The country’s largest telecom firm has claimed there is a material flaw in the desire by the industry’s regulator to keep public payphones in operation.

The firm said its fixed network investment programme would provide coverage to another 1.4 million premises with speeds of up to 10 Gbps.

An Post has told an Oireachtas committee that Eircode usage remains “very low”, with less than 5% of all mail it handles using the €38m postcode — more than two years after it launched.

It might be easy to joke about the low use, below 5%, of the €38m Eircode but, as is often the case, the joke is really on us.

Fewer than one in 10 logistics and shipping companies have adapted their businesses to use Eircode, according to a survey by KPMG.

The minister responsible for Eircode has issued a staunch defence of the system, despite the fact he does not use it on his own website.

Some of the changes to the Susi grants system this year include greater use of technology to calculate how far they travel to college and the resultant level of payment they are due.

A survey has found that 96% of logistics and shipping companies have not adapted their processes to use the €38m Eircode system, nearly a year since its introduction.

A company that formed part of the consortium that introduced Eircode has denied that a new delivery code it has offered the courier industry is an alternative to the controversial postcode system.

A Limerick-based Fine Gael TD has described the hiring of former civil servants as consultants on the Eircode project as “a scandal”, and said he was disgusted they were hired without the jobs being advertised.

Ireland’s unique postcode system cost €20m more than originally forecast as the bill for encoding public sector databases was not initially counted, a spending watchdog has been told.

Members of the Public Accounts Committee will try to get to the bottom of where the Eircode system went wrong today.

Communications Minister Alex White has defended Eircode, estimated to cost between €38m and €50m, after An Post said fewer than one in 10 letters and parcels use the new postcode.

The Eircode system is "worse than useless" and serious questions remain about the system, a Sinn Féin spokesman said today.

The Department of Communications has been accused of making “misleading and untrue” assertions in relation to Eircode by a body representing the freight industry.

The State’s spending watchdog questions whether Ireland’s €38m postcode system will be value for money, and raises concerns with a number of aspects of its introduction.

The State's spending watchdog has strongly criticised the Government's handling of the new national postcode service.

A parcel posted from Britain with Ireland clearly marked as its destination ended up in Canada — leaving the intended recipient to question whether the Eircode he gave in his address may have played a role in the mix-up.

If a proxy for the public sector’s engagement, efficacy and the adaptability was to be measured by their promptness in using Eircode smart postal codes in the ‘contact us’ section of their websites, the impression conveyed would be that citizen relations and customer-focused culture are low priority.

I was thrilled to get my new and long-awaited Eircode in the post this morning. No more problems sending coordinates to my far flung friends and relatives to feed into their sat-navs.

I got my Eircode this morning and it crossed my mind that life was all of a sudden much easier, until I thought of my Revenue PIN number for the Local Property Tax (put money away), MPRN number for electricity (put money away), WPRN number for water (put money away).

Eircode has been branded a “disgrace” after a postcode was issued in the name of a man’s recently deceased father.

Eircode has cost the country €27m, and the problems that have come to light in the three days since its launch confirm detractors’ long-held fears, writes Joe Leogue

The company behind Eircode expects the postcode to be widely used within two years, despite the teething problems that plagued the system on launch day and sustained criticism from courier companies.

Yesterday’s Eircode launch saw a protest by a group that claims 50,000 Irish language addresses are either incomplete or have been entirely omitted from the new postcode database.

OUR record in introducing change, always intended as improvements on how we conduct business — Irish Water, the HSE and, say, Seanad reform — have been shambolic.

The Communications Minister Alex White has defended the new national postcode system as accurate, despite a number of complaints.

The trade body representing freight transport and courier companies has filed a formal complaint to the European Commission, claiming that the State’s new postcode amounts to unfair state aid for An Post.

The State’s new postcode will not deliver the value for money when it is launched next month, a senator and professor of economics at Trinity College has warned.

Communications Minister Alex White has rejected criticisms of forthcoming legislation aimed at regulating the privacy impact of the country’s new postcode, Eircode, amid claims it will cause a “mushrooming” of unwanted mail delivered to homes.

Senior civil servants have been accused of “peddling falsehoods” to an Oireachtas committee in order to promote the controversial design of the nation’s new postcode.

An advocacy group dedicated to online privacy rights has described proposed data protection legislation for the country’s new postcodes as “toothless and useless”.

County councillors have called on the Government to abandon plans for the Eircode postcode system and, instead, adopt a satellite service council staff are using to pinpoint locations.

The European Commission has described Ireland’s response to its findings on the flawed Eircode tendering process as “unclear” and “not satisfactory”.

Former communications minister Eamon Ryan has questioned the decision- making behind the design of the country’s new €27m postcode and called on Communications Minister Alex White to explain the rationale behind it.

Plans to introduce a postcode system this year have created more questions than

OUR new postcode system is due to be introduced in largely unamended form this spring despite the reservations expressed by civil liberty groups and the Data Protection Commissioner.

A group representing the freight and delivery industry has threatened to refer its concerns surrounding Eircode to the ombudsman unless the Government agrees to submit the new €27m postcode system to independent scrutiny to confirm it is proficient fit for purpose.