Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Naughten. I am very happy to take on board his suggestions but, in fairness, much of the responsibility for this lies with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. The Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, sits on the task force. In fairness to Deputy Naughten, the then Minister, if I remember correctly, we set up the task force in 2016 and it was a great success. It managed to deal with the issue of bridging the gap between the roll-out of the broadband plan and all of those areas that had very little coverage. It worked very well. The broadband officers that Deputy Naughten and I appointed jointly in every county council have been a great success. They have been able to smooth out problems and deal with various issues that arise at local level.

I know that mobile phone coverage is a big problem in rural Ireland. I do not have 5G myself. Only that I have broadband in my house, I would not get calls. I have to use it for calls. I am sure there are more people like me. For some reason, and I know it probably has something to do with the traffic on the system, we need to get better coverage. I absolutely agree with Deputy Naughten.

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