The total cost of upgrading ten major computer systems in the Department to facilitate Eircode is estimated at €276,375 from 2014 to date. The use of Eircode is not mandatory but the Department has run a number of promotion campaigns, including at the National Ploughing Championships in 2015 and 2016 to encourage farmers to update their contact details to include Eircodes, and further initiatives are planned. In addition, the Department has provided a self-service facility on its online services portal (www.agfood.ie) for farmers to provide their Eircode. The Eircode provides a means of unambiguously identifying and locating our customers and this is particularly useful in the case of rural areas where there are many instances of non-unique names and addresses in a particular townland.