What is the Gaeltacht?
The Gaeltacht is the collection of districts in Ireland where Irish is the everyday spoken language. It is not an official territory. It is a set of towns, villages and cities recognised in the 1920s.
Census 2022 counted about 106,000 people living in the Gaeltacht. Of those, 65,156 can speak Irish and 20,261 speak it daily outside the education system.
Where are the Gaeltacht districts?
In counties Donegal, Mayo, Galway and Kerry, with smaller areas in Cork, Meath and Waterford.
Why does the Gaeltacht matter for address capture?
Because the address a resident uses is the Irish one. A checkout that only holds an English form of the street and townland will either reject a valid address or store a version the customer does not recognise. Ireland already has a high rate of non-unique addresses, so a form that also forces a language change is asking a lot of the customer.
The districts also support the language directly, through immersion programmes for people learning Irish, known as Gaeilge or Gaelic.
Does Ideal Postcodes support Irish-language addresses?
Yes. The Eircode Address Finder API covers Gaeltacht areas. A user can type in English or Irish, and results can be displayed in either language.
Contact us if you need Eircode data and we will talk through what your forms require. The Eircode products guide covers the difference between the two datasets.