Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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24. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the overall projected cost of implementing Eircode; and his views that this is the best value for money option available. [3933/15]

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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My Department commenced a procurement process for a National Postcode System in 2011. An open and competitive procurement process was conducted in accordance with Department of Finance and EU procurement frameworks.

A pre-qualification questionnaire was issued on on 17 January 2011. This invited interested parties to tender for the contract as a postcode management licence holder for a period of 10 years to design, provide, disseminate and maintain a National Postcode System. A number of companies entered and participated in the procurement process. Three parties qualified following Stage 1 of the procurement process. The choice of postcode operator was restricted to those companies who participated in the procurement process. My Department subsequently received two final bids from consortia led by Capita and An Post.

My Department evaluated the final bids and Capita’s bid was found to be the most economically advantageous of the two bids.

On 8 October 2013, the Government approved the appointment of Capita Business Support Services Ireland Limited as the company which will develop, roll-out and operate the National Postcode System.

The overall projected cost of implementing the National Postcode System over the 10 year cycle of the contract is expected to be €27m (ex VAT) with costs covering design, database upgrades, communications and postcode distribution. The cost of the contract will be approximately €16m over the first two years and a further €1.2m per annum for the remaining 8 years of the contract. There has been approximately €1.2m spent on specialist costs arising from the project in the period 2010 to date.

The costs of designing the eircodes and setting up the Eircode Address Database are approximately 9% of total cost. It is expected that 43% of the overall cost over 10 years will be attributed to dissemination, communications and upgrade of public sector databases. The remaining estimated costs, approximately 48% of the total cost, will be accounted for by the acquisition of data from GeoDirectory and costs of maintaining the postcodes.