Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour)

A further issue that is causing great distress to many citizens, especially those living in newer housing estates around the country, is that they are being told they may have to wait for over a year to get a home landline installed. When my great constituency predecessor, Conor Cruise O'Brien, was Minister, one could get a phone line faster than under the current Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey.

My colleague, Deputy Stagg, has told me of local residents in Griffinrath, Maynooth; Easton Gardens, Leixlip; the Beeches in Straffan; and Ryebridge in Kilcock who have been left hanging on for months for essential phone lines. Those areas are not exactly on top of a mountain; in fact, they are on the edge of the greater Dublin area. A few weeks ago on the Joe Duffy show, we heard irate customers of NTL and Perlico making serious complaints about services. The Minister may say that the Bill will change that situation and hopefully it will, but the problems remain. In recent days, Mr. Gerry Ryan's excellent radio show on 2FM has allowed consumers to ventilate major grievances over delays in installing phone lines.

Last week, ComReg released a report on the provision of the universal service by Eircom — the company's key responsibility for landlines — which detailed that 99% of residential public service telephone network provision requests are granted within 115 working days and in an astonishing 171 working days during the previous quarter.

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