Ireland is the one country left in Europe without a national postcode system which is vital for e-commerce and location-services. The Government has issued a tender for the project and work will begin in March.
Communications Minister Eamon Ryan today announced that the Department of Communications has issued an invitation to tender for consultants to advise on the implementation of the national postcodes system.
The selected consultants will begin their work in late March. Minister Ryan said that this preparatory work should mean a national postcode system will be assigned and in use throughout the country by the end of next year.
He said a national postcode system will deliver benefits not only in terms of postal delivery but across the economy and in Government planning.
“Ireland is the only EU country without this piece of information infrastructure.
“The future economy depends on a national system which can access and collate spatial data.
“I am pleased that work on this project is continuing apace and look forward to working with the consultants and the Department on the implementation of a national postcode system for Ireland,” Ryan said.
The Government has approved an alpha-numeric, publicly available and accessible postal code model.
Each postcode will have a geo-coordinate at its centre and consequently, would be compatible with global positioning or navigation systems, allowing integration with GPS and other global navigation satellite technologies.
Mobile and e-commerce applications based on such systems become much more readily accessible to the public through the use of a postcode, Ryan concluded.
By John Kennedy
