Ireland Mailing Address Formats and Other International Mailing Information

When mailing an envelope or postcard, leave at least the bottom 16 millimeters (5/8 inch) blank on both front and back. (The postal service's reading and sorting machines might need this space to print bar codes on your mail.)

Format Information

"Ireland Mailing Address Formats (snail mail)"

An easy-to-understand guide, but outdated or potentially misleading on two points:

• Irish addresses now have optional postcodes (like USA zip codes.)
• For a few addresses, an extra line above the town/city name may be needed to disambiguate an address.

An Post

Ireland's national postal service.

Selected address formatting guidelines from the An Post website as of 2017, with additions for mailing from outside Ireland to Irish addresses:

• For a few cities (Dublin and Cork) there may be a one or two digit zone number. This is completely different from the postcode/'Eircode'. For the least confusion, write it on the address's city line, after the city name. (Some people might write the zone number after the street name, but that could be more confusing.)

  An example is shown below, with the zone number written after the city of Dublin.

  An Post Business Desk
  GPO
  O'Connell Street Lower
  Freepost
  Dublin 1
  D01 F5P2
  IRELAND
                      

You should write your address in Ireland using the following guidelines:

1. Each line should start at the same distance from the left hand edge of the cover, i.e. the address should not be written in the indented format.
2. Each line should be limited to 32 characters.
3. Individual characters should have a minimum height of 2mm (5/64 inch), a maximum height of 7mm (8/32 inch) and a maximum width of 7mm (8/32 inch). (So character height and width of 1/4 inch to 1/8 inch are certainly within the specified size range.)
4. The address must be written in a compact form without a blank line between the Post Town or County Name (if required) and the other elements of the address. It is important that no part of the address is underlined.

Note: The Official Postal Address does not contain any abbreviations and An Post recommends that you use the full spelling when addressing a mail piece, for example Road not Rd.

A few addresses are special cases:

• The post town and county in a mailing address can be different from the real physical location. To ease logistics, a particular area's mail might be delivered through a nearby town in a different county. In this case, the official mailing address might incorporate the "post town" and the post town's county, instead of the physically accurate geography.

• Locality is an extra line required in a few addresses above the city/town, and optional in others.

  An Post says "The name of the locality or second thoroughfare should...always be included in the address where it is necessary to distinguish between two or more streets in the same postal district, for example"

  Pembroke Cottages
  Ringsend
  Dublin 4
  
  OR
  
  Pembroke Cottages
  Donnybrook
  Dublin 4
  

Find Postcodes / Postal Codes

Ireland's government has created and adopted a postcode system (somewhat like the USA's zip codes) in which the postcode is called an "Eircode."

Postcode/Eircode Search

• When you address mail to a destination in Ireland, the postcode/'Eircode' is not mandatory.
• An Irish postcode/'Eircode' is three letters and/or numbers, followed by a space, followed by four more letters and/or numbers.
• Most addresses in permanent buildings now have postcodes. Relatively new buildings or addresses might not yet have postcodes assigned (that could take a few months.)
• The first three characters of an Eircode indicate the post town or area; the last four characters indicate a particular address within that area.
• When sending mail into Ireland and using the postcode/'Eircode', the postcode would go on a line of its own just above the country name IRELAND. Otherwise, the postcode would be the bottom line of the address.
• A relatively critical explanation of the Irish Eircode / postcode system is available from Padraig O'Mara (July 2015).

Address Validation, Verification, and/or Correction

Free Address Correction and Verification and 'Check An Address' online forms provided by the Irish postal service.

Limited number of addresses per day on free plan.

Postal Rates to or from Ireland

Postage calculators and tables showing how much postage you need to mail or ship to and/or from Ireland are at the International Postal Rates Page.

Finding Out Addresses (such as addresses in Ireland / Ireland address search)

See Finding An International Address / Address Search.