Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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222. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if his attention has been drawn to the concerns of a company (details supplied) regarding the development of the national postcode system; if he will confirm whether this is consistent with the evidence provided to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Transport and Communications; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7334/15]

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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I am aware of the concerns of the organisation in question regarding the development of the National Postcode System, such concerns primarily relating to the Eircode design.

The design of the Eircode followed a public procurement process. During that process a range of options for the postcode structure were evaluated. That evaluation process, together with stakeholder engagement which preceded the procurement, helped inform the final format of the Eircode design.

The Eircode design chosen has been tailored to meet the needs of Ireland's addressing structure in that approximately 35% of Irish addresses are non-unique and many properties can have multiple forms of address. The design adopted which assigns a unique identifier to each address will make it easier for both public and private sector providers to find individual addresses.

I can confirm that officials from my Department gave a very comprehensive account of the project including the Eircode design to the Joint Committee on Transport and Communications on 19 November 2014.