Ireland
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V・T・E Ireland, Europe  |
| latitude: 53.491, longitude: -8.344 |
| Browse map of Ireland 53°29′27.60″ N, 8°20′38.40″ W |
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Ireland Mapping Project, the home of Ireland on the OpenStreetMap wiki. |
| Hello! Welcome to the project for mapping efforts in Ireland! You can find here national events, ongoing projects, map status and mapping guidelines, as well as links to other pages directly related to the mapping of Ireland. You may also find a list of contacts and mappers involved with the OpenStreetMap community in Ireland. |
This page contains information relating to mapping activity that is specific to Ireland. There is another wiki page for Northern Ireland.
Contact
Feel free to use any of the following methods to contact any of the Irish mappers.
See also: Category:Users in Ireland
| Website | Visit us at openstreetmap.ie |
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| Mailing list | Sign up for the mailing list talk-ie@openstreetmap here |
| Forum | Ireland sub-forum in the OpenStreetMap Forums |
 OpenStreetMap Ireland
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| Telegram | OpenStreetMap Ireland |
Events
| OSM Ireland AGM 2023 scheduled for Nov 4, 2023. Submit your RSVP here |
For more events, see Ireland/Events
Address Format
Address format differ between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, but the relevance of Townlands to both jurisdictions makes it worthwhile to document them together. In both cases, there can be variation in the format which arises mainly because of differences between urban and rural situations.
Republic of Ireland
Mail is delivered by An Post.
Address hierarchy
Each address will include some subset of the following elements in the order given (for simplicity, certain non-geographical components like PO box numbers are omitted):
| Component | Example | Used when? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| House number or name, Street name |
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When available. In rural areas, there are often no street names or numbers. In this case, house names can be used alone, but these may also not exist. Before Eircodes, non-unique addresses were the norm in rural areas. | House number or name always precede the street name |
| Townland | Ballymacoll Little | Used in rural addresses. As a rule, include these if and only if no street name is available. | |
| Town or City |
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Always, rural or urban. For larger cities like Dublin or Cork, this field will probably be used for a suburb or district within the city, with the actual city name being given in the County address line. | Inferring this is challenging, since Ireland tends not to have formal municipality boundaries of the kind common in other countries. It is likely, though not demonstrated, that addresses sharing the first half of an Eircode will map uniquely to the same Town. |
| County |
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Always, but note that how it is used varies. Addresses in cities will simply name the city (all cities happen to exist within a county of the same name). Addresses outside of cities will use the format "County <name>", often abbreviated to "Co. <name>". Dublin has an additional twist in that it contains many historical postal districts that were used for many years before the introduction of Eircodes. All parts of Dublin city and many of the county suburbs of Dublin had these district numbers. Those that did traditionally used a county line like "Dublin 24". Those without used "County Dublin". An Post continues to include the postal district in addresses, even though this duplicates information already in the Eircode. It should be considered valid to omit the district number when an Eircode is provided. | These are traditional counties (of which there are 26 in the Republic of Ireland). So newer administrative counties such as Fingal or South Dublin are not heeded for addressing purposes. |
| Postal Code (Eircode) | D15 A3Z9
V42 113A |
Always, if known. Every address point in the country has a unique Eircode. The codes are maintained in a proprietary database, so there is currently no option to systematically tag all addresses in OSM, but cleanly sourced individual Eircodes can and should be included when known. Do not use the official online tools to find and map Eircodes, as this represents a copyright infringement! | Eircodes may superficially resemble UK postcodes, but they cannot be treated in the same way by geocoders. Crucially, each code represents a single delivery point, not a local area. The codes are not hierarchical in a per-character way as UK postcodes are, but the first 3 characters of each Eircode do form a contiguous area on the map. When geocoding, it may be safe to guess the first half of an Eircode based on nearby locations' Eircodes. It is guaranteed to be wrong if you infer an entire Eircode this way. |
Northern Ireland
Mail is delivered by Royal Mail.
Address hierarchy
The address format is consistent with the usual UK format, but townlands and traditional counties remain relevant in similar ways to RoI.
