Melissa UK Team | Address Quality, Data Quality, United Kingdom

What is Eircode

Ireland was one of the few developed nations without a postcode system, this saw approximately 800,000 addresses and over 35% of properties sharing their address with at least one other property meaning no house name or number for the percentage of these premises.

As this may not seem like the biggest issue, when scaling it down to logistical efforts, deliveries and even emergency services, the ability to pinpoint a specific address or location caused massive implications and knock-on effects… particularly in rural areas.

You could argue that a sat nav could have attained to this problem but we wonder how well that would have worked without any postcodes intact.

The obvious factor accounted for a better solution, which then in 2015 Eircode was introduced as Ireland’s brand new advanced postcode system. Like most countries’ post or zip code structures which define a cluster of addresses, Ireland’s game-changing system gives the ability to locate every individual address or premises in the country by using a single code at the end of each address.

This ultimately removes the guesswork of finding addresses, not just good news for the Irish but a grand development for any business that holds Irish address data.

What does EIRCODE look like and how does it work?

An Eircode is made up of seven digital alphanumeric code which is made up of two compositions

Part 1 – The Routing Key: consisting of three characters that define the main principal postal delivery location or town

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Part 2 – The Unique Identifier: As each home or business has its own Eircode, the unique identifier is used to distinguish one address or premise from another.

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Who is using Eircode after its launch?

Expectedly the top users of Eircode are couriers and distribution parties, having to verify, sort and deliver almost an endless number of mail and parcels daily. The benefits of Ireland’s new postcode system dramatically reduced manual sortation requirements, which resulted in better logistics planning, faster deliveries, and locating addresses in rural areas with ease.

Many other companies have also adapted to Eircode, for its benefits to their business and their customers, some of these include Tesco, Domino’s Pizza, Electric Ireland, Curry’s PC world and Power city.

The large mixture of businesses shows its usage to be very widespread through different sectors, we can no doubt demonstrate Eircode’s addition to better quality location data and information allowing for greater accuracy, routing, measuring and overall business operations and ROI.

For more information on how Eircode data services can benefit your business efforts, contact us