Dublin postal districts are used by Ireland's postal service, known as An Post, to sort mail in the Dublin area, This system is similar to that used in London and other UK cities before the advent of the postcode. The postal district appears with one or two digits appearing at the end of addresses, e.g:

 British Embassy
 29 Merrion Road
 Ballsbridge
 Dublin 4

Primarily, odd numbers are used for addresses on the Northside of the River Liffey, while even numbers are on addresses on the Southside. One exception to this is the Phoenix Park (along with a small area between the Park and the River Liffey), which, whilst being on the Northside of Dublin, is part of the Dublin 8 postal district.

In 1985, Dublin 6 was split, with some areas, such as Templeogue, Kimmage and Terenure becoming part of a new district in order to facilitate processing of mail by a new sorting office for those areas. Residents of some areas objected to the assignation of "Dublin 26" for the new postal district, citing property devaluation (the higher numbered districts typically representing less affluent, and typically less central regions), although "address snobbery" probably played as large a factor in the objections. An Post ultimately relented, and the district became known as Dublin 6W.

These numbers appear on most street signs in Dublin, next to the name of the street in English and Irish, hence the 'MERRION ROAD' (Bóthar Mhuirfean) street sign will display the digit '4'. In Cork, there are also numbered districts, eg: the 'PATRICK STREET' (Sráid Phádraig) sign will display the digit '1', but these are not encountered in postal addresses.

Similar schemes were used in cities in other European countries until they adopted a national postal code system in the 1960s and '70s. However, Ireland did not follow suit, and An Post did not introduce automated sorting machines for mail until the 1990s. By then, the introduction of new technology, known as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), meant that machines could 'read' whole addresses as opposed to just postcodes. An Post argues that a national postcode system is unnecessary describing it as 'a 1960s solution to a 21st century problem'. Consequently, mail to addresses in the rest of the Republic does not require any digits after the address, eg:

World Wide Web Marketing Ltd. 
4/5 High Street, 
Galway 

However, the Communications Regulator in Ireland is considering the introduction of such a system in the light of the liberalisation of postal services, and the end of An Post's monopoly.

See also

• List of Dublin postal districts

External links

• An Post - The Post Office
• Communications Regulator