nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Child Item

What postcode for IRL?

DigiMarc

Sorry if this has been mentioned before but I did a search and...

Anyway, I am trying to order Sky+ online but you need to enter a postcode to login. Does anyone know what postcode Sky use for Ireland?

Any help greatfully received.

Find more posts tagged with

Quick Links

Comments

pbirney

Originally posted by sceptre
Sure they're not just voting wards? Limerick has the same (you can see the little numbers on old signs).

No. They're actual post codes and are in use. I get occasional correspondence from companies in Cork city who use them.

dahamsta

Originally posted by pbirney
No. They're actual post codes and are in use. I get occasional correspondence from companies in Cork city who use them.

We're just playing with your head pbirney. Cork people are cruel like that.

adam@cork1

Floater

Originally posted by pbirney
No. They're actual post codes and are in use. I get occasional correspondence from companies in Cork city who use them.

They are on the street and road name signposts as well.

Cork 1 is centre
Cork 2 is south east (eg Douglas)
Cork 3 is north west (eg Sunday's Well)
Cork 4 is south / west (eg Bishopstown)

If there was a proper postcode system for the country this might be 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004 respectively.

Floater

Floater

Originally posted by ColinM
Alot of UK systems accept DU8 1IN as a valid postcode.

This really screws up mechanised sorting systems.

I occasionally buy stuff by mail order from a company in GB for delivery to an address in France.

Their computer system make a real dogs dinner of the address and when one is entering the address in their website order form there is no option for forcing proper layout.

Mr Floater
1329 rue Dauphin
F - 83999 Varville

gets mangled into:

Mr Floater
1329 rue Dauphin
F-83999 Varville 83999
Varville O00 0OO O00 0OO
France

The O00 0OO is because their system assumes that everyone has a British postcode - even though they claim to ship worldwide. The "British postcode" is also printed in huge characters a second time and is probably read by the French system as an attempt at 00000 postcode which is invalid.

There is a standard format for postal addressing across continental Europe and people adhere to it. Anything that doesn't comply gets junked.

Why should stamps cost another 10 cents each to pay for people to decypher addresses written by illiterate people or those that want to impose their non-compliant systems on the world? A phone company wouldn't intercept wrongly dialled numbers to offer to look up the correct number for the idiot on the other end of the line.

As a result three our of four shipments never arrives! It costs them a fortune in re-shipping.

Floater

Floater

Originally posted by yossarin
livin' in england the postcade system is dead useful - it identifies the side of the street you live in and everything - most of the address is pretty much not needed

Postcode or no postcode they still have some of the longest mailing addresses in the world! Little or nothing has changed there (or in Ireland) since 1066 when it comes to addressing standards!

If you are thinking in terms of rapid address entry systems where you give your postcode and the street address etc pops up this technology also works with short numeric postcodes such as

1004 Dublin

The operator enters the four digit postcode and the first two or three characters of the street name eg 1004 ME or MER for "Merrion Road" - ie enough data to exclusively identify the street and the rest of the address fills in automatically.

It is far simpler telling everyone in Dublin 4 that your postcode is 1004 than to get people who live between 1 and 9 Merrion Road (odd numbers only) that their postcode is D4 2GX or whatever.

Floater

Floater

Originally posted by eth0_
I honestly don't know how postmen can work without postcodes, considering plenty of addresses outside cities and towns in the UK and Ireland do not have addresses in the form: house number, street name, district, city/town, postcode.

The best system of house number (for use outside the existing urban numbered area) is the metric house number as used in France and some other countries.

If your house is 500 metres from the start of Dublin Road, it will be 500 Dublin Road.

If my house is on the same road on the opposite side, half a km down from you, it will be 1001 Dublin Road.

If someone builds a house half way between the two on my side it will be 751 Dublin Road, or 750 if it is on your side.

It makes searching for houses and business premises simple – even if everyone doesn’t display their house number. All you need to do is reset the odometer in the car to 00000 either at the start of the road or outside someone’s house where they display the house number.

You don’t need a district name in a rationalized mailing address system because the postcode will clearly indicate the “district”.

The postcode should appear before the town for two reasons.

1) It is far easier for optical character recognition systems that read envelopes to find the postcode at the start of the bottom line of the address. This is the European standard format.

