Cathal Crowe (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Eir is putting them in in some communities but the communities that really need them do not have any. There is something wrong with that. I know because I have delved into this quite a lot over the years. It is lucrative, and this is the bottom line. It is lucrative because space can be sold. For example, making a 12 m tower into a 24 m one, which is the application currently in my community, and it is a controversial one, and doubling the height of a tower suddenly makes it possible to sell off perhaps ten or 12 antennae spaces on it, each carrying a fee of perhaps €6,000 to €10,000. It makes huge money for the company in a year, but parts of County Clare have no mobile phone signal and it is like falling off the edge of the Earth. Eir is not investing there. As a telecommunications company, the largest in Ireland, in fact, it has an obligation.