Conor Lenihan (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail)

I thank all Members who contributed to this debate. Their contributions were extremely positive. I take this opportunity to reassure them with regard to some aspects of their contributions. Deputy Coveney focused on the increasing revenue stream companies derive from premium rate services, a valuable benefit to those companies. However, it is important, as Deputy McManus said, that the consumer is not lost in the rush to embrace these services. Deputy Coveney is correct in saying we will see an increase in the revenue stream from these sources in the future.

It is a long time since I worked in the mobile phone industry - I am a long-term inmate of this place at this stage - and I find it extraordinary to see the extent to which the level of texting and services offered via text and mobile phone or fixed line telephones have opened up. This will continue the more fibre we lay and the more the technology improves in terms of the telephone instrument and its software. We will see an increasing diversity of development in this area and we need to put the consumer in a position whereby he or she is not second placed to the industry and its voracious appetite to develop further chargeable services. Deputy McManus's assertion that the balance needs to be right in any regulation we introduce here is important, so that ComReg, the new Regulator of this area of activity, can impose sanctions and guide behaviour or misbehaviour as it occurs within the industry.

I was pleased to hear most Deputies preface their remarks about the difficulties encountered to date with Regtel, with the very strong caveat that, broadly speaking, it has been an effective self-regulatory experience. However, some people have been able to evade that regulation because, in effect, they are rogue operators not succumbing to industry norms or the best practices demanded by the industry. That is why we are putting it on a proper footing.

We have yet to receive permission from the Minister for Finance for it, but one of the key aspects to this is the transfer of the staff from Regtel to ComReg so that the people conducting the regulation in the State-sponsored new regulatory body will be working from a position of strong knowledge and experience developed at Regtel. That is a valuable reassurance to Deputy McManus in particular-----

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