Irish Geocoding Coverage

Address-level geocoding for Ireland with Eircode-aware matching, county-level administrative context, and locality fallback for rural and regional queries.

What is covered

Map Zena supports geocoding across the Republic of Ireland. Coverage extends to urban addresses with strong street-level results in cities and large towns, and locality or townland-level fallback for rural queries where rooftop-level address points are not available in source data.

Address componentCoverage detail
Street address and house numberStrong in cities and towns; partial in rural areas
Locality and townlandBroad national coverage with common variant normalisation
EircodeHandled where source data includes Eircode-to-location mappings
CountyReturned in admin fields for all results where county attribution is available
Street and road networkNational road network coverage including regional and local roads
CountryReturned as IE (ISO 3166-1 alpha-2) in all responses

Eircode format and handling

Eircode is Ireland's national postcode system, introduced in 2015. Each Eircode is a 7-character code structured as a 3-character routing key (identifying a local delivery office area) followed by a space and a 4-character unique identifier — for example, D02 XY45 or A65 F4E2. Unlike most postcode systems, each Eircode maps to a single address, not a street segment or area.

Eircode-inclusive queries are handled where source records link the Eircode to a geographic point. Including an Eircode alongside a locality or county significantly improves resolution precision and reduces ambiguity for addresses in rural areas where house numbers are uncommon.

Irish address structure and rural challenges

Irish addressing differs from most countries in that rural addresses historically lacked house numbers and relied on townland names, county, and post office designations. A typical rural address might read Kilcolgan, Clarinbridge, Co. Galway with no street or number component. The geocoder resolves these at locality or townland level where the named place appears in the address index.

Urban addresses in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, and other cities follow conventional street-number formats and typically resolve at street or building level. Dublin postcodes (Dublin 1 through Dublin 24, and newer D postcode areas) are supported as location qualifiers.

County and locality disambiguation

Ireland has 26 counties in the Republic. Many county names double as town names — for example, Wicklow refers to both County Wicklow and Wicklow town. Including both the street or locality and the county in a query helps the geocoder select the correct result. The response includes county in the admin output for all results.

Example query patterns

GET /geocode?q=
1 Grand Canal Street Lower, Dublin 2
Main Street, Galway
A65 F4E2
Kilcolgan, Clarinbridge, Co. Galway
Cork City, Cork

Common use cases

  • E-commerce delivery validation — Verify Irish delivery addresses at checkout, including Eircode-based lookups for precise coordinate output.
  • Financial services and KYC — Confirm that a customer-supplied Irish address resolves to a real location as part of identity or account opening checks.
  • Property and real estate — Geocode residential and commercial listings for map display and catchment analysis by county or region.
  • Field service and logistics — Convert address strings from job sheets or manifests to coordinates for routing across both urban and rural Ireland.

Reverse geocoding in Ireland

The reverse geocoding endpoint returns the nearest Irish address for a given latitude/longitude, including street or locality, county, and country fields. Useful for mobile and GPS applications where a coordinate needs to be converted to an address for display or logging.

Related pages