“Eircode will not deliver,” says Loc8 chief executive

Gary Delaney, the chief executive of Loc8, told the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications yesterday (30 June) that the new Eircode “will not deliver on the legal definition of what the national post code should be”. Loc8 operates its own digital address system, but Delaney told the Committee that he was appearing as an expert rather than someone with a commercial interest. He argued that Eircode was not fulfilling its brief because it does not allow ordinary citizens or visitors to the republic to use it to identity localities.

As previously reported, the system, developed by Capita Ireland, has met with criticism from some quarters. The first three digits of the code are based on major national routes and will identify the area, but the other four digits are randomly assigned – and this has proved a concern for some because the postcodes will not be sequential. This means that within a postal district of tens of thousands of properties, it will be difficult to tell if certain properties are close to each other without paying for access to the government database.

Speaking at the committee hearing yesterday, Delaney said that the Eircode system will be a disaster and reminded him of the “old adage about a camel being a horse designed by a legislative committee”.