Tony Mulcahy (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and the Bill on postcodes. The purpose of the Bill is to amend parts of the Communications Regulation (Postal Services) Act 2011. It is particularly important for the introduction of Ireland's seven digit postcode system this year. Ireland is one of the last remaining countries in the world to introduce a national postcode system. This has to be welcomed by both the public and businesses.

It will be far easier once the system goes live for post to be delivered. With Eircode, the first three characters of the code will provide the routing key. These are designed to help in the postal sorting process and the logistics industry. The remaining four characters will provide the unique identifier which will identify each individual address. They will not be sequential, allowing for the insertion of new addresses as houses, etc. are built and added.

We should be able to locate addresses more efficiently with this new system. In addition, medical emergency services where an ambulance has to be called will be able to respond faster, especially in rural areas. Unfortunately, there have been some cases in which ambulance crews not familiar with a rural area have got lost and arrived very late following a call-out.I hope Sat Nav providers will update their systems in conjunction with the new system.

Postcodes have been a long time coming. On 23 May 2005, the then Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, announced that postcodes would be introduced on 1 January 2008. Seven years and three Ministers later, we are finally ready to go live. It is envisaged that the system will go live once this Bill passes through both Houses and is signed by the President. I urge Members to support the Bill.

The purpose of this amending legislation is to address the public's concerns about data protection and privacy. We need to ensure only legitimate postcode activities are carried out. The Bill will regulate how information is collected and distributed by the postcode contractor and reseller of postcode databases. We are all aware of the amount of advertising mail that is put through our postboxes every day. We need to protect the privacy of householders who are about to be allocated new postcodes. Legitimate postcode activities are set out in the proposed section 65A(2) to be inserted by the Bill. These include development and maintenance of a postcode; management of the postcode database; incorporation of address aliases into databases to allow for the association of geoco-ordinates with the new system; dissemination of postcodes on behalf of the contractor or the Minister by An Post, a universal postal service provider or such other person the Minister considers appropriate; matching of addresses to postcodes for reselling with the provision that the name of the occupant or owner of the property is not identified; and licensing of the postcode address database to a value-added reseller or end user with certain criteria being observed. The Minister has ensured the Data Protection Commissioner and the Minister for Justice and Equality will be consulted if there is need to broaden the scope of the legislation in respect of privacy. I welcome this legislation and agree that data protection in relation to the new postcodes has to be strong. A complaints procedure is provided for under the proposed section 66D and a statutory code of practice by the contractor is provided for in the proposed section 66E.

In January 2014, Capita Business Support Services Ireland was awarded a ten-year contract to operate and maintain the postcode service. I hope that company is successful in delivering a postcode system of which the country can be proud. It may have taken ten years to develop a postcode system but at least it is starting now.