Mr. Ben King:

At that meeting we discussed how we can solve the problem of businesses using English addresses when they are communicating with people. This was the concern the Coimisinéir Teanga had in terms of the complaints he was getting. During that meeting we looked at the options for how we could have Irish only in Gaeltacht placenames. We agreed at the meeting that we would write to An Post and ask it if it could take out the English addresses and only use Irish addresses in Gaeltacht areas. We hoped that would assist in the reduction of complaints to the Minister or the Coimisinéir Teanga on communications with English addresses. That is what we agreed at that meeting and we subsequently wrote to An Post. An Post replied to us to say that was impossible because of its sorting system and how it worked. It also mentioned a broader issue, namely, that there is no legal form for addresses in the State and that there are large variations of English and Irish addresses, not to mention that 35% of the addresses in the State are the same as other addresses. To resolve that issue, An Post has variations of addresses and the English addresses in its database. When a letter for a Gaeltacht area arrives in English, the scanning software is able to pick it up and automatically sort it. We told the commissioner at that meeting that we would write to An Post to see if it was possible for the software to work with Irish only and that was the answer we got.