Eircode got us moving in the right direction

Critics silenced as 97% of households now validated 10 years on from launch

- BY CIARA O'LOUGHLIN

OVER 97% of people in Ireland have a validated Eircode for their home address, 10 years after the initiative was launched.

Since its launch in 2015, there have been 197.3 million look-ups on the online finder, with two million average searches per month last year.

However, a decade ago the initiative was not widely welcomed. At the time, experts said the €38m project was “not fit for purpose”.

It was initially supposed to cost €18m, but it went more than double over budget.

The biggest criticism of Eircode at the time was that it's not strictly geographical, like the UK's system, which can be confusing.

While the first three characters of an Eircode, the routing key, is linked to a broad area, it doesn't precisely map smaller units such as a street or even a town.