2) Mail is now “electronically sorted” on the continent. Eg if you post a letter in Amsterdam for an address in France, the Dutch post office scans and validates the address label against a database of valid French addresses. They then apply a barcode to the envelope which is a serial number – nothing to do with the postcode. The system then sends a message to La Poste advising that they have an envelope serial number NL8938239449823984XX weighing 18g posted in 1121 GW Amsterdam on its way to France and the address on the envelope is bla bla bla.

When this envelope arrives in the French system, they already know where it is going so it doesn’t have to go through the time consuming address scanning and recognition process. Instead it can be dumped in with the mail stream of other letters posted in France.

At each stage in the French sorting process the barcode is scanned on the envelope and the address sent by the Dutch is retrieved to decide where to route the packet to next. At the end of the sorting process, the mail is automatically sorted by house number within each road or street so the postperson has nothing to do other than walk and deliver.

Standardisation provides a more efficient service on an end to end basis.

Floater

Sin e an Fear

There is a standard format for postal addressing across continental Europe and people adhere to it.

Thus spake Napoleon Bonaparte.... buried in St Helena STHL 1ZZ (Yes, that postcode really exists)

Why should stamps cost another 10 cents each to pay for people to decypher addresses written by illiterate people or those that want to impose their non-compliant systems on the world [read 'mainland Europe']?

Yes, in the name of uniformity, everybody in the world should all drive on the right, have telephones that go 'beeep' when they ring, have two-pin plugs, use metric weights and measures, but they don't. And hey, they still speak different languages from one another.

http://www.columbia.edu/kermit/postal.html

Malaysia was once British, but it puts its postcodes on the left, eg: 50100 Kuala Lumpur. Hong Kong doesn't have postcodes at all, even though mainland China does, eg: Beijing 100081. Postcode on the right- shock, horror! Mail to mainland China is still treated as international.

It would make even more sense for the US, Canada, Russia, Australia, Japan, South Africa, etc, etc, to have '00' as their international access code, but they don't see the need to. Having to dial 011, 8-10, 0011, 010, 09 may be a change from what you're used to, but it won't kill you.

To all the people suggesting we use the UK style of post codes have any of you ever read a report instigated by the Royal Mail AFAIK. Anyway, Royal Mail know that the Post Codes are a disaster in the UK and do not work well at all, are incomprehensible to the public and they're been looking at ways to change them.

Not AFAIK. There have been suggestions about having 'personal' or 'non geographic' postcodes, like telephone numbers, but the present system works fine. Channel Islands and the Isle of Man didn't have them until ten years ago, but are fine with them now.

British addresses aren't complicated, in fact they're less so since the requirement for including a county was dropped. I still include 'Surrey' in my address, even though Croydon hasn't administratively been in the county for thirty years.

Okay, IRL can have numeric postcodes (104x or 104xx for Dublin 4) do distinguish itself from GB, just has Canada has alphanumeric postal codes (NOT ZIP codes) to distinguish it from the USA. You can write to Santa Claus at
North Pole, Canada H0H 0H0

In the interim, New Zealand Post's approach would make sense.
They don't even use the old postal zones, Auckland 6, Wellington 1, Christchurch 4 any more.

New Zealand Post

The Post Code Finder allows you to find a Post Code for a street,
P O Box, Private Bag or Rural Delivery address. Post Codes are only required to be used by customers who are lodging mail through our VolumePost options. It is not necessary to use Post Codes when addressing any other mail.

New Zealand Post
Private Bag 39990
WELLINGTON (the 6020 is not required)

Actually, they should use them, and allow OCR to sort Australian mail (and vice versa) so NZ 6001 goes to Wellington and WA 6001 goes to Perth.

Victor

Originally posted by Floater
2) Mail is now “electronically sorted” on the continent. Eg if you post a letter in Amsterdam for an address in France, the Dutch post office scans and validates the address label against a database of valid French addresses. They then apply a barcode to the envelope which is a serial number – nothing to do with the postcode. The system then sends a message to La Poste advising that they have an envelope serial number NL8938239449823984XX weighing 18g posted in 1121 GW Amsterdam on its way to France and the address on the envelope is bla bla bla.

....................

