Ms Helen Dixon:

I thank Senator Dooley for his good wishes. I also look forward to working with this committee. I turn to the question on adequate enforcement powers. As I reflected in my opening statement, it is clear that over the past ten or 11 years, ComReg has been an active enforcer of consumer issues and has dynamically used the powers it has available. This area is of course a constantly moving target in terms of the issues that arise for consumers and end users. You can see that reflected in the role of the EU legislator and the legislator here, particularly in terms of the European economic communications code, which brought in a lot of new provisions and obligations for providers and powers for regulators to tackle those issues. We have acquired a lot of new powers and obligations recently. Some of them are powers and obligations we now have to empower end users and consumers themselves. I think of things like the recent publication of our broadband checker, which allows users to look at what broadband provision is available in their area. The mobile coverage map, which the Senator has just referenced, drills into what the coverage by providers is in different locations.

We also have a number of new powers under the 2023 Act to compel providers to provide information about complaints lodged with them in a preceding six-month period. We have started to use those powers. We have a first tranche of data. This will provide us with insights in how we, as a regulator, target future actions. We also have new powers to require operators to provide a customer charter to end users. We have consulted on that customer charter and are now in the process of finalising our response to the consultation and issuing a decision. The idea of that customer charter is that, under certain headings - billing, switching and customer service contact - we create comparability for users and try to generate a market where the providers are now competing on customer service instead of a lowest common denominator approach. There are lots of new powers and we are taking lots of new actions that over time will stem some of the complaints and the need for later enforcement.

The particular case I mentioned in my opening statement was the recent prosecution of Eir in the District Court, which was of course pursued with the powers we had at the time. Now that the 2023 Act is in place and the Minister has appointed adjudicators under Part 5 of that Act, were the same case to arise in future we would have an option to have an authorised officer of ComReg refer suspected non-compliance in a case of that type to an independent panel of adjudicators.

They have a range of powers, including the ability to impose administrative fines of €5 million or 10% of turnover, whichever is the greater. We have lots of new powers that we need to work through and implement. In addition, the European legislator is reviewing the code that was just implemented in the 2022 regulations and the 2023 Act in Ireland so, clearly, there is a desire to further drill into some of these consumer issues. We can look and see what the impact has been in a year.

On the cellphone issue, our advice is for consumers and end users to look at that coverage map and see if there is a difference in the mast positioning by the different providers to see if switching service provider might yield a better outcome. That can also be viewed on the site viewer website. In terms of the most recent auction in 2022 where ComReg licensed new spectrum, what we saw in that for the first time in terms of the conditions we licensed under is that as well as population coverage requirements in three, five and seven years in terms of the obligations on those that have been granted the licences, the operators are now tied to geographic commitments in respect of business parks and motorways that may not directly cut across whatever location the Senator was referring to. We have not received extensive complaints on point of what the Senator raised with us today. We have one or two. In one case, it turned out that it was a faulty mast while in another case, it was a case of there not being a mast nearby and the service was never going to be good. We are happy to bring it back to our market framework team and liaise further with the Senator if we have anything useful to share.