Ireland's Shannon Airport, up until a few days ago to be found in Shannon, County Clare, has seemingly up sticks and moved to County Limerick following the introduction of Ireland’s new postcode system, the Eircode.

Other problems with the Eircode range from incorrect addresses to data protection concerns.

Despite this, Communications Minister Alex White defended the new national system (which cost Irish taxpayers €27m), claiming it would make postal deliveries much easier in the long run despite early teething problems.

Users who want to write to more than 15 Irish friends in a day, however, (say, for weddings, Christmas, party invitations) better get checking in advance because the online database only allows 15 searches a day.

“The Eircode Finder is for the public who occasionally need to look up address details, it is not for commercial use which is why a limit has been set," explains the website.

"When the limit is reached an alert is shown, although you may look up a further 15 searches the following day,” it continued.

For companies that do want to look up more addresses, the fee is between €60 and €180 a year, depending on the number of searches performed and the option of a mapping service.

Yes, a mapping service.

The new system identifies the exact latitude and longitude of 2.2 million individual addresses. Unlike other countries, where postcodes define a cluster or group of addresses, a unique Eircode will be assigned to each residential and business address.

If your correspondent’s address does not come up on an address search on the website, but you know where they live, you can hover an ominous red target icon over their property on a map and click to reveal the postcode.

Even using the Eircode finder may present data protection issues. Although Eircode claims that we "do not collect or store your your name or address as part of this data", in its Code of Practice it admits that in some circumstances, Google Analytics "can capture the IP address of the user, and this address along with other data that might be available, can be used to identify you."

More than 170,000 people had already checked the website at Eircode.ie on Monday morning. ®