The recent victory by An Post in the high court creates an interesting situation for addressing in Ireland. To recap on what happened, An Post won a case against Comreg , where they challenged a direction forcing them to deliver to a legal or "geographical" address. A couple in Cork complained to Comreg that An Post were refusing to deliver to their address in rural Cork. The address in question was specified by the Local Authority, and as such one would imagine was the "legal" address for the property.
An Post were insisting that they referred to the address differently in their post-town system and as such could not easily deliver to the address as specified. In effect, they were insisting that the householder use the An Post version of the address (the Postal Address), if they wanted mail delivered to them. Interestingly, Comreg supported the householder in this case, and agreed that An Post should be obliged to deliver to any "legal" address in the country, even if it differed from the address held by An Post. The High Court disagreed and ruled that An Post were entitled to specify how an address should be recorded, if the householder wanted their mail delivered. It also was reported that to do otherwise would create a major difficulty for the An Post system and require a fundamental change.
From this case, we can now ascertain that;
1. An Post may specify the address structure, format, and content that they choose for an address even if it varies completely from the address specified by the local authority. If they decide that you now live in 4 Main Street, Letterkenny, Co Donegal, Sligo, Co Dublin - must you put that on your mail or become a postal pariah ? Or is the freedom for freestyling addresses restricted in some way ?
2. An Post face a major technical or systematic issue in adding aliases for addresses. For example, in our Autoaddress technology, we can easily add an alias for an address, so Ballysmallplace, would be entered as a valid alternative for Ballysmalltown, and whenever the system came upon it again, it would automatically be matched and thus sorted. It is surprising that this causes such a headache in a multimillion-pound sortation system such as that used by An Post. Its almost like Tesco's home delivery service telling you "No sir, you don't live at 4 Bezzel Ave, Clontarf, Dublin 3, you now live at 4 Bezzel Ave, Coolock Distribution Depot, Dublin. Or else we can't deliver." Who said "the customer is always right" ?
An Post, as the designated service provider have a special place in determining the official postal address. I'm not sure where competitors to An Post would stand in regards to that ? Would a smaller mailer like Citypost, for example, be afforded the same right to specify their unique postal addresses that must be used or would the regulator have more power in tackling these undesignated providers ? If not, we may be forced to have a selection of addresses ready for use depending on who we want to deliver our mail.
Feargal O'Neill
