Dublin postal districts

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Street sign in Dublin, displaying name of the street in Irish and English, with postal district number.

Publicly distributed leaflet to publicise the Dublin Postal Districts issued by the Irish Department of Posts and Telegraphs - dated April 1976 (predates the creation of Dublin 6W)

Dublin postal districts are used by Ireland's postal service, known as An Post, to sort mail in the Dublin area. This system will soon change as a national postcode system will be introduced. The system is similar to that used in cities in other European countries until they adopted national postal code systems in the 1960s and '70s. The postal district appears with one or two digits appearing at the end of addresses, e.g.:

Dublin Orthodox Synagogue,

32 Rathfarnham Road,

Terenure,

Dublin 6W

Primarily, odd numbers are used for addresses on the Northside of the River Liffey, while even numbers are on addresses on the Southside. Exceptions to this are the Phoenix Park (along with a small area between the Park and the River Liffey), and Chapelizod Village which, whilst being on the Northside of Dublin, are parts of the Dublin 8 and Dublin 20 postal districts respectively.

In 1985, Dublin 6 was split, with some areas, such as Templeogue, Kimmage and Terenure becoming part of a new district in order to facilitate processing of mail by a new sorting office for those areas. Residents of some areas objected to the assignation of "Dublin 26" for the new postal district, citing property devaluation (the higher numbered districts typically representing less affluent, and typically less central regions). An Post ultimately relented, and the district became known as Dublin 6W (Confusingly the Eastern half of the old D6 postcode area remained "Dublin 6" rather than "Dublin 6E"). Proposals to extend the system to Blackrock and Dún Laoghaire met with similar objections.

The numbering system is not used for surrounding areas in County Dublin, such as Dún Laoghaire, Blackrock, Lucan or Swords.

In Cork, there are also numbered districts, eg: the 'PATRICK STREET' (Sráid Phádraig) sign will display the digit '1', but these are not encountered in postal addresses. Cork has four postal districts. District 1 covers the city centre and large parts of the surrounding city. District 2, administered from the Ballinlough sorting office covers the south-east, District 3 from Gurranabraher covers the north-west while district 4 from Togher sorting office covers the south-west. In practice these numbers are only used internally by An Post and rarely used on mail.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Future developments

Ireland's Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, announced^[1] that postcodes will be introduced in Ireland by 1st January 2008.^[2] It has been reported that the postcodes will include the one- and two-character county codes currently used in vehicle registration plates, and that each address will have a unique postcode.

TimesOnline reported^[3] that the current system of postal districts will be retained and any postcode system will be placed after the current district number but the precise details of the system have not yet been released