Madam, – Where I live seems to have multiple acceptable addresses, which can make it difficult to deliver mail when you have a surname like mine. The absurdity of our approach to addresses was brought home to me when I read a notice in your paper from Fingal County Council.
In the first paragraph it referred to “The County of Fingal” three times but later gave their address as Swords, Co Dublin. I was confused and asked them why this was so. They replied that “County Fingal” referred to in the advertisement is an ”administrative” term and Swords, Co Dublin and Balbriggan Co Dublin etc is a “geographical” location.
We do things differently in this country.
I also have had reason to look up a Donegal address on the Ordnance Survey (OS) website where it has kindly placed an address finder. This part of Donegal is in the Gaeltacht and Éamon Ó Cuív recently officially changed all placenames in the Gaeltacht to their correct original version, in this case to Cill Charthaigh from Kilcar. The OS database still gives me Kilcar only and does not recognise Cill Charthaigh. So much for that initiative.
Isn’t it about time that we settled on one version of each place name and used the name of the actual county in which the place name is found? – Yours, etc,