Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry South, Independent)
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806. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources if he has considered an awareness campaign to alert persons to the benefits of an App added to their telephones showing their exact location (details supplied); and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37991/13]

Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour)
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The provision of accurate location information is important for the management of the response to an emergency call. At present the mobile phone operators provide the mobile base station location and the centre of the coverage area to the emergency call answering service. The location information received by the emergency call answering service is then passed on to the relevant emergency services. My Department is aware that there are a number of software applications that run on smart phones that will provide more accurate location information than is currently available from the operators. Given that not everybody uses a smartphone or has downloaded these applications it is considered that this solution has limited application at present. In addition, as the presentation of location information using these applications has not been standardised, the processing of this information by the Emergency Call Answering Service could be challenging at present.

My Department will, however, engage with the mobile telephone operators and ComReg in the next few months to explore technical ways to improve the location information available at a network level.