FOURTEEN councils have been slammed for snubbing a request by the broadband minister to provide a map of mobile phone black spots in their counties.
A string of councils failed to reply to a request by chairman of the Mobile Phone and Broadband Taskforce, Sean Canney.
The failure came to light when Fianna Fail’s Dara Calleary asked the Minister about the progress of the provision of a map of black spots in mobile coverage.
Responding to the query, Canney said: “An invitation was issued in late 2017 to all local authorities to provide data on five or six prioritised local black spots, with a view to examining the potential for mapping mobile phone black spots in Ireland.”
The objective, he explained, “was to identify areas of immediate priority for the purposes of testing an approach to the mapping of black spots”.
But the Minister admitted that “while the exercise was informative, it was not comprehensive”. In fact, it has emerged that two years after the original request, of the 31 local authorities only seventeen returned data to feed into the exercise.
The local authorities which responded were Carlow, Donegal, Galway County, Kerry, Kildare, Leitrim, Limerick, Longford, Mayo, Meath, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford, Westmeath, Wicklow and Cork County.
But, in a remarkable snub, none of the four Dublin local authorities responded while Galway City, Cavan, Monaghan, Kilkenny, Laois, Louth, Offaly, Wexford, Cork City and Clare also did not reply.
‘SNUBBED’
In a surprisingly low key response to the snub, the Department of Community and Rural Affairs noted that “the local authorities did what they could with the resources available to them”.
The Department of Community and Rural Affairs also said some local authorities “provided more data than others and some were not able to take part at all”.
But stunned Calleary lashed out, fuming: “If we are wondering why projects like broadband are not progressing, this is a perfect example.”
The FF frontbencher continued: “Fourteen councils, more than a third, have snubbed a Ministerial request, from the Minister in charge of a key task force and the Minister’s response appears to be to say, ‘fair play, come in for tea and biscuits.’
“This is another example of how we have a government that are in office not power. It brings politics and local government into disrepute.”
The Department of Community and Rural Affairs flagged up the recently appointed 31 new local authority Broadband Officers who they hoped “will perform their role in a full-time capacity in future and additional funding is available to assist with this”.
The Department also said: “Officials at the Department of Rural and Community Development will continue to work with local authorities to identify and investigate potential methods of improving connectivity across the State.”
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The Minister did note that subsequently, unlike our councils, Com-Reg has recently published a national map of outdoor mobile phone coverage for 2G, 3G and 4G services for a range of providers.
This map, which is available on Com-Reg’s website, shows the quality and prevalence of mobile phone coverage across the country for each provider.
He said: “It will prove to be a useful tool for consumers.”