Mr. Eamonn Confrey:

I thank the Deputy for the question. I will make a couple of points. The first thing to say is that the Department and Minister have no role in the individual roll-out plans of private operators with regard to masts or anything like that. Clearly, individual projects or applications will have to go through the planning process, as the Deputy will be aware. However, the Minister does have policy responsibility for matters pertaining to public exposure to non-ionizing radiation. Policy in this area is informed by a lot of internationally recognised scientific research and evidence. This includes guidelines set down by the ICNIRP. I understand they were revised in March 2020. Those guidelines provide scientifically based exposure limits that are applicable to both public and occupational exposure to electromagnetic fields, including from 5G. These guidelines are based on evidence gathered from a range of peer-reviewed scientific literature. Ireland has commissioned its own research into this with reports in 2007 and 2016 concluding that there is insufficient evidence to establish a causal relationship between exposure to low-frequency electromagnetic fields and adverse health effects. While there is insufficient evidence pointing to a causal link, this is obviously something that needs to be monitored continuously. In May 2019, the Minister assigned a new statutory function to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, to monitor scientific, technical and other developments on these matters and to advise the Minister accordingly. Clearly, the EPA is fairly proactive in providing information to the public. In fact, it commenced a national monitoring programme for electromagnetic fields in 2021. I understand a report on that was expected late last year.