Sir, – I think a major mistake has been made in the introduction of Eircodes by having such a minimal hierarchical structure.
I have received my code which starts with A94 (the routing key), which covers the area served by An Post’s Blackrock, Co Dublin, sorting office and includes the areas of Blackrock, Booterstown, Mount Merrion, Stillorgan, Monkstown, and Deansgrange. The fourth and fifth characters of my code are CD, while those of my immediate neighbours are F2 and HH. Therefore there is no geographical refinement beyond the routing key.
An Post’s own system does have geographical refinement. The area served by the Blackrock sorting office has four subdivisions. (An Post areas can be seen by Googling “An Post publicity planner”). Why are there no subdivisions in the Eircode system? Surely the Central Statistics Office among others would benefit from a more refined system – the A94 area includes about 15 electoral divisions, 20 townlands and 60 small areas.
I appreciate Eircode’s boast that it has a unique identifier system, but surely the uniqueness could be provided by just the sixth and seventh characters. – Yours, etc,
AIDAN WARD,
Booterstown, Co Dublin.
Sir, – Rather than adapt an existing numerical postal code system such as those that operate in Germany, France and Austria, etc, Ireland had to choose the expensive option of reinventing the wheel, to few people’s satisfaction, excluding consultants.
The lack of buy-in reminds me of the bafflement that greeted the proliferation of road signs indicating “junction numbers” that blighted Dublin some years back and had to be scrapped (not to mention electronic voting machines!).
No doubt bonuses for those who delivered the Eircode “achievement” are even now being calculated. The political establishment excels at wasting taxpayers’ money. When will it ever learn anything? – Yours, etc,
BERNARD KEOGH,
Clontarf,
Dublin 3.