Minister of State Jack Chambers, who has special responsibility for Eircodes at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, announced the extension of the Postcode Management Licence Holder (PMLH) contract between the Department and Capita Business Support Services Ireland (Eircode).
Capita Business Support Services Ireland, trading as Eircode, were awarded the contract to develop, rollout and operate the National Postcode System in October 2013. A key driver for the introduction of Eircodes was to deal with the challenges faced with non-unique addresses in Ireland. These include difficulties encountered by the emergency services in locating addresses due to 35% of all properties in the state sharing an address with other properties. This is the highest figure in the OECD and has a particularly negative impact for people and businesses in rural Ireland who require better access to goods and services.
Since the introduction of Eircodes, significant progress has been made in relation to the implementation of Eircode across the public sector, private sector and among the public.
Since the launch in July 2015, there have been:
• 154.6 million lookups on the Finder since launch;
• 2.1m average monthly lookups & 25.3 million look ups in 2022
• 2.5m average monthly lookups & 30.5 million lookups in 2021;
• 32,190 addresses assigned an Eircode in 2021;
• 38,851 addresses assigned an Eircode in 2022; and
• 229.8k addresses received an Eircode since launch.
By the end of August 2023, there were 2,387 business organisations and State Agencies licencing Eircodes within their business systems and operations across a wide spectrum of sectors, including logistics and deliveries, utilities, hotel, retail telecommunications, insurance, financial and satellite navigation. The six largest international Sat Nav providers have all integrated Eircodes within their products – i.e., Google Maps, Microsoft (Bing/Nokia Maps), TomTom, HERE Navigation, Garmin and Apple. This enables members of the public and businesses to get directions and accurately locate addresses, particularly in rural areas.
Commenting on this very positive development, Minister Chambers said, “since the launch of Eircodes their usage, as part of an address, continues to grow and is used widely among the public, businesses and public sector. This can be seen by independent research and use of the free Eircode Finder website which has received 154 million look ups since launch. In 2020, independent research carried out by Amárach Research showed that 93.3% of respondents were able to supply a validated Eircode for their address. Capita Business Support Services Ireland, trading as Eircode have been integral in the success of Eircodes and I look forward to our continued partnership.”
Capita Ireland’s Managing Director, Gillian Chamberlain, said, “we are delighted to continue working in partnership with the government to fulfil this vitally important service on behalf of the Irish public. The widespread use and adoption of Eircodes in Ireland is testimony to the successful management of our remit and our constructive partnership with the Department.”
The contract awarded to Capita Business Services in 2013 was for a ten-year period and was extendable – at the discretion of the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications – by a further five years.
