Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I support these amendments. These phone boxes are being turned into what are primarily advertising structures, though maybe with some phone function there. It is hard to know in this day and age how that phone function is being used by anyone. One certainly never sees them in use given the proliferation of mobile phones and other forms of communication. It seems to be a form of bogus conversion of what was an essential phone box use into an advertising structure. It is something our planning system should be able to deal with, rather than facilitating these conversions from phone boxes to advertising structures.

On the shared structures, I am aware of very scenic locations of significant natural beauty where there are multiple phone masts located. There are objectives in development plans for those to be shared over time. However, each time there is a licence renewal that sharing and consolidation does not happen and decades later, despite the objectives in development plans to have shared structures for phone masts, we end up with multiple phone masts in highly scenic locations and nothing effective that can be done about it. It just seems very unnecessary. If we could get those all down to one structure it would have much less of an impact. Is there anything in this Bill that is going to address that? If not, is the Minister of State looking at supporting these amendments or doing something on Report Stage to address these issues?