Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Ryan, is here for this Topical Issue matter. This debate on the issue I am raising has been a long time coming. I refer to people trying to report faults having an average waiting time of 57 minutes. That is the average waiting time. I am not raising this issue to complain, but as we face into the winter and the dark nights, na hoícheanta fada geimhridh, I am worried about people's mental health and their safety and security.

The situation at the moment is an unmitigated shambles and a disaster. I am not blaming the Minister. I differ with him regarding many opinions, including on green issues, but I do not on this issue. This has been a whole-of-government abandonment of the people, rural and urban. I refer to people with pendant alarms and other types of alarm connected to the telephone, as well as those who do not use mobile phones, especially the elderly and the vulnerable. They are all abandoned, because if the line goes off, they are out of contact.

I salute the founders of Eir, and its predecessors, Eircom and Telecom Éireann. I remember when the former Taoiseach, the late Albert Reynolds, waved a phone in the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis and stated that every phone would be fitted within a month, and it was. Now it is impossible to get a phone disconnected. It might take a year. It is also impossible to get a phone repaired. This is communications we are talking about. People can be waiting up to 60 minutes and still not be able to get through. I received a message from a man on Facebook this evening. He wrote:

I am a constituent of yours. I have been trying to contact Eir every day since 20 July, and been on hold every day for up to 60 minutes, without ever actually getting through to anyone. This company needs to be closed down.

This is a shocking situation in 2020. It was better back in the dark ages, when we had pigeons to deliver messages, than it is now. This is an outrageous situation and this company must be taken to task and closed down.

I salute the workmen who were there when the lines were put up and the phones installed, and especially the care and attention that was provided to the customers. I refer to the dignity of the work and the respect that those workmen had for that work. Now, however, poles are falling out on the road, hitting buses and lorries and breaking mirrors. A constituent contacted me today because he cannot cut his hedges. He has got hedge cutters from the county council to cut his hedges, but it cannot be done because wires were lying on the ditch. Wires are lying on roads and in the bogs. It is a Third World service, and above all there are no communications.

Constituents contact my office because their efforts have been futile and they are weary of being on the phone with Eir for so long. When those constituents have been unable to contact Eir themselves, they see us as the only last hope they have. They contact many other offices, besides mine. Eir often insists on those constituents getting an email address. Those people do not have email, they do not do Google and they do not even have broadband. It is shocking and disgraceful treatment, and it should be brought before the European Court of Human Rights. People are entitled to get a service for which they pay. Those people pay dearly for a connection and rent, yet they cannot use the telephones.

What about children going back to school and young people going back to college? Classes and exams are often online now. We talk about options for education, but those people cannot get broadband and do not have that service. What about farmers trying to do applications for grants? What about the CAO courses? People in rural Ireland have been especially discriminated against, but people in urban Ireland have also been affected by the situation.

It is time the new Government sorted out this issue and stopped the blackguarding, the plundering and the rape of good communities by this company, Eir, which should be ashamed of itself. It does not represent anything anymore. A gentleman contacted me recently who was trying to get disconnected from Eir for six months. Another man, Paul Lafford from Cahir, contacted me and he had an ordeal and a half in trying to deal with Eir. The company accused him of not paying his bills. When he then produced his bank statements, the company did not apologise, but it had to accept that he had paid. The company did not apologise. The Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg, is toothless, useless and fruitless. We have many such institutions and boards that similarly do nothing for the public. They just have nice fancy names, fancy jobs and to hell with the people. It is a sad indictment in 2020 that such behaviour is being allowed to continue. I appeal to the Minister to use his good offices within the Government to deal with this shambolic and disgraceful company.

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