Minister keen to seek resolution to south Mayo internet issues

Minister of State, Alan Dillon TD, has highlighted the difficulties facing residents and business in the Tourmakeady area since Storm Éowyn in late January.

Minister Dillon stated today, “Since Storm Éowyn on January 27, I have been receiving calls, texts and emails about delays in restoring telephone and broadband service across the county, but unfortunately the problems in the Tourmakeady area continue to persist. I am especially concerned about issues restoring service for elderly people who rely on their panic alarms to raise alerts in the event of an emergency. Also there are businesses affected who need broadband and telephone services to engage with customers.

‘I want to advise anyone who is still without a phone service that I continue to engage with Eir to escalate faults. They have informed me that the Open Eir network suffered unprecedented damage in a wide number of locations, largely due to trees on third party land falling onto the Open Eir network, bringing poles and cables down.”

Minister Dillon said he continues to engage with Eir, along with Minister for Communications Patrick O’Donovan and ComReg in relation to their repair efforts. “I am advised that approximately 99% of customers nationally that originally lost fixed voice or fixed broadband service as a direct result of the storm have now been reinstated.

‘Unfortunately, there have been a relatively large amount of elderly customers using panic or home monitoring health alarms which work on the legacy copper network which has been impacted to a much greater degree then the fibre network.

In some cases, fibre networks are available to these customers through Open Eir or under the National Broadband Plan in rural communities.

I will continue to prioritise the upgrading of the network in advance of the switch off of the copper landline network, post the completion of the respective fibre rollouts by Eir and NBI in the coming years,” concluded Minister Dillon.