Mr. Gary Delaney:

I will deal with the requirements first. As I said, there is a long history, which I have dealt with in the document, and I hope people have time to consider it in detail. In 2006 the national postcode project board, which was appointed to come up with recommendations for a postcode system, defined nine criteria. It is arguable that Eircode does not satisfy any of them. I refer to two in particular. One is that national postcodes should be based on small spatial areas. Loc8Code does this, but Eircode does not. I referred to localities and the definition of a postcode in the Act. In the design document, Eircode does not do that.

From my navigation background, I am conscious that a person travelling anywhere first visualises the localities through which he or she must drive to get there. Those recommendations were picked up by the board and brought forward. We knew we could address that. We also knew we could address the idea that the code must be future-proofed and based on technology, while also being easy to use and not hidden. The UK postcode system has survived for 50 years. It has problems, and I am not recommending it, but I am taking ideas that work from it. It has many features that work, such as the fact that anybody can look at it and intuitively guess that something is closer or further away.

These are all things we build into Loc8Code, not just because they were recommended by the national postcode project board but because we, as navigation experts, recognised that humans needed to know them. They also need to know such things when GPS or the mobile phone network is not working. We have SOS phones on the side of motorways because it is recognised that phones do not always work when there is a disaster and the emergency services need to locate people.

When the tender for the postcode started, it used the 2006 national postcode project board recommendations as the reference. The recommendation to the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resource from PA Consulting in the months before that were that it was to comply exactly with that.