Mr. Mark Griffin:

Can I just say on postcodes, it is important to say there has been huge collaboration between the people in my Department involved in this and Capita, which is the private sector contractor, with Departments to look at what critical databases need to be upgraded and in what way the introduction of postcodes will support the work they are doing? We have spoken to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the CSO, the Department of Education and Skills, the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade - it is critical for passports, the Department of Health, the NTMA, the Private Residential Tenancies Board, the Revenue, the Department of Social Protection, the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport and we are also working ESB Networks. We are looking at what databases need to be updated and we have already invested significant money in doing that and looking at the applications that they are engaged in, both current and prospective, that would benefit from the postcode system. The great thing about this system now is that we are on the cusp of going live and if one looks at the challenges that are faced in this State in terms of non-unique identifiers, we have 35% of the addresses in the State that are non-unique. From an OECD perspective we are unique in that regard.

Coming back to the earlier discussion we had on ECAS, this will make a massive difference to people's ability to access emergency services.