Dominic Hannigan (Labour)

I was delighted to see that Meteor mobile telephone company has been named as one of the top 50 Irish employers in the past year. It promotes a work hard, play hard ethos and that is why it has achieved a growth in subscribers of 150,000 in the past year which increased Eircom's profits. Meteor's revenues have risen by 30%, not only because the number of subscribers has increased but also because the average revenue per user has, as Rex Combs from the company said this morning. According to ComReg's report last December Irish mobile telephone users pay more than users in any of the European countries ComReg has studied. Paying higher than average charges for mobile phone usage will impact on our competitiveness. Although we have an open market we are paying high prices. Will the Leader ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to meet ComReg and the mobile telephone providers to come up with an action plan on how mobile telephone charges can be reduced for users in this country?

Yesterday traffic crawled at a snail's pace through Dublin following the closure of the port tunnel and once again the emergency services failed to plan adequately for the incident. Only a few weeks ago a different incident brought the whole of Dublin to a standstill.

I do not accept that nothing can be done. I read in the latest edition of Garda Review that divisions often have to share equipment so, for example, public service vehicle inspectors must collect equipment from one division and bring it to the scene of an accident before they can clear the scene. That can take hours and such delays are common. Work could be done on issues such as this to improve the process. Will the Leader speak to the Minister for Transport to impress upon him the need to put adequate emergency planning procedures in place so that we do not continually suffer such gridlock as we did yesterday?