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How to get to know an EirCode?

Irish Stones

Mods: Please, feel free to move this thread to the appropriate forum, if needed. Thanks

I'm Italian and live in Italy. I used to write greeting cards a couple of times a year to an Irish address.

The last time was a Christmas card, I posted it early in December, it was returned to me two days ago because of insufficient address, which was the same I have always used. So I believe that the EirCode is now needed. The fact is that I don't have this bit of info and can't contact the person in any other way.

This person lives on a N road and has no door number, but until a year ago all worked fine.

As far as I have understood, each house has its own EirCode. Is this true?

I tried to use Google Maps, right click on the house and then click "What's Here", but I only get the GPS coordinates and no EirCode.

Is there a way to get the EirCode of a house? What other issue would it be other than the EirCode?

Thanks a lot!

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Spear

Every house/apartment gets an Eircode but An Post don't use them for local delivery.

But they're all public info, you can look them up here: https://www.eircode.ie/

Brussels Sprout

This is the official site for finding them if you have the address:

https://finder.eircode.ie/#/

coylemj

Edit: Corrected.

Allinall

Why not just ask the person who lives there?

[Deleted User]

An Post DO use Eircodes.

They're used for automatic sorting, can be useful for vague / unclear addresses but they're not mandatory.

Postmen / Postwomen obviously don't use them for local delivery, as they are only working with the top line of the address on a known route. That's true of pretty much every postal service in the world. However, putting an Eircode on the envelope is useful.

If the envelope was returned with insufficient address information, it means that it didn't get past the automatic sorting stage and it couldn't find any address for the delivery, so it never even got as far as a route.

OP: you should check you actually have the correct address. A lot of rural Irish addresses are just utterly vague: i.e. "Anne Other, Mysterioustownland, Co Kerry"

I don't understand why people keep repeating an urban myth that they don't use them. It seems to have been pushed by that extremely annoying account on Twitter that had it in for Eircode. Every time you mentioned the word Eircode it seemed to trigger that account to bombard you with explanations as to why Eircode was utterly useless etc etc.

coylemj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860646#Comment_121860646

My apologies, you are correct. I was repeating an urban myth. For my sins, I will tell every person I meet today that An Post does use Eircodes.

The Eircode for the address should be the last line for mail generated within Ireland and the second last line for mail generated outside the country

https://www.anpost.com/Post-Parcels/Sending/Correct-Address

[Deleted User]

It's usually fairly hard to get An Post to reject a letter. They're typically pretty flexible about inaccurate addresses.

I'm just wondering if they're beginning to rationalise the costs. It's quite expensive to manually process letters i.e. they have to be scanned and someone has to look at a screen and figure out the address e.g. bad handwriting or missing components of an address.

Or, they're rejected and manually sorted.

It's possible they're just automatically rejecting more letters if OCR scanning system can't figure out the address.

Gooser14

When you check eircode.ie you will see that it shows a geographic address & a postal address which may be different. Use the postal address for mail.

coylemj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860698#Comment_121860698

A relative of mine worked in a post office once and he said that if the address isn't exact, your best bet is that someone in the local sorting office who knows the area might take the time to manually adjust the address on the envelope to make it more precise. But if nobody bothers, it gets rejected. So it's basically a lottery.

Uncle Pierre

Eircode finder won't work for you if the person only has a townland in their address, in the way that most rural residents do - e.g. Tom Murphy, Ballymore, Gorey, Co. Wexford.

It doesn't know which precise house in Ballymore that Tom Murphy lives at. And any system that could link eircode to a person's name would have to be updated every time somebody moves in or out.

Will only work in such cases if the person has assigned a name to their house - e.g. if it's Tom Murphy, "River View", Ballymore, Gorey, Co. Wexford, then you can search for "River View".

Irish Stones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860106#Comment_121860106

Wow, that's amazing, I found the Eircode for that house. I hope that using it will sort the matter.

Thanks so much!

Irish Stones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860108#Comment_121860108

Amazing tool! Thank you very much, I hope this sorts the matter.

Irish Stones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860614#Comment_121860614

As I said above, I do not have any contact but their home address, which I always used and it always worked. This time my letter was returned, so I thought that it was because I didn't write the Eircode on the envelope.

