Mr. Torlach Denihan:

I am Torlach Denihan, director of the Telecommunications and Internet Federation. I am accompanied by my colleague, Mr. Pat Galvin, chair of the regulatory affairs working group of the Telecommunications and Internet Federation. We thank the committee for the opportunity to appear before it today. As the committee will be aware, we have appeared before it previously, being the representative body for the telecommunications industry in Ireland.

Moving on through the slides, we have set out a sample of some of the industry's corporate social responsibility activities. They are done on a bilateral company basis. The substantive issue we are here to speak about is the partnership through the Telecommunications and Internet Federation, TIF, with the Samaritans. By way of background, in March 2014, Samaritans Ireland launched 116123, the new free-to-call ComReg assigned European number for an emotional support helpline. Through TIF, the telecommunications industry entered into a voluntary partnership with the Samaritans, first, to plan for the new number and, second, to fund incoming calls for a two year period, from March 2014. The contribution in terms of revenue not collected by each operator depends on calls volume.

The partnership involves BT, eircom/Meteor, Three, UPC and Vodafone. Since it is a telecommunications provider, Sky Ireland has agreed in principle to join the partnership, which is a positive development. I will hand over to Mr. Pat Galvin who would like to add a few words.