At each stage in the French sorting process the barcode is scanned on the envelope and the address sent by the Dutch is retrieved to decide where to route the packet to next. At the end of the sorting process, the mail is automatically sorted by house number within each road or street so the postperson has nothing to do other than walk and deliver.

This is the way An Post are going, although it is still under implementation and still ivolves an amount of hand sorting - you will often notice and orange bar code printed on an envelope.

Floater

Originally posted by Victor
This is the way An Post are going, although it is still under implementation and still ivolves an amount of hand sorting - you will often notice and orange bar code printed on an envelope.

An Post are in the process of centralising operations on four mechanised sorting facilities located in Dublin, Cork, Athlone and Portlaoise.

As it stands, they have a very poor delivery performance on non machine produced mail. By machine produced mail I mean things like ESB bills. The addresses on machine produced mail can be easily read and require little or no manual intervention during the sorting process.

(Aside from the fact that ESB bills are printed in account number order and the ESB account number is in effect a 9 digit “postcode” down to each individual household and business premises!)

Mail is treated in two ways in the sorting process:

(a) If the address can be machine read and matched against the database of valid addresses, it is barcoded with a serial number and passed on for sorting based on the address stored in the system, referenced by the barcode number.

(b) If the address can’t be machine read and matched to the database, an image of the address is scanned and the item is also barcoded with its serial number.

Sorting staff are presented with an image of each envelope that fails machine recognition on VDU screens and they manually enter routing codes. These routing codes are used for sorting again by reference to the envelope’s barcode. After this manual intervention the type (b) problem envelope that originally failed to machine read can be machine sorted.

Unfortunately large number of envelopes are failing to be machine read and this creates backlogs of items that have to be manually treated – hence delays in delivery. This problem will escalate as the four new sorting centres take over more geographic responsibility.

Take by way of example of a letter posted in Limerick to an address in Dublin. This letter will first go to the Munster sorting centre at Little Island. Let’s say that it arrives there at 8pm – together with 500,000 other letters from all over Munster. Perhaps 100,000 of these will fail to machine read properly and sorting staff will have to work through them manually on VDU screens to assign routing codes to each one.

The “reject” envelopes can’t be sorted until they are manually coded. If they are to make the next day’s delivery in Dublin, they have to be out of the Munster centre by say 11pm for the sake of argument. This gives them a window of three hours to be coded manually and run through the sorting process or they will be stuck in Little Island overnight – adding another day to the delivery time - perhaps more at peak times.

If these items were postcoded the machine sorting process would be simplified, and every other country in Europe that uses this centralised sorting system with database matching and barcodes has a postcode infrastructure.

A numeric postcode before the town name is the easiest to machine detect and read, because figures have a higher probability of machine recognition than letters of the alphabet, and the postcode will always be at the bottom left of the address block (rather than being buried within text blocks elsewhere on an address line).

More complex postcodes are more likely to be transposed by the customer and misread in the machine recognition process.

If the mail arriving in Little Island was postcoded, even if the mail failed to be machine read properly on each line of the address, there is a high probability that the postcode could be read. A simple 4 digit postcode such as 1004 for Dublin 4 is all that is required to get the otherwise “reject” item on the road – not only to the Dublin mails centre but also from there to the Ballsbridge delivery office.

The large number of bills and other machine produced items in the mail flow has disguised the appalling delivery performance that the current system is delivering because they distort the statistics relating to the mail you really want to receive quickly ie anything but the bills!

Mail posted in Germany or the Netherlands takes two days to get to my address in France – ie posted Monday, delivered Wednesday. Mail posted in Ireland typically takes five days and mail posted in England often takes ten days. Uniform standards are essential for automated mail sorting to work efficiently across Ireland and across the rest of Europe.

The efficient delivery of mail in any country plays a vital part in the global competitiveness ranking of that country.

Floater

eth0_

That metric postal system has to be one of the dumbest things i've ever heard of. Regular post codes like those in use in the USA and UK are far easier to use and i'd imagine enable postmen to sort all their deliveries efficiently. So they could have a pile of post for BT9 4JA (the left side of the road) and one for BT9 4JB (the right).

Also, postcodes (in the UK at least) are used for more than just mail! Credit checks are run on your post code, I don't see how they can do this as easily with a system like France's....

