Sir, – I live at what is referred to as a “non-specific rural address”, with my address being shared by a number of people within a 1.5km radius, and so I have good reason to give my full support to the introduction of a modern postal code.

However, the Irish solution is useless except insofar as it provides the State with the ability to identify each and every property in the land with a unique code and that aids it in all sorts of Big Brother ways. But that’s it.

A random coding system is useless without a means of decoding each one individually, so what is the local post delivery person to do with an Eircode unless there is a means to look up each and every one? He or she has no way to determine which codes are next to one another, or in what sequence – fundamental to managing a delivery route effectively.

Indeed, much is made of the code’s benefit to the emergency services but this is one of the great myths about what has been developed because if, in a panicked state, a person quotes even one letter or number wrong in their Eircode, the ambulance or fire service could find itself in a different part of the county!

My advice in that situation is never, ever take the risk of using it in a crisis.

Surely Eircode was the biggest single waste of tax money in 2015? – Yours, etc,

T GERARD BENNETT.

Bunbrosna,

Co Westmeath.