Michael Lowry (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the witnesses and thank them for their presence here today. Eir has a serious problem which has to be addressed. It has a problem with its customers, with its image and with its service and, if it does not move to correct these problems, it will do serious damage to the long-term future of the company. The only thing saving it at the moment is that its customers are effectively hostages to fortune. They are with the company and are signed up to it and have no avenue out. If they had, people would be deserting the company on a great scale.

Ms Lennon was appointed CEO in 2018. One of the major initiatives she identified was customer care. She said she wanted to ensure that she made a difference in respect of the company's customer care. She made a decision to move from outsourced and subcontracted customer care services to in-house customer care. I will not dispute whether it was the correct decision or not, but it is obvious to me and to all of us here that she did not think this decision through, that she did not understand the extent of the service Eir needed to provide and that she did not gear up for it. The proof of that can be seen in the opening statement where it says: "Once restrictions began to lift we launched a national recruitment drive and we have been hiring and training [...] while adhering to safety guidelines." This in itself tells me that the company never had enough staff in the in-house service to deal with the level of problems it faced. It is effectively reacting now rather than having had services prepared, designed and rolled out when they were needed.

All of us, as public representatives, are inundated with calls. I can only imagine what Ms Lennon's people are dealing with on the telephone. Out of pure frustration and anger, people become abusive when dealing with issues regarding Eir. The main reason for this is that they feel they are not getting a reaction. My impression is that there is massive incompetence in the customer care programme, which seems to be in an absolute shambles. Eir's customer care was bad when it was outsourced but, since being brought in house, it has gone from bad to worse. Does Ms Lennon consider the initiative she took to have been ill-thought-out and that preparation was lacking? Does she believe that, effectively, it has been a failure and that she needs to do something to correct it?

I acknowledge the point Ms Lennon made about making financial concessions. Connection fees were lowered to make them more affordable. It is not really a matter of affordability, however. It is about accessibility, maintenance and customer care. Those are the issues. People will gladly continue to pay what they are paying if they get a proper service. It is about a proper service.

What is Eir's relationship to National Broadband Ireland, NBI? In 2018, Eir put fibre broadband cables into Terryglass. I mentioned this to NBI when it was last before the committee. It is a beautiful village and tourist destination with a strong local economy. At the end of 2018, Eir's broadband infrastructure was 90% complete and the village was due to be fully connected in March 2019. In November 2019, the new national broadband plan was announced and Eir effectively walked away from the area. It never completed the works in Terryglass, even though they were 90% complete. Terryglass has now moved from a blue designation on the map on which Eir had indicated its plans to deliver services into the amber designation under the new plan. Terryglass will now have to wait to get broadband through the national broadband plan and NBI. Why would Eir, a very strong company, walk away from Terryglass and not complete these works? To the locals it looks like a reactionary commercial sulk as a result of NBI getting the new contract. Eir left the people of Terryglass without a service. It turned its back on them. Can Eir return to Terryglass and consider providing a service?

I know of multiple examples of the kind of gap the Chairman mentioned earlier. I live in the townland of Cormackstown, near Holycross. There is a gap area in the locality. There are 30 houses in this gap area, all of which seek connection to the service. Eir's fibre-optic cables run by both sides of this group of 30 houses. It would take very little to connect them to it but, again, Eir has refused point-blank to fill that gap. I do not understand the logic of that decision. Surely a company with a reputable reputation which is concerned with customer relations should be more considerate of people who do not have a service. Among the owners of those 30 houses in Cormackstown are farmers, people who work from home and business owners. They need a connection. I have been on to Eir's operations people on numerous occasions and I just get a stubborn point-blank refusal to join up these areas in the middle which have missed out.