"Ambulances delayed after sat-navs repeatedly sent crews to wrong addresses" is an article by Ken Foxe in breakingnews.ie on 9th July 2026 . The article can be found at this link =/>  Ken Foxe’s article explores ambulance-navigation incident records and the direct feedback of paramedics working for the National Ambulance Service. Ken specialises in stories sourced through Freedom of Information requests. Although the article does not expressly state how these particular records were obtained, it is reasonable to assume that they resulted from such a request.
The article contains disturbing operational descriptions, including: “Sat Nav in vehicle directed to incorrect location to housing estate adjoining patient address. No access to incident location.” Anyone who has followed this NewsBlog will recognise that as a classic description of Eircode related access-point misrouting. The National Ambulance Service records also describe ambulances being directed to the opposite side of a river, down roads from which there was no access to the patient, into a nearby cul-de-sac and along a laneway too narrow for an ambulance. In one case, the crew had been given the correct Eircode but was still brought to the wrong location. Another report stated that a patient’s “life survival” had been compromised by a twenty-minute delay. These are not theoretical concerns. They are records made by ambulance personnel while responding to real medical emergencies. In July 2023, the then Minister responsible for Eircode, Eamon Ryan, admitted in a Parliamentary Question reply that this type of problem could occur. However, responsibility was effectively passed to the “satellite navigation system”. See our article here=/> We now see the same tendency in the ambulance incident records, where the failures are repeatedly described as problems with “sat-navs”. That explanation is technically inadequate. Do not blame the sat-nav for defective destination intelligence It is well established and understood by professional navigators and geospatial specialists that neither maps nor satellite-navigation systems can be relied upon one hundred per cent. Like every navigation aid, a sat-nav should be used in conjunction with other available information, professional judgement and informed user discretion. However, those normal limitations are made considerably worse by a specific Eircode design flaw: an Eircode can direct a navigation system towards the geographic centre or building point recorded in GeoDirectory rather than towards the road-access point from which the property can actually be reached. The article reports what ambulance crews experienced. It does not attempt a technical geospatial diagnosis of every incident. However, from a professional navigation and positioning perspective, reports of ambulances being sent to an adjoining housing estate, a road with no access, the opposite side of a river or a nearby cul-de-sac are recognisable examples of Eircode related access point misrouting. The routing system may be functioning exactly as designed. The problem is that it has been given inadequate destination intelligence. This Eircode flaw has been explained repeatedly in this NewsBlog. A fully worked and demonstrated example can be found in our article here=/> Map-pointing is not map-routing The fundamental issue is the difference between map-pointing and map-routing. Map-pointing identifies where a building is geographically situated. Map-routing must identify how a road vehicle can actually reach that building. Those behind Eircode appear not to have understood this distinction when the system was conceived. More seriously, they have repeatedly chosen to ignore it since the consequences became known. The location intelligence supplied by Eircode may be sufficient to place a marker on a map. It is not always sufficient to provide the navigation intelligence required to bring an ambulance to the correct entrance over the Irish road network. A building may be beside several roads but accessible from only one of them. It may be separated from the nearest road by a wall, river, railway line, field, embankment or another housing development. Its entrance may be hundreds of metres away from the building point. An Eircode can, therefore, point accurately to the correct building while simultaneously causing a routing system to bring an ambulance to the wrong road. That is not accurate emergency navigation. The dangerous haemorrhage case Ken Foxe’s article reports: “In one case involving a ‘dangerous haemorrhage’ in Limerick, the ambulance was sent down a cul-de-sac nearby to where they were supposed to go.” The article continues: “One entry in the log explained how a trip ended up taking twice as long as expected.” This was not caused by a lack of navigation intelligence on the part of the ambulance crew. It is directly consistent with an Eircode being used to guide a routing system towards a GeoDirectory building coordinate rather than towards the road-access point needed to reach the patient. The sat-nav did not invent the destination point. It calculated a route towards the location intelligence supplied to it. Blaming the sat-nav avoids the real question: was the destination point suitable for road navigation in the first place? The UK postcode comparison With the UK postcode system, a postcode used with a property number resolves to a delivery-point address containing a road name. That road provides the road context from which the numbered property is served and accessed. Eircode provides no equivalent assurance. An Eircode can resolve to a building point without identifying the road, entrance or access point from which the building must actually be approached. This is particularly serious in Ireland, where a large number of addresses contain no road name. Eircode was supposedly introduced to overcome the ambiguity of those addresses, yet it was built upon An Post’s GeoDirectory and the same address structure that caused the ambiguity in the first place. Why was a modern national postcode, developed over approximately eleven years and promoted heavily for emergency-service use, designed around postal building points rather than verified road-access points? That question has never been satisfactorily answered. Why was An Post allowed to control the design? We also have no proper explanation for why An Post was permitted to exercise such influence over the Eircode design when the Government decision of October 2013 made clear that emergency-service use would be one of its most important public benefits. It is now beyond credible dispute, and has been confirmed through An Post’s own explanations, that An Post does not use the full Eircode as an operational postcode for the delivery of mail. There was, therefore, no public-interest justification for allowing An Post’s address management preferences to determine the location architecture of a system promoted as essential emergency infrastructure. Postal address management and