Dublin postal districts

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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

Dublin postal districts are used by Ireland's postal service, known as An Post, to sort mail in Dublin. 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.

1 Structure
2 History
3 Future developments
4 References
5 See also
6 External links

[edit] Structure

Current Postal Districts for Dublin City and Suburbs

The postal district appears with one or two digits (or in the case of one district, a digit and a letter) 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.

[edit] History

The postal district system was introduced in 1917 by the UK government, as a practical way to organise local postal distribution. This followed the example of other cities, notably London, first subdivided into ten districts in 1857, and Liverpool, the first city in Britain or Ireland to have postcodes, from 1864, and was part of a wave of such introductions across Britain and Ireland. The alphabetic code "D" was set aside to designate Dublin, and after Irish independence, was not reallocated. The new Irish government retained the postal district system. However the use of district numbers by the public did not occur until the mid-1960s as evidenced by street signs of house developments prior to the 60s only displaying the street name in Irish and English.

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 15, 17, 22, 24 and 6W)

The districts have been added to as the city grew, and large districts have been subdivided, as when Dublin 5 was split, with the coastal part retaining the "5" and the inland part becoming Dublin 17.

In 1985, Dublin 6 was divided, 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 the next available number, "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 (a wide area of southern suburbia has the postal designation "Blackrock," far beyond the actual district of that name) and Dún Laoghaire met with similar objections to those which arose with Dublin 6, so 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

Ringsend post office in Dublin 4 with older green Dublin street signs without Dublin Postal District number

Ireland's Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Noel Dempsey, announced^[1] that postcodes would be introduced in Ireland by 1 January 2008.^[2] It was reported that the postcodes would include the one- and two-character county codes currently used in vehicle registration plates, and that each address would have a unique postcode. (With the existing Dublin system retained^[3].) However, in August 2007, the new Minister ^[4] reportedly postponed the implementation of the system "indefinitely", pending additional public consultation.

In a speech at a Comreg conference on Postal services on October 18th 2007 the Minister committed himself to the introduction of a post code system as soon as possible ^[5].Industry sources say it will be at least 2009 though before they could be introduced ^[6]