Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)

The Minister may see this as a slightly unusual question because it is quite general in terms of what it requests, but the Minister, Deputy Ryan, has responsibility for communications. He will agree that the technical infrastructure now exists for the Government to provide a communications channel in the case of emergencies directly from Government and the emergency infrastructure which it controls to the public. I come from a city which has been devastated by flooding in the past three or four months. Elderly people woke up with floodwaters lapping against their mattresses in their houses and had to be pulled out of windows by relatives or rescued by the emergency services. We can no longer allow a situation to occur whereby, when we have warning that floods are on the way, we do not use the technology which is available to warn people of what will happen.

I ask the Minister to work with me, if necessary, or the industry to ensure the emergency services directly linked to Government have the capacity to use the mobile phone infrastructure currently in place in the country to contact people via their mobile phones in the case of emergency. It should also require the private sector which owns the infrastructure to provide it to Government for use in the case of an emergency such as flooding or some other type of emergency so we can contact people. For every 100 people in Ireland there are 117 mobile phones. Practically every person or household has a mobile phone. It is the obvious way to contact and alert people to warn them about emergencies. Will the Minister put that type of system in place? It is directly connected to his area of responsibility.

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