Each address will include some subset of the following elements in the order given (for simplicity, certain non-geographical components like PO box numbers are omitted):
| Component | Example | Used when? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| House number or name, Street name |
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Even in rural areas, these are available, though many were assigned relatively recently. Before numbers and street names, non-unique addresses were the norm in rural areas. | House number or name always precede the street name |
| Townland | Cavanacross | Used in rural addresses. Not strictly required for orientation, since number, street name and postcode are unambiguous. However, in many areas, the postal town may be quite remote and people identify strongly with their townland. | |
| Suburb or District | Stranmillis | In larger towns or cities where additional orientation is required. Since these may often correspond to older villages absorbed into a larger town, this may be required to disambiguate street names. | |
| Town or City |
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Always, rural or urban | Inferring this is challenging, since it may not correspond with the official municipalities for which we have formal boundaries. It is likely, though not demonstrated, that addresses sharing the first half of a postcode will map uniquely to the same Town. |
| County |
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Royal Mail does not require (or encourage?) the inclusion of counties in addresses, since postcodes provide more than enough information. Similarly, in most parts of Northern Ireland, the traditional counties have not been used administratively for a long time. However, many regions, especially Fermanagh, continue to include county in addresses as a matter of course. County is often included in townland-based addresses. Never used in Belfast addresses (Belfast city straddles two traditional counties). | Where used, these are traditional counties (of which there are 6 in Northern Ireland) |
| Postcode | BT9 1AB
BT74 8YZ |
Always. This is the same postcode system as used in Great Britain. All postcodes begin with BT suffixed with a 1- or 2-digit number. |
Projects
There are a number of additional wiki pages for Ireland. These are used primarily for tracking progress of mapping certain features however a number also contain tagging guidance or advice on methods used. The list below outlines each of these pages.
Suggested projects
There is also a list of suggested projects/tasks contained on the Community Todo List.
Current projects
| Name | Description | Lead mapper | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland buildings project | Increase the map coverage for buildings from ~ 900K to 5.5 million on the island of Ireland. | Active | |
| Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) | Increase the map coverage for AEDs in Ireland. Build relationships with other organisations that can make use of the data. | Anne Distel | Active |
| Cork City Bus Stops | Increase the coverage of bus stops in Cork City to aid in updating bus route information. | Donal Hunt | Active |
| Ballyragget Place Names Project | Mapping place names such as field names, names of hills and lanes and other points of historical interest in the wider Ballyragget area in Co. Kilkenny | Anne Distel | Active |
Past projects
Putting Clonmel's History on the Map
This was our Heritage Week 2020 project and part of the osmIRL_buildings project, but went into much deeper detail. It used the tasking manager [1] for mapping the buildings.
Irish townlands
A community effort to map townland, civil parish & barony boundaries in Ireland.
Map data
Places
Counties or cities in Ireland : Carlow · Cavan · Clare · Cork · Donegal · Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown · Fingal · Galway · Kerry · Kildare · Kilkenny · Laois · Leitrim · Limerick · Longford · Louth · Mayo · Meath · Monaghan · Offaly · Roscommon · Sligo · South Dublin · Tipperary · Waterford · Westmeath · Wexford · Wicklow – Cities and counties: Cork · Dublin · Galway – Former counties: Dublin Region · North Tipperary · South Tipperary – Former counties in Northern Ireland: Antrim · Armagh · Down · Fermanagh · Londonderry · Tyrone – Other cities: Kilkenny · Limerick · Waterford – Other cities in Northern Ireland: Belfast · Londonderry (or Derry)
- Some towns: Abbeyleix, Birr, Borrisokane, Cashel, Clonmel, Ennis, Kildare, Kilkenny, Mountrath, Roscrea, Thurles, Tipperary, Tullamore, Westmeath, Portmarnock
- Townlands
Infrastructure
Health
Other
Irish websites and institutions using OpenStreetMap
- AirQuality.ie
- Cavan Townlands
- daft.ie
- Department of Justice
- Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies
- Dublin Luas
- excavations.ie
- Failte Ireland
- Hiiker (Irish hiking app)
- Geological Survey Ireland
- Met Éireann
- townlands.ie
- Transport for Ireland (as one of their basemap layers)
- schooldays.ie without attribution as of 2022-12-22
Links
As always, please respect the copyright of these sites!
OSM RSS feeds for IrelandSubscribe to these feeds to be kept up to date on changes made in Ireland.
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