Floater

Originally posted by eth0_
That metric postal system has to be one of the dumbest things i've ever heard of. Regular post codes like those in use in the USA and UK are far easier to use and i'd imagine enable postmen to sort all their deliveries efficiently. So they could have a pile of post for BT9 4JA (the left side of the road) and one for BT9 4JB (the right).

I was talking about metric house numbers – not postcodes. Odd metric house numbers are on the left of the road and even metric house numbers are on the right. You don’t need the postcode to tell you which side of the road they are on.

Speaking of which Ireland already has a "metric postcode" system - called the national grid reference. The address and location of every property in the state is stored in the An Post database used in the four sorting centres, together with its grid reference to an accuracy of 1 metre – i.e. a 12 digit number.

When the letter is scanned and matched to the national address database the precise location of the delivery address to a one metre square accuracy is known. Far more accurate than a British postcode with is typically shared by about 20 houses. This allows mail to be sorted if required into the delivery sequence used by the postman.

The British postcode was developed in the 1960s when optical character recognition systems were not as advanced as they are today and computing power was limited. The same goes for the zip+5 system in the USA, the latter part of which is often ignored by people. This is second generation technology.

If a postman had to manually sort letters into delivery order for a street, it is far more user-friendly for a human being to simply refer to the house numbers.

Postcodes have a limited function in a country that uses third generation technology, and I have described that function in a previous posting – ie to get the largest possible amount of mail hitting a mechanized sorting office on the road quickly.

Also, postcodes (in the UK at least) are used for more than just mail! Credit checks are run on your post code, I don't see how they can do this as easily with a system like France's....

Someone’s credit rating is not a function of where they live. It is a function of their individual identity, borrowing capacity and credit performance track record. It can only be done properly using their name and date of birth.

While I am aware that postcodes are used for this type of purpose in GB, I have heard it referred to as “postcode blight”. If you have a few bad neighbours who don’t pay their bills and who share the same postcode with you, why should that affect your credit rating in any way?

Software that provides rapid address lookup and entry is available for countries that use European standard postcodes.

Floater

Further Information on An Post's address database and related software and mapping applications

Victor

Originally posted by Floater
Take by way of example of a letter posted in Limerick to an address in Dublin. This letter will first go to the Munster sorting centre at Little Island. Let’s say that it arrives there at 8pm – together with 500,000 other letters from all over Munster. Perhaps 100,000 of these will fail to machine read properly and sorting staff will have to work through them manually on VDU screens to assign routing codes to each one.

The “reject” envelopes can’t be sorted until they are manually coded. If they are to make the next day’s delivery in Dublin, they have to be out of the Munster centre by say 11pm for the sake of argument. This gives them a window of three hours to be coded manually and run through the sorting process or they will be stuck in Little Island overnight – adding another day to the delivery time - perhaps more at peak times.

My brother's sister-in-law works there part-time and they start at 16:30 (in tiem for the start of the business post) and are invariably finished by 19:30. The part-timers are paid up to 21:00, but she has never had to work the "full" shift.

Victor

Originally posted by Floater
Postcodes have a limited function in a country that uses third generation technology, and I have described that function in a previous posting – ie to get the largest possible amount of mail hitting a mechanized sorting office on the road quickly.

But DHL and UPS would really like it so they can charge people in the sticks a fortune.

Floater

Originally posted by Victor
My brother's sister-in-law works there part-time and they start at 16:30 (in tiem for the start of the business post) and are invariably finished by 19:30. The part-timers are paid up to 21:00, but she has never had to work the "full" shift.

The automated centres are only doing a fraction of the global workload at the moment. The phase in is over a two year period to 2005.

I suspect that they don't want to repeat the disaster they had when they opened the Dublin Mails Centre and threw virtually everything at it day one.

Floater

Only 64-70% of mail delivered next day in IRL if you remove ESB bills and similar - ComReg

Floater

Originally posted by Victor
But DHL and UPS would really like it so they can charge people in the sticks a fortune.

They don't vary tariffs based on postcode in any country I know of.

Floater

Victor

Originally posted by Floater
They don't vary tariffs based on postcode in any country I know of.

Well they certainly do want it. Perhaps it's more on a routing and cost management basis then.

Floater

Originally posted by Victor
Well they certainly do want it. Perhaps it's more on a routing and cost management basis then.

