Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)

Those were very good questions, Senator. I was actually going to raise that issue myself. I will refer to the blackspots. What I am getting from this is that when it comes to mobile phone coverage in general, while they have the commitment - I know about all the commitments they have - where they do not meet a commitment, there is engagement. As far as I am concerned, however, in any contract into the future, there have to be graduated penalties. I would encourage the witnesses to do that because, as Senator Duffy has outlined, I have the same issue in Tipperary. I know exactly where the phone signal is going to drop. In some cases, it is rural, but not very rural. I cannot get to my house from where I turn off the motorway to go back to Portroe without the phone signal dropping. I know it is going to happen; I just say, "I am going to lose you now." That is it. We have all done it. There should be some graduated fines or graduated penalties. I would suggest that is implemented. We as a committee would agree that should be implemented in any future contracts whereby after a period of time, they have to be penalised.

The other thing I would ask is that in any future contracts or future deliberations there is an insistence that when they are advertising, their coverage advertisement is based on facts. If they say 99.9% coverage, people take that as geography. It is not geography; it is population. I would say that they have to say population or geography and be very clear.

There were some very good questions by the other contributors earlier. I was going to raise the issue of scam text messages. Have the Department or ComReg - it is probably more for ComReg - engaged with the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, on this?