Michael Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Does the Minister of State accept mobile phone usage has become universal over the past 20 years? There are misconceptions. Yesterday, when taking part in a debate with me, a leading member of the media made the point that at this stage it is only the tops of mountains and the bottoms of bogs which do not have mobile phone coverage. Parts of Dublin city have very poor mobile phone coverage. Our local radio station, County Sound, did a trawl and took complaints from different parts of County Cork on which we are trying to follow up. The same could be done by every local radio station the length and breadth of the country, no more, I am sure, than in the Minister of State's county of Donegal.

It is a crisis. What were blackspots 15 years ago at the turn of the new millennium are still blackspots. I contend that some parts of the country have got worse. I was quite shocked and worried by the debate we had yesterday that people would accept or think there is almost universal mobile phone coverage. There is no ten miles in any county outside of the cities where one can travel where one's phone call would not be dropped. It is time the Minister and the communications regulator took it upon themselves to audit what is out there and what type of mobile phone coverage we have. It is a tool of modern-day living, no more than any other modern convenience.

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