The Irish Government has formally awarded a 10-year contract for Ireland’s national postcode system to Capita Ireland, providing every address in Ireland with a unique identifier.
Capita, which is supported by BearingPoint and Autoaddress, will now be responsible for the design, encoding and rollout of a national postcode that is due to be launched in the first quarter of 2015.
The long overdue arrival of a postcode system will be vital for a range of services from e-commerce to emergency services and will prove useful to citizens and businesses reliant on smartphones and GPS systems.
“A publicly-owned postcode system is a key piece of modern national infrastructure, and ours will be the first in the world to be unique to each individual address,” said Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte.
“It will bring significant benefits to the public, business and government. I’m very pleased to announce the signing of the contract with Capita who will develop and operate the next generation postcode system for the State. I look forward to the public starting to use postcodes, which we expect to be in the first half of 2015.”
The national postcode system will use a 7-character code in an alpha numeric format. Existing Dublin postal districts will be retained.