Irish Stones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860646#Comment_121860646

Thank you @[Deleted User] , your explanation was clear.

Irish Stones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860698#Comment_121860698

What I can absolutely rule out is a bad handwriting, all the people that I know praise me for my accurate, clear and precise handwriting, especially in capital letters.

The person to whom I sent the letter was one of those cases where the address is vague, sort of "Mary Murphy, Down There Road, Ballysomething, co. Mayo".

Thanks for your explanation.

Irish Stones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860784#Comment_121860784

Thanks for the tip.

I checked, in my case both addresses are the same.

Irish Stones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860880#Comment_121860880

Thank you for your time, very much appreciated.

coylemj

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121860948#Comment_121860948

If you 'do not have any contact' .... can you be sure that they still live there?

Irish Stones

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121861905#Comment_121861905

No, I'm not. But if they moved and someone else is living there, the return reason would have been "the addressee does not live here anymore" or something like that.

bog master

Maybe a bit off topic-Mods feel free to move. My problem is my eircode is so different from postal address.

History:

Acquired a Rural LA house. Townland address only.

Lease says address is X

Contact ESB for connection-address is X

Contact SW re pension-address is X

Notify Voting Register-address is X

Change address at bank-address is X

Eircodes come in several months later and I tend not to use them. But when I do, totally different townland, address is now Y, but nearby.

It's now causing issues with online purchases, road tax online etc.

What can I do?

byte

I'm not sure if it will be much help, but maybe try contacting Eircode and maybe they can sort it or advise who you need to contact:

https://www.eircode.ie/contact

Mimikyu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122235078#Comment_122235078

Hey,

We moved into a new estate last year I’m having a similar problem with our Eircode. It puts a close town (20/25 mins away) in our address which seems to be causing post to go missing or be delayed.

It seems some services that make you use an Eircode auto populate the address field and I’ve seen some cut out part of the address so it ends up being 1 Fake Street, Wrong Town, County so the estate and village are missing. Had the postman deliver something the other day exactly like this. Said it was bouncing around the sorting office for a few days and no one wanted it but he said he knew there was a 1 Fake Street on his route so he’d try that. I’ve also seen tracking with the couriers go out for delivery and back to the depot again when they obviously took it to the wrong town.

Anyone get their Eircode edited to remove wrong info? I’ve checked an older estate beside ours and theirs is correct and doesn’t include the nearest (wrong) town so it’s not something that’s done village wide.

JVince

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122236106#Comment_122236106

It's the post delivery office that can do the corrections. Usually they also input the original data.

Write to the Delivery Office manager and request the change in eircode.

They will pass this on to geo directory who operate eircode and which is a subsidiary of an post

...Ghost...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122235078#Comment_122235078

Similar issue that my eircode gives my address, but with the next town over which is in a different local authority. On the bright side, it's easier to spell and fit on a form for address, so I've taken to using it anyway 😁

Sam Russell

An Post admit that they do not use Eircode.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/an-post-confirms-staff-do-not-use-eircode-system-for-local-deliveries-1.3104577

Sorting mail for a postman's delivery route cannot use Eircode because it is random and cannot be sequenced for the order of the postman's route. It was never designed for the postal service, but suits one-off deliveries.

There is a problem with non-unique addresses in Ireland that should have been addressed prior to the introduction of Eircode. Every road should have a unique identifier in every townland, and every property/address should have a number on that road, either as a sequence or based on the distance down the road.

Even properties in Ailesbury Road, Dublin 4 are not numbered.

The design was flawed from the beginning. There is also a privacy issue - if someone knows your Eircode, they know exactly where you live. The system should have been designed to allow a partial Eircode that gives a near location, but one that is not exact.

whiterebel

This was known since before it’s introduction. Its the reason the couriers like DHL and UPS wouldn't get behind it. An Post use it in the sorting centres but not on the local leg.

Cabaal

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123954098#Comment_123954098

and yet carriers like DHL will still use them, go figure.

whiterebel

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123958321#Comment_123958321

Not on their main system , like An Post, they use it on their phone, not on their handheld unit.