Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes. There are still charges if one roams into a different network, such as Orange or Vodafone UK. There are data charges on top of that.

Compared with 2007, the cost of outgoing voice calls has fallen by over 60% to 19 cent per minute. I agree that we have to work towards zero. Incoming voice calls have fallen 80% to 5 cent per minute. Outgoing texts have fallen from 11 cent in 2009 to 5 cent. Per megabyte data charges have fallen from 70 cent in 2012, when the regulation on data price was introduced, to 20 cent today.

It is significant that the Latvian Presidency has been given responsibility to ensure we work towards proposals that would allow mobile service providers to charge a premium above domestic charges only to recover the regulated wholesale charges. My colleague, Brian Hayes, MEP, raised this publicly during the week at the European Parliament. I will speak to him about how we can move this forward. The date 2018 was given but that seems a long time to work towards eliminating charges altogether. I agree about the mobile coverage at the moment. Everything is not hunky-dory; in fact it has deteriorated. I met some weeks ago with the head of ComReg. The new motorways were not built in a joined-up way with mobile phone antennae placed along the motorways. We are playing catch-up. Calls are dropping out. We need more information on the infrastructural upgrades. We need to know how much money is being spent.

When I go to Cavan tonight, my calls will be dropping out the whole way and then I will probably go through Enniskillen. The coverage in the North is very poor. I hear, however, the mobile phone companies in Northern Ireland are making a substantial investment in their infrastructure. They should make the same level of investment in the South. We need an open, transparent conversation about mobile phone operators. Local companies declare their profits publicly, but we need to ensure the end user is not the one left to do the heavy lifting. That has been the case. There are different attractive packages and bundling of minutes and so on and phone costs have come down, if one is smart. If one brings one’s iPhone to Belfast, the data charges are astronomical. We are part of the European Union which must become a non-roaming charge environment for phone access. I will have a long conversation with Brian Hayes to see how this Government, including the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, who is also keen to work towards zero cost, can work with the European Parliament to push this important matter forward.

See this speech in context