Eircode

Over 35% of addresses in Ireland are non-unique, where there is no house name or number. A lot of people spell the same addresses differently, and might use the address in English or in Irish. This makes it difficult for those delivering goods and services or responding to an emergency to find the location of an address.

Eircode was designed specifically to overcome this problem. Unlike other countries where a postcode identifies an area with a group of addresses, a unique Eircode is assigned to each residential and business address in Ireland.

An Eircode is made up of seven characters, for example D02 X285. The first three characters are the 'Routing Key' which can be shared by several towns and townlands. Except for Dublin postal districts the letters are not linked to a town or city name. The second part of the Eircode is the 'Unique Identifier' and is four characters long. Eircodes are not sequential; if your neighbour is D02 X285 you won’t be D02 X286. This is to avoid the situation where a new building is created between two existing ones, and the code sequence would be broken, requiring all Eircodes in the area to be changed.

Find an Eircode

Eircodes identify each property in Ireland, which means deliveries and services can find houses and businesses, emergency services can respond quicker and you can get directions on sat nav to a location using Eircodes.

Businesses and state bodies use Eircodes in collecting information from the public, to identify addresses correctly and ensure the correct services are delivered, and in gathering information about people and business which they can use to improve services for the country.