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An Eircode may correctly identify a property while still directing an ambulance, delivery driver or visitor to the wrong road, an inaccessible boundary or a location from which the property cannot be reached. This can happen when the geographic point associated with the property is treated as the navigation destination, even though the actual entrance is located on a different road. The short video below explains how Eircode misrouting can occur, why a precise property location is not always the same as a safe and usable access point, and how householders can check whether their own Eircode may cause problems. Its purpose is not to discourage the use of Eircode, but to encourage people to identify any access risk in advance and to provide clear additional directions or a precise entrance location where necessary; - particularly when contacting the emergency services. There is a full worked example for a property with an Eircode that misroutes on this website here The Video also gives advice on displaying your Eircode/Loc8 Code for all to see in an emergency and why "Nearest Eircode" should not be used; - especially for emergency response. To CheckYourCode go here on this website
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For more than ten years the public has been told to "have your Eircode ready."
Emergency services. Ambulances. Doctors. Deliveries. Tradespeople. Taxi drivers. The message has been remarkably consistent: Use your Eircode. It will help people find you. For most locations it does. But for some, it doesn't. The problem is that years of promotional messaging have created an assumption that an Eircode always produces the correct road route. It does not. Where an Eircode is linked to a location that causes misrouting, every organisation that has been encouraged to rely upon it can unknowingly inherit the same problem. That over reliance has consequences. Emergency responders may continue following electronic directions even when local geography suggests something is wrong. Service providers may insist that customers supply an Eircode before assistance can be dispatched, even where other location information would be more useful. If delays occur, householders can find themselves blamed for "giving the wrong Eircode" when the code itself may have routed the vehicle to the wrong road, entrance or access point. This has resulted in goods being delivered to the wrong customer. Ironically, before Eircode was introduced, the National Ambulance Service was cautious about relying on satellite navigation because of concerns over Irish address routing. The expectation was that Eircode would solve those problems. Recent evidence, see our article here =/>, suggests that, in some cases, it has simply changed their nature. The solution is not to stop using Eircodes. The solution is to stop treating them as infallible. Responders should always remain alert to visual and physical evidence that the route guidance may be wrong. Service providers should never disadvantage customers simply because they cannot provide an Eircode. Most importantly, the Government's public messaging needs to evolve. The Minister responsible for Ireland's National Postcode System also has responsibility for ensuring that the public understand both its strengths and its limitations. Simple advice such as "If the route doesn't look right, don't rely on the Eircode alone" could prevent delays, reduce frustration and, in some situations, save lives. "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. More Examples of Eircode Misrouting We have been reporting on Eircode Misrouting for years and the issue has neither gone away by itself nor been resolved by those behind Eircode. The issue is a design one and resolving it would involve admitting that the problem exists in the first place. More public reports of Eircode Misrouting continue to appear and the pattern is consistent with what this NewsBlog has been warning about. A new report posted today states that the Eircode “brings you to a different estate” and that delivery drivers often end up “the wrong side of a 6 foot wall” when they rely on the Eircode. The person posting warns that if it was an emergency “it could a lot more serious”.  This is not a “minor inconvenience”. It is a predictable navigation failure: routing to a single “address point” is not the same thing as routing to the correct access point. As navigation professionals explain, getting this wrong can land vehicles on the wrong side of a physical barrier, at the wrong driveway, or somewhere that simply cannot be accessed. And crucially, this is not something that could not have been foreseen. As we have previously stated here, the potential for misrouting was well known to navigation industry experts before Eircode was ever conceived, and the designers of Eircode could and should have taken it into account. The core problem: Eircode’s main public use is navigation; - but navigation requirements were never treated as primary. Whatever Eircode may have been originally framed as, the reality is that the public now uses Eircode primarily as a navigation input and it has been promoted for life-saving use cases. We have previously highlighted how Eircode advertising has encouraged people to use an Eircode when calling an ambulance, even though well documented misrouting can cause delay. If navigation (and emergency access) had been treated as a primary design requirement, the system would have had to accommodate access/entrance realities & not just a single fixed point at the centre of buildings. Instead, people are repeatedly being put in the position of discovering, often under pressure, that “Where it points to” and “Where it leads to” are not always the same. In the last few weeks alone we have noted more public examples including this one: Ambulance delay (~10 minutes) due to wrong directions when using Eircode  We repeat what we have always advised:
1. Check where your Eircode points to (map location). 2. Then check where it leads to by starting navigation as if you have never been there before. 3. If it leads you the wrong way, wrong entrance, wrong estate, or wrong property: do not assume it’s "just Google” or “just your phone.” The same error can exist across multiple navigation products, including those used by service providers and emergency responders. 4. Record and share the correct access instructions and remember that Loc8 Code can be used as a solution If you have an example of misrouting, please contact us and pass on the details. 15/9/2023 Be Eircode "Where Aware"Those responsible for organisational health & safety, for safety infrastructure & those who provide emergency responce MUST take more care and be more "Where Aware" when it comes to Eircode ..... Where does it point to & Where does it lead to? Check both Location & Routing before having to rely on it especially in an emergency!  The Eircode shown both on the above Defib Cabinet and in the tweet is not at the Castleblayney Hurling Pitch. In fact, the Pitch has NO Eircode. We responded to the tweet raising concerns but without reply. The image above encapsulates everything we have been warning about when it comes to Eircode:-
Yet, the Department of Communications, Capita, who run Eircode, and An Post, who support the whole thing by the provision of their addressing system GeoDirectory, for more than 7 years have collectively failed to warn of these known issues and encourage the Public to be more Eircode "Where Aware" by checking their codes. Our last article on this matter here refers to the answer to a Parliamentary Question by Minister Eamon Ryan, who is responsible for Eircode, on 11th July last where he admits issues with Eircode and, therefore, that it can cause misrouting. Yet, the Public and, in this case, Castleblayney Hurling Club and the owner of the property who's Eircode they are using, have not been made aware of these issues and encouraged to check things thoroughly before relying on an Eircode for any aspect of emergency response. It is equally worrying that response agencies involved in identifying the location of the Defib and undertaking related Community Response have themselves not yet taken time to understand the issues and warn the Public either. Some of you might suggest that sure wont the Eircode shown get someone into the right area and the instructions in the tweet will make it clear that the Defib is in the Hurling Pitch. Unfortunately, this may be true for some very few but, as the marketing about Eircode has been that it is always unquestionably "precise", it has become the norm to communicate Eircodes without supporting address information or instructions. Eircode (Capita) encourage people to blindly put an Eircode into Google Maps or other and navigate to it. In this case, that would lead to the user ending up in the driveway of a private house;- maybe desperately searching around the building in the darkness of night for a Defib which would not only delay the use of the Defib to save someone's life but it could also also potentially cause an altercation between the property owner and the unwanted visitors. Of course, Community First Responders or an ambulance intended for the property at the Eircode shown could also misrouted to the wrong property. When the impression has been promoted that Eircode is precise without question;- responders are not prepared to consider the other possibilities and this is likely to cause confusion and delays. The notion that the "nearest Eircode" will do, as is now being widely suggested by State Agencies involved with and using Eircode, undermines the notion of precision imagined for the national postcode and belies the claim that it is the panacea for emergency response. To address you directly Minister Ryan (who under the terms of the Postal Act must control the "appropriate" non postal service use of the national postcode) it is clear from your PQ answers and other information, that you are very much aware of the issues with Eircode. Therefore, if you do not take urgent action to advise and guide the Public in order to avoid very predictable potential adverse outcomes associated with its use (misuse), it is inevitable that you and your Departmental Staff and their contractors will be held directly responsible. As for the Castleblayney Hurling Club, none of this is their fault. They have been badly advised and are the unsuspecting victims