I've seen postcodes on either DHL or UPS tariff booklets. However they related to delivery lead times. i.e. if you live in 8200 to 8999 the express package will take 2 days rather than one.

Floater

Victor

Originally posted by Floater
Only 64-70% of mail delivered next day in IRL if you remove ESB bills and similar - ComReg

http://home.eircom.net/content/irelandcom/topstories/2006620?view=Eircomnet

An Post fails to hit delivery targets
From:ireland.com
Saturday, 22nd November, 2003

Only 76 per cent of regular post reached its destination within a working day during the third quarter - 18 per cent behind the target set by the telecommunications regulator ComReg. Edward Power reports.

While this represents a marginal improvement over the 73 per cent rate achieved in the previous three quarters, it is now statistically impossible for An Post to reach the 94 per cent target laid down by ComReg for 2003.

It is vital that An Post improves its performance during the busy pre-Christmas period, said ComReg chairwoman Ms Etain Doyle.

The regulator has also asked An Post to revise its code of practise for reimbursing customers in the event of loss, damage or undue delay of post. It has given the company a month to come up with new proposals.

An Post acknowledged that while progress has been made in delivery time, further improvement is necessary. "We are pleased to see that the quality of service figures are moving in the right direction but they remain far below what we want them to be. We are confident we can change this next year," said a spokeswoman. The other recommendations would be studied, she added.

An Post is in serious financial difficulty, with an expected trading loss of €47 million for 2003, and a further €39 million deficit predicted next year.

The company has implemented a recovery plan, requiring 1,000 to 1,500 redundancies, which it hopes will return it to a break-even position by 2005.

Earlier this month, An Post took the unprecedented step of assuring the public there will be no repeat of last year's pre-Christmas delays when teething troubles with new processing equipment in December caused widespread disruption.

ro_G

have to agree with much of floater's comments on this. what i would say is that their geo-encoded directory is becoming more important, and slowly but surely spatial data is hitting home with them.

They could, with a moderate amount of effort role out a postcode system based on this, the database and IT technology is there, but its a big program, and well, i'd say it will happen in time.

Floater

Originally posted by ro_G
They could, with a moderate amount of effort role out a postcode system based on this, the database and IT technology is there, but its a big program, and well, i'd say it will happen in time.

One individual with access to that database could run up a simple four digit postcode system in a day or two. Mailshot everyone from the same database - this is your new postal address. Please update your document templates and printed stuff as soon as you can.

Use of your postcode will greatly help us to improve the service we provide.

Old address/ New Address

Dublin 1 is replaced by 1001 Dublin
Dublin 2 = 1002 Dublin
Dublin 3 = 1003 Dublin
Dublin 4 = 1004 Dublin

[If you wanted to give a separate postcode to PO Box address and CEDEX addresses use]

Dublin 4 PO Boxes 1041 Dublin
Dublin 4 Regular deliveries 1040 Dublin
Dublin 4 RTE (example) 1044 Dublin CEDEX
etc etc

Dublin 24 = 1240 Dublin or 1024 Dublin depending on structure decided upon.

Cork 1 = 2001 Cork
Cork 2 =2002 Cork
Cork 3 =2003 Cork
Cork 4 =2004 Cork.

Limerick City = 6001 Limerick
Waterford City = 5001 Waterford
Galway City = 9001 Galway
Kilkenny City = 5601 Kilkenny
Wexford town 5301 Wexford

Many people can guess what their postcode might be already.

That's nearly half the population of the country done in two minutes with no fancy software!

While country addresses without house numbers might take a bit longer to allocate each addressee with a metric house number (which can be done by geo software) a large part of the mail flow could be postcoded by hitting the urban areas with postcodes first - and moving onwards on a phased rollout basis.

Floater

Victor

Originally posted by Floater
Dublin 24 = 1240 Dublin or 1024 Dublin depending on structure decided upon.

1240 is much more impotant as it means you can then subdivide Dublin 24 into 10 delivery areas and still allow plenty of space for "vanity" numbers, e.g. for companies that process a lot of incoming mail.

shotamoose

One of the benefits of the postcode system in the UK is that you can use it to find your nearest whatever, for example see upmystreet.co.uk . I use it quite a bit.

I presume this would be compatible with An Post's geographically-based system. So why are they keeping it a secret, exactly?

