Farmers across The Avondhu region are calling on Eircode to provide their location service for isolated farmyards, so they can be found in emergencies.
Anne Baker, the North Cork representative for the Irish Farmers Association, said that there are colleagues who have farm yards and lock ups where work is being carried out.
She said that her association members have appealed to the State body with responsibility for the codes to make a provision to identify these yards with the same address status as a house.
Vital in emergency
Anne said that it would be a critical measure to ensure that people taken ill or injured in their workplace would get rapid access to the required emergency service.
“This is an issue for farmers with an ‘outside farm’. God forbid that they get sick or injured and they need an ambulance it doesn’t have an eircode.
“This is the point that is being made by farmers. There is no post being delivered to this outside farm, but the lorries are coming in with deliveries for the farm. It doesn’t make sense that an outside premises wouldn’t be facilitated by eircode.
“There are people working there and there is no doubt that it doesn’t just effect people like farmers, it would effect anyone who has a business outside of a dwelling.
“The facilities should be there and should be facilitated. They are vital in an emergency, they work very well and anyone that has to go and find a place, the eircode makes it very simple.
“It is not a difficult job for eircode to bring on these locations. For instance, new houses that are built in rural areas get an eircode so it shouldn’t be too hard to generate one. They should facilitate one for them, the IFA have lobbied for this many times, but as yet it hasn’t happened,” she said.
Local gardaí have backed the move at a recent meeting with farmers in Mitchelstown. An Eircode spokeswoman said that they were not aware of the issue and could not comment further.
Survey finds low takeup
Meanwhile, on a national basis, a civil service customer satisfaction survey in a poll by Ipsos MRBI found that 60% of people do not use eircodes.
It is not disclosed if this study was carried out in an urban setting or in a rural area. It found that 30% of the population never use their home or business’s unique seven-character code. Another 32% said they only used it occasionally.
The findings claim that 22% of the population use Eircode frequently, while 14% said they always used it.
The study was commissioned by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