of misinformation. They need to be more "Where Aware" and take another look at the solution for them. They can feel free to contact us at www.checkyourcode.ie for free and professional advice. In answers to two Parliamentary Questions (PQ's) from Brendan Griffin TD on 11th July 2023, the Minister for Communications identifies An Post as the organisation to contact if there is a location or address issue with Eircode and states that Satnav systems can misroute even if the Eircode location from An Post is correct. Effectively, even though the Department of Communications and Capita have been promoting Eircode for use when calling an ambulance since 2015, this is the first time that the potential for misrouting if an Eircode is used is publicly admitted. This is a Public Safety Issue. Neither Capita, who produced the Eircode ambulance advert, nor the Department, which approved that it could be broadcast by RTE as a Public Service Announcement (PSA) and paid for by TV license payers, have never previously publicly admitted that misrouting could occur if an Eircode is used.  This blog has previously explained how misrouting occurs in SatNav systems and we have provided multiple examples of how it has delayed ambulances getting to patients on numerous verifiable occasions. (as well as causing confusion and delays for deliveries of goods and services) We have also shown that this is an issue that was well known to navigation industry experts before Eircode was ever conceived and that the designers of Eircode could and should have taken it into account. Furthermore, we have also shown in our blog posts that in the vast majority of cases simply moving the location of an Eircode by a small amount can solve the problem. However, this is not acknowledged in the answer to the PQ's referenced above and when one of the PQ's identifies An Post as responsible for Eircode location issues, it also directs the blame to An Post as An Post's design rules for Eircode do not permit movement of the related location away (even by a small distance) from that which is recorded in An Post's Geodirectory. By simply removing this rule, many of the misrouting issues identified to date could be immediately resolved. It is because Loc8 Code allows flexibility as to where the destination location is marked, it can resolve Eircode misrouting issues instantly and that is why we recommend it as a solution in our Guide to checking and resolving Eircode misrouting here It is notable that in his response to the PQ's that the Minister does not highlight that the Eircode Satnav routing issues which he refers to, could also misroute an ambulance and, as a result, there is a need for people to check their codes before relying on them in emergencies. This is in spite of the fact that his Department and Capita, under contract to the Department, with the support of An Post, promotes Eircode for emergency Navigation by the ambulance service through PSA's which have been repeated every year since 2015. Equally the Minister does not mention that even though both Capita and his Department have previously recommended that members of the Public contact Google Maps to ask them to solve the issue, there is never any mention that since the Ambulance Service does not use Google Maps (same for many others), resolving the issue with Google Maps may still leave the same misrouting issue for ambulances. We have also highlighted this in our related blog posts here Misrouting relating to Eircode use on Satnavs has been known about by those involved with Eircode since at least 2016. (Autoaddress was a subcontractor to Capita for the roll-out of Eircode)  However, those directly responsible, especially Officials in the Department of Communications, have denied misrouting even when raised with them officially. Their denials have been accompanied by misinformation such as the idea that ambulances use Ordnance Survey of Ireland (OSI - now Tailte Éireann) mapping for Navigation (they use Trimble Maps in the Co-Pilot Navigation system)  It is good, therefore, to finally have the Minister representing the Department of Communications officially admitting that that Eircode related misrouting does actually occur when his Officials & Contractors have previously failed to do that. He should now, therefore, commence a National and highly visible campaign to warn the Public that this may happen when an Eircode is used in calls to the ambulance service and, if the Eircode ambulance advert is to be broadcast as a PSA again, then it should also include that warning. This is a Public Safety Issue so all such warnings should advise the Public to check their codes and we at checkyourcode.ie are more than willing to work with the Department, Capita and An Post to facilitate that checking and help with the quick solutions if an Eircode does suffer from misrouting. Finally, when the Minister stated in his answer to the PQ that he has "no direct function" relating to the "accuracy of these directions" , this is NOT TRUE :-