emergency road navigation are not the same discipline. An Post’s priority was maintaining the integrity of its postal-address database. The emergency services require a system that identifies how a vehicle can reach a person. Those are two different requirements, and Eircode was designed around the wrong one. The public was told to rely on Eircode Since 2015, public-service announcements broadcast repeatedly on RTÉ have encouraged the public to have their Eircode ready when calling an ambulance. That advice created a reasonable public expectation that providing an Eircode would help an ambulance reach the correct location. Those responsible for Eircode, up to and including Ministerial level, have repeatedly been asked to warn the public about the known misrouting problem and to encourage people to check their Eircode before an emergency occurs. They have failed to do so. Ken Foxe’s article confirms why that warning is necessary. Where the State has repeatedly encouraged the public to rely upon Eircode during a medical emergency, it has a clear public-safety responsibility, and potentially a duty of care, to warn that an Eircode may occasionally direct an ambulance towards the wrong road or an inaccessible side of the property. The National Ambulance Service describes these incidents as “rare”. But “rare” is not the same as acceptable where a patient’s survival may depend on a crew arriving within minutes. The problem can be fixed The positive news is that the problem can be addressed relatively easily. Incidents such as: “Other cases saw ambulances routed down roads where there was no access to the patient” can be eliminated by associating the Eircode with the point where the property is accessed from the nearest suitable mapped road. The building coordinate can remain in GeoDirectory for address and property purposes. A separate, verified road-access point can be provided for navigation. Priority should be given to:
The ambulance incident records obtained by Ken Foxe would provide an obvious starting point. The GeoDirectory obstacle The principal obstacle is An Post. For commercial and address-control reasons, An Post wants Eircode to remain dependent upon postal addresses and GeoDirectory. The 2014 Eircode design documentation records An Post’s desire to keep GeoDirectory “pure”. In practical terms, that meant maintaining the GeoDirectory building point rather than adjusting it to provide safer road-access intelligence. This resistance may not change easily, particularly as An Post is reported to believe that it may eventually assume complete control of Eircode. The current Eircode contract ends in December 2026. A decision to extend Capita’s contract, award a replacement contract or introduce a new operating arrangement is, therefore, imminent. No contract should be extended or awarded without requiring:
Check your Eircode now In the meantime, the quickest solution is for members of the public to test their own Eircode. Do not simply check whether the map marker appears somewhere on your house or property. Check the route itself. Does the navigation system finish at the correct entrance? Could it approach from an adjoining housing estate? Could it arrive on the opposite side of a river, wall, field or railway line? Does it finish on a road from which there is no access? Would an ambulance be able to use the route shown? Our advice for checking your Eircode is here=/> Where there is any indication that the Eircode could cause misrouting, generate a Loc8 Code at the actual road-access point. Continue to provide your Eircode when calling the Ambulance Service. However, also provide the Loc8 Code and explain that it identifies the road entrance the ambulance must use. Loc8 Code has been fully integrated into National Ambulance Service systems side by side with Eircode since late 2017. We continue to support Eircode as the primary code for postal addresses to be used when requesting emergency assistance. The purpose of providing a Loc8 Code is not to replace or withhold the Eircode. It is to supply the missing access intelligence where the Eircode route has been shown to be unsafe or unreliable. Do not put a “nearest Eircode” on lifesaving equipment Finally, where proposals are made to place Eircodes on lifesaving equipment, such as in this case here=/>, objections should be raised immediately. A lifebuoy, defibrillator or other emergency asset situated on a riverbank, beach, pier, farm building public path, greenway or playing field will not normally have its own Eircode because Eircodes are assigned only to postal addresses. The proposed solution is, therefore, often to display the “nearest Eircode”. That does not identify the lifesaving equipment. It identifies a different postal address. Placing that Eircode on the equipment is a deliberate form of geographic misrouting: a code known to identify one location is placed on a different location and presented as though the two were the same. That does not mean anyone intends to cause harm. It means the geographic misdirection itself is knowingly introduced. An ambulance following the Eircode will be directed towards the postal address, not towards the lifebuoy, casualty or correct emergency access point. The two locations may be out of sight of each other, separated by a wall or river, or accessible from entirely different roads. This can create further confusion and delay at precisely the moment when seconds matter. Lifesaving equipment must carry a code or coordinate that identifies the equipment itself and, where necessary, the road-access point from which emergency personnel can reach it. Loc8 Code is specifically design and already used for this purpose. Anything less is not emergency location intelligence. It is an address-based workaround being presented as though it identifies the emergency. No one can now claim the problem is imaginary We thank Ken Foxe for bringing these National Ambulance Service records into the public domain. They ensure that nobody can credibly deny that ambulances are sometimes misrouted and delayed while responding to emergencies; - including cases in which the correct Eircode was supplied. This NewsBlog has warned about that risk for more than six years, and the issue has been raised elsewhere since Eircode was launched in 2015. The remaining question is whether those responsible for Eircode will finally act. They must stop blaming "sat-nav" systems for following defective destination intelligence. They must distinguish building location from road access. They must warn the public to check their Eircode. They must correct the known problem addresses. And they must prevent “nearest Eircodes” from being placed on lifesaving equipment as though a nearby postal address were the location of the emergency. The alternative is that these failures will continue appearing in future Freedom of Information disclosures; - or, God forbid, in the findings of a Coroner's Court.
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