Martin Conway (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This morning I was delighted to accept an invitation to visit St. Joseph's House for adult deaf and deaf-blind residents in Stillorgan.

I met management, staff and residents. It was a pleasure to visit the wonderful facility. I pay tribute to the management and staff as well as the religious order that developed the facility over many years. I wish them well in their great work in the future.

As one who comes from a coastal area I offer my condolences to those who lost their lives as a result of drowning in the past 48 hours. We always seem to have tragedies when we get this amazing weather. Apparently there has been a dramatic rise in the number of prank calls to the Irish Coast Guard in the past three years. This is a very worrying development given that the Coast Guard's budget like that of all other services has been cut significantly in recent years. I call on the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to introduce a system whereby all mobile phone SIM cards can be traced back to the individuals who own them and also all mobile phone handsets. These people are removing SIM cards and dialling 999 and getting through to the emergency services. There should be traceability of all SIM cards and mobile phone handsets sold in this country in order to reduce the amount of prank calls being made to the emergency services.