Fergal Browne (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I have already spoken about this matter in a general debate on communications. This issue will be a hot potato in the years ahead. As we move forward we will be able to receive e-mails, texts, photographs and so on by wireless technology. We will nonetheless pay a price in another respect. In order to do this, we need to have the proper infrastructure in place. The major telecommunications industries are multi-million euro industries. This was brought home to me recently when a nursing home in Carlow had a base station and antennae erected on its roof.

I am sure that the Minister of State would have been involved years ago in protest meetings concerning the erection of phone masts. They are now largely gone and have been replaced by far smaller antennae, which invariably do not require planning permission. There has been a complete revolution in the area of wireless technology. The Government should look at this area again and update the necessary legislation. None of us could have predicted how fast the whole area could have expanded and, in the case in Carlow, the antennae and base station caused great distress to the relatives of those in the nursing home. There were genuine fears on their behalf as to whether there were health risks involved.

The status of a nursing home also needs to be clarified. Is a nursing home a commercial premises or is it a hospital or medical care centre? If it is a hospital, then it should not have any telecommunications equipment attached to it. The Minister of State might claim that this is an area which is dealt with in county development plans, but it is an area where the central Government has a role to play.

ComReg is an independent body which gets funding from the Government annually. The main purpose of ComReg is to inspect sites where antennae and base stations are located and monitor the emissions from them. However, I heard rumours that ComReg ran out of money last October and could not visit sites. I have also heard that it only visits a site once a year. That does not instil public confidence in the system. It is very important that we have an independent body that is properly funded and is in a position to carry out independent audits on sites and check emission levels. ComReg does not have to be legally informed about any new base stations, which is a loophole in the law. It therefore cannot check them for emissions afterwards.

A telecommunications provider such as Vodafone might not notify ComReg about a new station because ComReg will recommend that a number of telecommunications providers share a site. This might not be in the commercial interest of the company involved. Many county development plans recommend sharing sites to cut down on difficulties. However, if Meteor discovers a site that improves the coverage in an area, then its competitors will be keen to access that site as well. Once ComReg is informed, its competitors will seek to gain access to the same site so it is in Meteor's interests not to inform ComReg.

The guidelines issued by planning authorities are also very vague. Telecommunications companies do not have to inform the local authority about their plans to erect antennae or base stations as it is purely a matter of courtesy to do so. There was a farcical scenario in Carlow where we were told the antennae on the base station were turned on, turned off and turned on again. The owners of the nursing home in question and Vodafone were not singing from the same hymn sheet. People who allow their premises to be used to host a base station or antennae get a nice sum of €50,000 every five years. That is quite a lot of money and I am sure that very few of us here would decline such an offer. The Government needs to acknowledge the revolution in wireless technology and bring forward legislation to update it for everyone concerned.

I want to place on the record that I have a mobile phone and I am favour of wireless technology as it is a step forward. However, we need reassurances as well. We cannot have progress in one direction, which may be at the risk of public health.