Mr. Eamonn Molloy:

As the person involved in procurement, the basic objective was to give Ireland a postcodes system. Our sense was that members of the public saw the need for postcodes. They were tired of making them up every time they were doing business on many websites and explaining to people elsewhere how it was that Ireland, of all countries in the OECD, did not have a postcodes system, when it seemed to be a key part of the way in which businesses in other economies operated. As we got into the project, we saw that uniqueness was a problem, but that was not where we started. It was the scale of the problem and its impact not just in terms of economics in rural and regional Ireland but also in the way public bodies did business. Uniqueness is so valuable to the public sector in the way it plans and runs its business. The project is actually about providing better public services. It would be very difficult to get many of the people in question, with whom I have worked for years, involved unless there was something very significant in it for them. I am glad that the CSO-----