Paul Connaughton Snr (Galway East, Fine Gael)

This Bill will pass relatively easily, since in recent years many Deputies have sought more power for the regulator. I hope that when it passes, some of the wrongs that we see will be righted.

There is no doubt that communications are at the heart of the economy, for a variety of reasons that I will shortly detail. The current emphasis worldwide is on instant communication, and that is certainly true here. There has been a sea change in the way we do business in this country, particularly since 1996 or 1997.

Many Deputies have said that one need only think of the numbers of mobile telephones relative to the Irish population. I recently heard that we had broken all records. Not only has every living person now got a mobile telephone; some have two or three, since we now have more such telephones than residents recorded at the census. Nothing brought things home to me more starkly than a young mother whom I saw a few evenings ago. She had three children under ten, and they had four mobile telephones between them.

Good or bad, that is the communications system that we will have in coming years. However, as with everything else, when there is such a great expansion in modern technology, there must be an independent watchdog. I have been in this House long enough to remember the time when one had to apply for a land-line telephone that one would receive in two years' time.

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