Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent)
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34. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources his views on the progress of operations of the Eircode system; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16117/16]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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Since  the launch of Eircode in July 2015 there have been over 4 million lookups on the Eircode finder, with average daily hits running at almost 19,000.  Over 80 million records across 15 public sector bodies were encoded prior to their launch and over 3 million pieces of correspondence have been issued by public sector bodies since the Eircode launch.

Some examples of usage by public sector bodies include:

- The Emergency Call Answering Service (ECAS), which takes emergency calls made to 112 and 999 numbers, has updated its systems and changed processes to enable the use of Eircodes when presented by callers;

- The National Ambulance Service has installed a new computer-aided dispatch system, which incorporates the Eircode. This allows callers in any part of the country to phone the ambulance control centre and give their Eircode facilitating a speedier dispatch of the ambulance;

- The passport card online application form was introduced in October 2015 and all passport card online application forms request an Eircode;

- All 2016 Census forms included an Eircode;

- The Department of Transport has started uploading the National Vehicle and Driver File (NVDF)  with Eircodes. This database includes address particulars in respect of the 2.6 million licensed vehicles and 2.74 million driving licence holders in the country.  The motor tax database of the NVDF went live in January 2016 with Eircodes;

- The Revenue Commissioners has uploaded Eircodes in some of their main databases and started issuing Eircode enabled correspondence on July 2015. In November 2015 alone one database issued more than 800,000 pieces of correspondence with Eircodes;

- The Department of Social Protection started issuing Eircode enabled correspondence in October 2015; since then more than 877,000 pieces of correspondence has issued with an Eircode;

- The educational grants authority, SUSI process over 120,000 grant applications per annum and they now  request that college grant applications include an Eircode. This has assisted SUSI to more efficiently determine the location of student addresses saving them time and facilitating faster processing times for issuing grants;

- Electric Ireland issued 680,000 electricity bills in February which had an Eircode included on them;

- A new version of the Register of Electors was rolled out to 31 local authorities. This version incorporates the ability to add in an Eircode against a dwelling; and

- The HSE now include Eircode in their primary care reimbursement service, an additional 1,000,000 pieces of correspondence will issue with the Eircode over the coming months.

Some key benefits that public sector bodies have experienced already are:

- Savings in time directing ambulances to addresses especially those in rural areas;

- Eliminating duplicate entries in Customer Databases;

- Increased speed of processing applications and saving in processing costs;

- Increased reliability of the geographical location of addresses, in particular non-unique addresses;

- Improved efficiency in matching address locations.

The Department and Capita (Project Management Licence Holder - PMLH) have worked to ensure that commercial bodies can use the Eircode and a significant number of commercial bodies have incorporated the Eircode into their online services, and this is growing all the time.  Since the launch Capita (PMLH), has signed up a total of 28 Eircode Value Added Re-sellers who provide a broad spectrum of Eircode specialist services to businesses including, location based applications for logistics/deliveries sector, address validation, database cleansing, address look ups and a range of spatial analytic applications. These 28 VARs have signed licences with 399 End User organisations who are using Eircodes in their businesses. The industries using Eircode data include Retail, Logistics/Delivery, Financial Services, Insurance, Utilities and Public Sector bodies. Most of the Eircode licensed End Users are using the data for address verification and deliveries, as well as for risk assessment in the Insurance and Financial Services.