Mr. Gary Delaney:

I will tell the Chairman how it is done, because it involves another step - that is, the use of a post town in addresses, which is the system An Post has justifiably operated for many years, with High Court sanction, and the definition under the Act allows it to continue to do that. An Post, and the Minister in announcing this, were very quick to say that people would not have to use Eircode, and that is the reason. It will continue to sort manually to the delivery offices based on the post towns.

To finish the point, once we get to the delivery office area, what is relevant is the last four characters. Much has been made of the fact that those four characters are random. How could any human interact with four random characters without reference to a computer? Delivery offices are not automated. To implement Eircode in those delivery offices, the sorting procedure would have to be automated, which would result in many closures and many job losses.