Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

This is the first opportunity I have had to wish the Minister well in his new brief. I am glad to see him in this particular Ministry because its handling by Fianna Fáil in the past five years has amounted to a succession of missed opportunities.

The Minister ought to be aware, if he is not, that Eircom has recently sold its mast network to Threefold Project Management. Given the fact that Threefold Project Management owns and manages masts for Eircom, NTL, O2 and Meteor, is it not now approaching the significant market share to justify ComReg requiring that all masts be open to all competitors to use, in the interests of consumer protection and coverage? If a Vodafone user drives between Cork and Dublin his or her telephone will cut out on at least a dozen occasions. I suspect the same problem exists with other operators and the reason is the fact that we do not have shared networks. I am sure the Minister supports the principle of ensuring Eircom's line network is unbundled and open for competition to use in the provision of services such as broadband and we should ensure the mast network around the country is treated no differently.

It is not true to say the Minister and the Government do not have the power to intervene because a telecommunications Act in the Netherlands in 2004 has done just that. If they decide not to go down the legislative route they have the power to issue a directive to ComReg to ensure it insists on the opening up of all masts to all operators, in the interests of consumers.

See this speech in context