The Minister's own Duty of Care to the Public he serves should dictate appropriate action once he has become aware of the related issues. The answer to this PQ confirms that he is now aware of Eircode related misrouting. You would imagine also that RTE and its new DG, Kevin Bakhurst, would no longer allow a Public Service Announcement be broadcast on its platforms without inherent warnings to the Public, since it is now officially acknowledged that the Minister is aware of related issues? Following on from our blog post 3 days ago - The Connaught Telegraph has published this article - Eircode misrouting should be tackled immediately in Mayo  30/12/2022 Eircode Misrouting Identified by Councillors in Castlebar But Dangers For Residents Not Recognised Here we are at the end of 2022, almost 9 years since Eircode was launched, and another case of Eircode misrouting is identified. This time it is being identified by Councillor Ger Deere and Iarla Moran, Head of the Municipal District, in Castlebar, Co Mayo, without understanding the potential dangers of this if a resident of the named street has to call for an ambulance. Instead of an Eircode which "directs" to the wrong street being a "not serious" "inconvenience" as suggested by the Connaught Telegraph Article, it could actually result in an ambulance being delayed getting to a patient in a case where minutes or maybe just seconds are critical. This is a particularly worrying possibility in a scenario where total reliance on Eircode and belief in its infallibility may have been created. It is just about 6 months since a similar article appeared in the Irish Examiner reporting confusion with street & estate names. In that article on the 24th of June last problems caused for Gardai were acknowledged.  What these articles are telling us is that Eircode has not fixed well known problems with property addressing in Ireland and , in fact, it seems to be associated with making matters worse as suggested in this article from 2017. It also tells us those who run our cities, municipalities and rural areas have been convinced by Public Service Announcements, marketing and political statements that Eircode is flawlessly precise and a perfect destination identifier for Navigation, when this Newsblog makes it abundantly clear that it is not. Furthermore, we can also see that there is confusion as to who is responsible. Because it was recognised before Eircode that we had significant issues with our property addressing system and because this appears to have deteriorated further in recent years, an over reliance on Eircode is being caused. Amongst the public in general and those who respond to emergencies, there is a bias that addresses cannot be relied upon at all so, they should be ignored in favour of total reliance on Eircode. In the professional discipline of Navigation, this is a recipe for disaster. Since it is well proven on this Newsblog that Eircode can & has misrouted, that disaster may well be related to the loss of life. I regret to say that, in the not too distant future, this subject may end up for consideration in a Coroner's Court where over reliance on Eircode, a failure to understand its limitations, the undermining of property addressing and all the people and factors that contributed to these, will be exposed in detail. Just like air or marine accident investigations, it will be found that contributing factors were obvious to those responsible for related oversight for some time but were consistently set-aside and/or ignored. Iarla Moran suggests in the Connaught Telegraph article that Eircode and street addressing have nothing to do with the Council. When it comes to property addressing, that is not entirely true but this article makes it clear that property addressing is nothing to do with Eircode. Nor is it anything to do with Google Maps. In fact, it is useful to know that the Postal Addressing associated with Eircode is not actually passed to Google Maps when Eircodes are passed on. However, as has been discussed in this Newsblog many times, it may be possible to resolve misrouting on Google Maps by making contact with Google BUT this does not assure that the same problem is resolved on other mapping and navigation systems used by emergency services or logistics companies. As we have highlighted before, the National Ambulance Service does not navigate to an Eircode location using Google Maps. We have to be very clear here, whilst property addressing is mainly an issue for An Post (with input from Local Authorities), Eircode misrouting is the sole responsibility of Capita which manages Eircode for the State. The misrouting wrongly identified as an "inconvenience" in the article should be brought to the attention of Eircode immediately and they must ensure that whatever steps are necessary to resolve the issue in ALL mapping and navigation systems, especially those used by emergency responders, are undertaken as a matter of urgency;- with unambiguous confirmations when achieved. As we reach the end of another year where evidence of the misrouting of ambulances has been prominent and the absence of warnings from those responsible has been conspicuous, we can only hope that 2023 will be better in the best interests of Public Safety for all residents in Ireland! We have been made aware of yet another case of Eircode misrouting where an ambulance was delayed as a result. For this reason, we have added a new "Point 5" to our list for checking