Madam, - Ciarán Tannam's pleadings (Letters, December 9th) that Ireland should use its "last mover" status in Europe to introduce a system of user-friendly GPS-based postcodes looks like a charter of fundamental rights for the junk mail industry.
Despite all the flak our postal service gets, invariably from a standing army of overpaid overseers, it actually does a very good job in delivering the mail on time and on target. And outside of Dublin, it seems to manage just fine without postcodes.
In Galway, we have nearly 4,500 townlands, none with a postcode.
Places like Abbert, Oultort, Ballywulash, Stripe, and even Scotland.
Somehow the postmen and women find them all. Only once have I had the experience of a package being lost in the post, but as there were two services involved, An Post and the Royal Mail, it may have been mislaid by either. Any other correspondence I need and want comes without fail. Anything else wings it straight to the green bin.
The only ones pushing this particular envelope are the junk mail industry beast and its handmaidens in the Department of Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, who date stamped their terror to be unleashed before this year is out.
The Government, which is now so unlucky it could probably sink the Titanic in dry dock, should put itself on the side of the public rather than the producer for a change, and torpedo the postcode proposal without further delay. - Yours, etc,