Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I conducted a straw poll today of people I know throughout the country. Cushenstown in rural Wexford has little or no mobile coverage. Maryborough Hill, Douglas in the heart of Cork has little or no mobile coverage. North Meath outside of Kells and Navan has no coverage. Other places, including the area west of Carrigrohane in Cork, have no courage. Wolfhill in Laois, Balgriffin in north Dublin and Knocknacarra in the heart of Galway city have no coverage. North-east Kilkenny has no coverage.

We must get the basics right. I am asking the Minister the question in simple terms. Will he ask the mobile telephone operators specifically to ensure that they provide coverage? It is all well and good to talk about tender processes for selling bandwidth and so on. The Minister referred to the 3.6 GHz band spectrum and so on. If people in the places I am talking about cannot use their mobile telephones, then we are on a hiding to nothing in respect of the roll-out of broadband. I am simply calling on the Minister to give some impetus to getting ComReg and the organisations I have referred to, including the mobile telephone operators, to ensure a 100% rate of penetration throughout the country. If we can start at that basic point, we will have done a good day's work.

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