Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Use of the Eircode has been optional since it came into operation in July. Is the Minister concerned that only a small number of bodies, including commercial entities, are utilising the postcode system? Is the reason for the low take-up the random nature of the system selected? The Minister and I both referred to our Eircodes. It is striking that the numbering system in housing estates and townlands in rural areas is random. This seems to be one of the reasons that emergency bodies, for example, do not use Eircodes. Is it a case that we should not have done this at all, that given we are in the e-mail era we should have waited a little longer and utilised GPS, sat. nav., Google Maps and so on, which would have been much simpler and which would have saved the country €50 million?

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