of An Post.

On the whole "no code doesn't solve every problem" point - the answer to that is simply - why didn't they subdivide the these enormous routing key areas into smaller ones? There is no good answer to that question.

Bray Head

plodder wrote: »

sondagefaux wrote: »

It doesn't say that the information is classified by routing key areas alone - prices can still be broken down by county and town for example.

Then the point is that eircode doesn't add much. It's true that eircodes as unique identifiers means you can cross reference different datasets, which is useful, but the claim you repeated was that classifying statistics by routing key is some big improvement. It might be in some parts of the country, eg County Dublin and Cork city, but it definitely isn't in other parts like Galway. It's not much help to a Galway estate agent to have one combined statistic that includes East Galway, Galway city, most of Connemara, and North Clare. They would prefer to see separate statistics at a finer level of detail. Another example of why it was wrong to base routing keys on the very strange historic delivery structure of An Post.

On the whole "no code doesn't solve every problem" point - the answer to that is simply - why didn't they subdivide the these enormous routing key areas into smaller ones? There is no good answer to that question.

If the estate agent is so curious she can download the PPR database herself and parse and analyse it by town or townland.

Very small areas will have very volatile results anyway as transactions are fewer.

plodder wrote: »

Then the point is that eircode doesn't add much. It's true that eircodes as unique identifiers means you can cross reference different datasets, which is useful, but the claim you repeated was that classifying statistics by routing key is some big improvement. It might be in some parts of the country, eg County Dublin and Cork city, but it definitely isn't in other parts like Galway. It's not much help to a Galway estate agent to have one combined statistic that includes East Galway, Galway city, most of Connemara, and North Clare. They would prefer to see separate statistics at a finer level of detail. Another example of why it was wrong to base routing keys on the very strange historic delivery structure of An Post.

On the whole "no code doesn't solve every problem" point - the answer to that is simply - why didn't they subdivide the these enormous routing key areas into smaller ones? There is no good answer to that question.

As the other poster pointed out, they can sub divide and group the unique identitiers any way which way they choose in the database. They can group all the city small areas, all the west ones etc. to any level of detail they want

ukoda wrote: »

As the other poster pointed out, they can sub divide and group the unique identitiers any way which way they choose in the database. They can group all the city small areas, all the west ones etc. to any level of detail they want

and as I pointed out, publishing statistics indexed by Eircode routing key is not uniformly useful and can't really be seen as a benefit of Eircode.

Bray Head wrote: »

If the estate agent is so curious she can download the PPR database herself and parse and analyse it by town or townland.

Very small areas will have very volatile results anyway as transactions are fewer.

as a matter of interest, where can you download it from?

The thing about small areas is that you can combine them if they are too small. But, if they are too big then there's not much you can do with them.

PDVerse

plodder wrote: »

as a matter of interest, where can you download it from?

The thing about small areas is that you can combine them if they are too small. But, if they are too big then there's not much you can do with them.

Small Areas are only large geographically if they are sparsely populated, which negates the need to split them.

GJG

plodder wrote: »

Bray Head wrote: »

If the estate agent is so curious she can download the PPR database herself and parse and analyse it by town or townland.

Very small areas will have very volatile results anyway as transactions are fewer.

as a matter of interest, where can you download it from?

The thing about small areas is that you can combine them if they are too small. But, if they are too big then there's not much you can do with them.

Plodder, you are stumbling towards the answer there.

Sure, be they in the UK (up to 26 residences in each postcode) or in Germany (up to 100,000), people can use the arbitrary postcode areas for organising data or other items. Of course it is normally only a coincidence that the areas are suitable for the use, though as you say, in the UK areas can be combined if they are too small, though even that may not be perfect where a very specific boundary is needed (say, a watershed).

But there are thousands of potential uses, and no 'size' is going to suit them all, unless it is done the way Eircode does it - have one residence per code. Then you can combine them any way you want, so the system suits any use.

