Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I refer to the whole planning policy of co-location. I am in a community with approximately 8,000 people in two square miles. It is a huge population density. There are approximately 25 mobile phone masts and there is no problem with the signal. There is no need for more again. Eir's network can probably take, perhaps, four times the population it is currently drawing out, and yet it puts in more. I want the witnesses to say this in the committee. I want them to spell out how much Eir's masts are making because it is not network driven.

A person in the west of Clare, two or three miles beyond Ennis, is off the radar. I know many Limerick people enjoy weekends around Kilkee in west Clare. A person cannot phone home when he or she is back there, although perhaps, he or she can in the town of Kilkee. There is, however, something acutely wrong.

Eir is putting 25 or 26 masts into certain communities, totally breaching the co-location policy of An Bord Pleanála and national planning guidelines. In other communities where there is a crying need for mast antennae, Eir has none.