Victor

Originally posted by shotamoose
I presume this would be compatible with An Post's geographically-based system. So why are they keeping it a secret, exactly?

Because it is theirs and they have spent millions on it (together with Kompass and the OS) and they want a return on that money.

ro_G

I fully agree Floater, when I say a big programme, I mean sorting offices, postmen, internal agreement etc. The IT is the easy bit.

Regarding the ROI:

http://www.geodirectory.ie/index.html
so it's no secret, you can purchase it for location based marketing etc.

Floater

Originally posted by Victor
1240 is much more impotant as it means you can then subdivide Dublin 24 into 10 delivery areas and still allow plenty of space for "vanity" numbers, e.g. for companies that process a lot of incoming mail.

If you want vanity addresses look at Finland. They make big companies towns in their own right.

Nokia is something like

FIN-00147 NOKIA GROUP

Sonera is something like

FIN-00177 SONERA

I can't see much value in sub-dividing districts because the automated sorting system can subdivide on any basis once it has recognised the address or it has been subsequently manually coded.

If you want to give individual postcodes to large organizations - I think on reflection it is better to use special numbering space - ie CEDEX addresses. I'm about to post on the item any minute now.

Floater

Floater

CEDEX is an acronym for « Courrier d’Entreprise à Distribution Exceptionnelle » and refers to business and government post that does not end up being delivered by the postman doing his rounds. It allows automated special handling of this type of post with a minimum of complexity in terms of the design of a postcode system.

Some examples of CEDEX applications:

Old address:
XYZ Bank
123 O’Connell Street
Dublin 1

This bank has set up the paper handling equivalent of a call centre for handling mail to branches – say in Naas, Co Kildare.

On bank statements, letter headings, cheque books etc, the new address might appear as

XYZ Bank
123 O’Connell Street
1019 Dublin CEDEX

1019 being a postcode assigned to special mail handling in the Dublin 1 area.

When an item of mail hits the An Post mechanized sorting centre the 1019 postcode indicates to the system that this letter is not for street delivery in O’Connell St. If the label is fully machine readable, it automatically looks up the CEDEX file for XYZ bank at 123 O’Connell St and send it on its way to

XYZ Bank Call Centre
PO Box 987654
4509 Naas

The PO Box number is actually the bank sorting code of the bank branch (ie 98-76-54) and allows for further sorting in the system if the bank requires mail to arrive at its call centre in separate containers for particular regions of the country or whatever specific requirement they may have.

Benefits for the customer:

The familiar address is retained – they don’t have to remember long po box numbers or the fact that as of two months ago all mail for their bank is now going to Naas. If they want to send something personal to the branch – eg a birthday card for the manager, which shouldn’t be going to the call centre, they can use the street address without the CEDEX eg:
123 O’Connell Street, 1010 Dublin
The appearance of the word CEDEX or its Irish equivalent will also alert the delivery postman to put the any mis-sorted letter back in the system – it shouldn’t be in his bag for street delivery.

If that letter was posted in Cork, and the Cork mail centre could only read the 1019 postcode, the letter would not be delayed leaving there before the cut-off time if there was a backlog of manual coding work. Over night, manual coding staff looking at an image of the address label on their VDU could manually enter the required details so the post would end up going to Naas delivery office and not Dublin.

Other examples of CEDEX uses include PO Box addresses where the customer wants to use their street address rather than a PO Box number in their advertising. The CEDEX lookup would cause the item to be bundled with other items for po box delivery or special van delivery to large users in that delivery office as is appropriate.

A further example might be RTE, an assumed very large recipient of mail in Dublin 4.

In this case one might give them their own unique postcode given the large amount of handwritten correspondence they receive.

e.g. The ABC Show,
1044 Dublin CEDEX 20

The CEDEX 20 (20 being assigned to the show in question) would allow a high proportion of correspondence for the ABC show to be machine sorted end to end, even if the address was not fully machine readable.

A separate postcode would normally only be allocated to very heavy volume users. Normal business users would share the same CEDEX postcode in that delivery district to conserve numbering space.

Another option to keep the postcode system simple might be to lump CEDEX postcodes into their own numbering space, and this space would not be geographically related – same as 0818, 0700, 1850 etc. phone numbers can be used to redirect a call to anywhere. This would allow 1004 Dublin to replace Dublin 4 and 1024 Dublin to replace Dublin 24, simple is best principal.