Bray Head

You can download the PPR here: https://www.propertypriceregister.ie/website/npsra/pprweb.nsf/page/ppr-home-en

GJG wrote: »

Plodder, you are stumbling towards the answer there.

Sure, be they in the UK (up to 26 residences in each postcode) or in Germany (up to 100,000), people can use the arbitrary postcode areas for organising data or other items. Of course it is normally only a coincidence that the areas are suitable for the use, though as you say, in the UK areas can be combined if they are too small, though even that may not be perfect where a very specific boundary is needed (say, a watershed).

But there are thousands of potential uses, and no 'size' is going to suit them all, unless it is done the way Eircode does it - have one residence per code. Then you can combine them any way you want, so the system suits any use.

You're mixing up a few different things there. The fact that Eircodes are unique per household is not relevant to the question of whether routing keys are a useful index for aggregate statistics like house prices. We are looking at this from the point of view of the consumer of the statistics (eg estate agents) not from the generator of the statistics. The whole point of statistics is to give you an overview without having to look at individual data points.

Let me elaborate the point. There are around 37 different routing keys in the Dublin area. So, if house prices go up in Swords, but down in Lucan, then you can see that because those areas have different routing keys.

On the other hand, most of Galway is covered by one routing key (H91), covering a population of around 250,000 people. If house prices go up in Galway city but down in Gort, then you won't see that in the statistics because they are all lumped in together.

The question is why did they create those massive routing key areas like H91? Why didn't they subdivide them into smaller areas?

You seem to be saying, that's all very well for house price statistics, but how can you be sure that a subdivision that suits house prices, would be useful for other uses? I'm saying that's nonsense because any subdivision would be better than none at all.

Here is a page showing the data indexed by routing key:

http://www.cso.ie/px/pxeirestat/Statire/SelectVarVal/Define.asp?maintable=HPA04&PLanguage=0

medoc

Ordered a new bin service from AES Bord Na Mona. They asked for my eircode to make bin delivery easy. 4 days later I get a call from the delivery man for directions!! Small steps I suppose

plodder wrote: »

You're mixing up a few different things there. The fact that Eircodes are unique per household is not relevant to the question of whether routing keys are a useful index for aggregate statistics like house prices. We are looking at this from the point of view of the consumer of the statistics (eg estate agents) not from the generator of the statistics. The whole point of statistics is to give you an overview without having to look at individual data points.

Let me elaborate the point. There are around 37 different routing keys in the Dublin area. So, if house prices go up in Swords, but down in Lucan, then you can see that because those areas have different routing keys.

On the other hand, most of Galway is covered by one routing key (H91), covering a population of around 250,000 people. If house prices go up in Galway city but down in Gort, then you won't see that in the statistics because they are all lumped in together.

The question is why did they create those massive routing key areas like H91? Why didn't they subdivide them into smaller areas?

You seem to be saying, that's all very well for house price statistics, but how can you be sure that a subdivision that suits house prices, would be useful for other uses? I'm saying that's nonsense because any subdivision would be better than none at all.

Here is a page showing the data indexed by routing key:

http://www.cso.ie/px/pxeirestat/Statire/SelectVarVal/Define.asp?maintable=HPA04&PLanguage=0

The actual question is why didn't they display the statistics the way you want them displayed. The answer is they could have, but I don't know why they didn't.

For example, they could have done an interactive map that the user could click on a area and it would combine certain small areas and give the average price for that area, they could also have split city and county or done it by townland or by general area (north south east west)

If they had displayed it by county, you'd probably have the same complaint as county Galway is too large.

Eircode allows you to split and display the data any which way you want. Have we moved on now to complain about HOW people are using eircode?

Sam Russell

ukoda wrote: »

Have we moved on now to complain about HOW people are using eircode?

Surely that is the point of this thread. Implementation is about the HOW it is used.

The routing codes are too big and too unwieldy for any use other than to help An Post deliver mail by the current system. A little forethought on their behalf would have got the routing codes reduced into similar population sizes.

However we are where we are a bad design that some are trying to use.