Neil McDonnell of FTA Ireland addressed the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications this morning to relay his concerns on Eircode, the new address system that is to be implemented in Ireland.
“Eircode is a bad postcode…Two adjacent poperties will have different randomly assigned eircodes…Eircode will impose a significant cost on SMEs in Ireland with no tangible benefit…As a national postcode however, Eircode lacks vision, imagination, ambition and most of all, practicality.”
Meanwhile…
Get on the Eircode story, jounalists. I’m told, by people who know about such things, that it’s the next Irish Water.
— lɐƃɹǝℲ (@Fergal) November 5, 2014
RUN!
Previously: Decrypting The Irish Postcode Saga
wasnt this one of rabbits floaters
Is this another John Tierney production? Any other friends involved? Any familiar consultants?
Isn’t having a specific code, which will tie an address to a very precise location, a good thing?
I’m absolutely sure that there are also bad things about the new system (aren’t there always?), but to say that there’s no tangible benefit seems odd. I know plenty of rural dwellers who have fallen foul of couriers who “couldn’t find the house”. That’s one major benefit right there.
Yes, It’s good to have a postcode.
But it’d be better to have a postcode that wasn’t proprietary and error-prone and user-unfriendly.
Of course, you could always read for the full story…
Postcodes are a great idea, and in the UK, they’ve got it right.
If you live at number 271 Main St, your postcode might be ER3 4HT, and that code just encompasses, say, 20 houses, so the bloke living at number 291 might be ER3 4HU. ER3 is the Post Office Sorting office, and the other 3 digits add the specificity.
In other words, you’ve got that inbuilt ‘i’m in the right ballpark’ thing built in, which you don’t have with ‘randomly’ allocated codes.
wait, people don’t want to give the PPS number to Irish water – but they do want post codes that map precisely to a specific location?
The randomness is there for error prevention – I wonder if people are as Precious about their IP addresses?
Wait until you are upside down in a field after crashing your car and you will see how useful Eircodes are….
If you dislike something, claim its the next Irish Water scandal. ‘Postcodes to cost 200euro per house’ ‘ Houses without postcodes will have post TURNED OFF’ ‘Protesters Block installation of Postboxes’
And so on
Missed and Delayed Deliveries cost a lot more to households and businesses every year;- paid through high delivery costs and having to go somewhere to collect your package.
Worse of course, is the fact that ambulances very often are delayed in responding because of address confusion – unfortunately sometimes mentioned in coroners reports!
An Post can delay deliveries if their postal code system (post town) is not used. Couriers like nightline have introduced parcel hotels to avoid deliveries:- a bit like waiting a day for water after turning on the tap or having to go to the well with a bucket. Some waiting for ambulances take their own car in frustration or move house if regularly required. There is a huge ongoing cost to Irish society but we have tolerated it;- seems the age of tolerance is now gone?
Much better postcode/location code in use here already
http://www.myloc8ion.com/
I don’t understand why we have to completely re-invent the wheel every time in this country.
The UK and US postcode systems work exceptionally well. What is wrong with just copying one of those?
they are 60 years old and we can do better
See http://www.loc8code.com
Jaysus that an exhaustive list of stuff the eircode misses… that’s a fuppin’ massive disaster!