Caít Keane (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to send my congratulations to Ms Janet Yellen, who will be appointed this afternoon by President Obama as the first female chair of the Federal Reserve. Indeed, she is the first woman anywhere in the world to head up a central bank. When we had the banking crisis here I mentioned another woman who was the head of a bank in Iceland, the only bank that did not fail in that country.

I also wish to congratulate Senator Martin Conway on initiating a debate on Irish Sign Language, ISL. When I came into this House the first motion I put down was on Irish Sign Language and I hope we will be able to make progress on this issue and eventually have ISL recognised officially as the language of the Irish deaf community. I look forward to that debate.

The postal code project is nearing completion and will hopefully be rolled out by 2015. While the system of national postcodes is still in the making, I call for a debate on the matter. We have been told that the postal code system will be very advanced and that Ireland will be one of the first countries in the world to have a unique identifier on properties, which is very welcome. The first three numbers of the new code will relate to the current postal code. As we all know, each and every house in the country that already has a postal district number at the moment considers that number to be sacrosanct.

We know how property prices relate to postal districts, be it Dublin 2, 4, 6 or 8. We have the unique postal code Dublin 6W with a letter as the second part. Computers do not consider people very often when they are making decisions. I am calling for a debate on the proposed postal code system before it is signed, sealed and delivered; it should not all be left to computers and experts. There are people in various areas who want to ensure the postal code for where they are living is not changed overnight with the stroke of a pen. Will the Leader facilitate such a debate and another on local government reform to include the issues raised by other Senators?