Mr. Mark Griffin:

Absolutely. I have a couple of points on that. I have seen that figure before. Like a lot of things, the particular question that was posed would not have been the question that I would have asked, and that is why a percentage of 60% was elicited. We have Amárach Research appointed under the contract. The research it did in 2019 shows that 99% of the Irish public are aware of Eircode postcodes and that 96% use them.

Considering what has happened, particularly in the course of 2020, including the immediate and massive shift of both workers and businesses to operating online, we have seen a huge uptake in the usage of postcodes. There was a 60% increase in November 2020 relative to November 2019. The total number of look-ups increased from 6 million in 2016 to almost 20 million in 2019. We are seeing that increase on a constant basis, month-on-month. We are seeing a very significant increase in the number of private sector entities using the system in terms of logistics and so on. Banking and insurance companies are included. In the public sector, the system is used for online passport applications. It is used for the census and for Student Universal Support Ireland grants. It is used for property marketing and mobility. We are constantly engaging with our colleagues across government to increase the use of postcodes. They are being stitched into what is known as the national data infrastructure. There are three key pieces of information: the PPSN, the Eircode postcode and a unique business identifier that is in development-----