an Eircode here -/>  On the afternoon of the 3rd November last, we received a call from a lady who had called an ambulance for her father a few days earlier but the ambulance was delayed as a result of Eircode misrouting. She made contact with us to confirm she could use a Loc8 Code when calling for an ambulance in the future. In this case, Google Maps had been corrected to include a short private driveway;- so if she had done our check and had not read our NewsBlog articles she would have assumed misrouting could not take place. However, there was another road running along a different side of her house from which there was no driveway but it was closer. CoPilot, which the ambulance service uses, did not have the corrected driveway to the house, so the ambulance ended up on the closer road from which there was no access to their patient and no visibility to or from the house. This caused a delay until all realised that there had been a misrouting error. For that reason, our new Point 5. states as follows: "5. If there is a road shown on Google Maps between your road access & your house, this road may not be on other mapping systems such as "CoPilot" which the ambulance service uses. If there is another road on the maps closer to your house than your own road access then, misrouting could occur and, therefore, you should also create & use a Loc8 Code to be safe. As different emergency responders and other service providers use different Navigation systems with different map suppliers, it is not possible to check them all. For that reason, best to be safe & use a Loc8 Code." In addition, because the actual access to this property from the road is very narrow and bordered on 2 sides by other houses, even with a Loc8 Code generated just inside the access point, there could still be doubt. For that reason we would recommend Confirmation Signage at the gate which would say "Access to Eircode &/or Loc8 Code xxxxxxxxx" This would remove any possibility of doubt amongst the paramedics navigating the ambulance. Confirmatory signage like this is very useful in navigation and is highly recommended where there might be any doubt. The responsibility for this kind of confirmation is on the property owner;- not the paramedics or other service providers trying to find them. It is extremely regrettable that those behind Eircode are not even warning the public about the possibility of errors or misrouting;- let alone advising how to check and resolve issues before they happen and cause risk to public safety. If you need any clarifications on any of this, please contact us here -/>  Misrouting of vehicles, including ambulances and 1st responders, by Eircode has been reported for many years now. New examples keep being reported through social media and that means there are many more that go unreported. The above image is from a post a few days ago in boards.ie and is just one more of many many examples. Those who report Eircode mis-routing in relation to deliveries do not always realise that the very same could happen if an ambulance is trying to find them........ ;- but with potentially life and death related consequences. Even though Eircode & the Department of Communications promote their product through Public Service Announcements (PSA's) on RTE for ambulance emergency response, they continue to fail to take any responsibility when a misrouting report raises the possibility of an ambulance being led astray and delayed. They also have taken no steps to warn the public about this well documented issue. Eircode misrouting is predictable and can be avoided. It is explained in detail in our post here -/> We are aware that in previous cases Capita personnel have advised those reporting the issue to contact Google Maps to get them to help solve the problem (not always possible or timely). Not only have they not admitted that by simply moving the location of the Eircode themselves they could resolve the problem, they also fail to advise those with the problem that even if they get the problem solved in Google Maps, the issue may well remain for ambulances as they use a different mapping system (CoPilot - Trimble Maps). Furthermore, other service providers may be using Garmin/Navigon, TomTom or other navigation/map systems which all would have to be contacted to fully (though possibly temporarily) correct a problem which Eircode created and could solve themselves. Unfortunately, Eircode will not do as required to resolve the matter as the An Post design specifications for Eircode limit what the code can point to. The quickest solution for those experiencing Eircode mis-routing is to generate a Loc8 Code for the access to the desired property using the web-app here -/> Then create a sign with the Loc8 Code on it and place for all to see - guidelines for displaying Eircodes or Loc8 Codes are here -/> It is important to understand that the National Ambulance Service has fully integrated Loc8 Code into their systems side-by-side with Eircode since 2017.  If you are reading this post, please #checkyourcode , advise others to do so also and please do it for those who can't. We are very happy to help and you can make contact with us here -/> |
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