John Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

There are no plans to re-nationalise Eircom. There are some problems with Eircom services in every constituency. It is useful to reflect on the positive elements of the telecoms sector by examining ComReg's latest quarterly data, covering Q4 of 2005. It shows the telecoms sector in Ireland employs about 14,500 people and is worth around €4 billion. For fixed calls Ireland is better than the EU average for both national and international calls for residential and business customers. Ireland has a mobile telephone penetration rate of 102%, which shows the appetite of consumers for these types of services and the variety of mobile services in the market including 3G services. The Irish broadband market more than doubled in 2005, more than twice the rate of growth of the EU broadband market.

See this speech in context