Perhaps all postcodes in the range 0001 to 0999 might be used for CEDEX cases. RTE Donnybrook being perhaps 0444 Dublin. A credit card centre in the west of Ireland might be 0456 – geography is not an issue in this numbering space. Following the rough telephone numbering logic, 3000 to 3999 and 8000 to 8999 are also available for CEDEX use.

This would also provide a slightly better service to XYZ Bank because much of their mail would be re-directed to another region. Eg
XYZ Bank
234 Eyre Square
9009 Galway CEDEX needs to go to the sorting centre for Naas.

If an XYZ Bank Galway branch mail item was posted in Cork and if the postcode was the only machine readable element on the address, some mail might end up being shipped to the sorting office for Galway when it should be sent to the sorting office for Naas. The use of a dedicated CEDEX postcode for that bank eg 0987 for all branches in the country would allow mail whose postcode is the only machine readable element to re directed to the correct destination first time because the 0987 postcode would be translated in the CEDEX lookup table to the correct ultimate delivery address.

Floater

shotamoose

Originally posted by Victor
Because it is theirs and they have spent millions on it (together with Kompass and the OS) and they want a return on that money.

Then let the State give them a return on that money - by handing over a wad of cash - and make access to the system easier and cheaper, so that everyone can benefit. I'd imagine that increases in trade and efficiency would soon pay for the initiative.

taking consideration of more irish people (or connections) with UK, why shouldn't

there be a UK postcode system here?

just take fully use of an existing good system without inventing another new one,

do remember, it also takes times for people to learn it.

just get the current postcode system and give it a go.

the beauty of doing that is you don't have to pay license fee, ;-)

therefore no money is needed to invest a new system~~~

Floater

Originally posted by X4
taking consideration of more irish people (or connections) with UK, why shouldn't

there be a UK postcode system here?

The British postcode system was developed in the 1960s when OCR and computing power were very limited compared with today. It is unnecessary today because the entire address can be scanned and matched to a database record for the house or office in question. This ensures a totally accurate match or a known failure which is signalled for manual intervention.

The function of the simple 4 digit (or similar) postcode has been outlined above already. A numerical postcode appearing at the bottom left of the address block is the most machine readable solution and provides the lowest error rate.

Postcodes involving alpha numeric characters can easily be mis-read (eg confusion between Zero and the letter O etc. The more elements you introduce to the postcode - ie all the letters and numbers increase the probability of a mis-read - because so many more shapes have to be taken into account. Handwritten alphabetical characters have a higher chance of mis-recognition than hand written numbers. The other readability issue in relation to British postcodes is for the OCR system to find them within the address because they can end up all over the place within the label.

An Post needs a bullet proof code (as near as possible) in terms of handwriting recognition of codes so that the four new regional automated mail centres can manage to machine read all or virtually all of the mail dumped into the system (largely in the afternoon) in time for cutoff deadlines allowing a timely shipment of mail across the country.

Numerical digits at the bottom left of the address block offer the best solution. We are not reinventing the wheel here. This solution has been in use for 50 years across Europe and has stood the test of time with the latest generation of mechanised sorting systems better than any other postcode system.

Consider also the customer factors. A company with a large database of names and addresses can more easily add a simple four digit postcode than update for the the complex British system. Global search and replace. All Dublin 1 is replaced with postcode = "1001" and delete "1" after city name, etc. If town = Kilkenny, postcode = "5601" or whatever. Rather than having to look at individual streets and house numbers in deciding each code update.

There will be a high error rate with clerical staff typing codes such as “SE23 5JG” with transpositions of characters and typos. Far higher than with 1004 Dublin or 6001 Limerick. A 2% error rate on postcodes would amount to 10,000 additional letters that might require manual intervention in the Cork Centre alone every night. Multiply that by the whole country. That all takes time, leads to delays and costs money. I also have no doubt that fewer people would use complex codes on their correspondence (because they couldn't be bothered to look them up) which would defeat the exercise.

The simple route is the only way to go.

Floater

Floater

Simple postcode systems are easy to download into your PC and incorporate into database systems for lookup, error proofing and validation purposes.

Belgium (Excel spreadsheet)

Estonia down to street level - (zipped Excel)

Floater