2026-01-20

135. Deputy Peter Roche asked the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport if his Department is aware that areas in rural Ireland, including Mountbellew in County Galway, continue to experience significant gaps in mobile phone coverage and effectively remain dead zones for cellular reception; if he will provide an update on measures being taken to address these coverage deficits; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3651/26]

I want to bring to the Minister's attention the lack of mobile phone coverage in one of our busiest little towns in east Galway. I refer to Mountbellew, which hosts quite a lot of activity in terms of national schools, two secondary schools and a the new third level college, namely the Atlantic Technological University, ATU, campus. The one thing that is really dogging those who live and work in Mountbellew is the lack of mobile phone coverage. We need a plan in terms of making Mountbellew an attractive place to do business.

Mobile network operators are continuously enhancing and improving their networks across rural and urban areas. However, I am aware that the quality of network coverage is not uniform across the country. While the availability of mobile phone coverage is primarily a matter for mobile network operators, operating on a commercial basis in a liberalised market, they are regulated by the Commission for Communications Regulation, ComReg. In the first instance, where customers are not receiving the coverage, they should contact the customer care team of their mobile phone operator to make a complaint regarding poor coverage and follow their official complaint procedure. Complaints, if not resolved to the consumer's satisfaction, can then be escalated to ComReg. It should be noted that ComReg completed a multi-band spectrum award, MBSA, in January 2023 to assign long-term rights of use in four spectrum bands to enable operators to provide improved services to meet increasing consumer demand for mobile services. This award represented a 46% increase in the harmonised spectrum assigned for the provision of wireless broadband services, including 4G and 5G, in Ireland and included significant coverage obligations for operators. Those MBSA2 licence obligations place a key focus on delivering improved coverage to population centres, such as places where people work and live, rather than solely focusing on geographical coverage. They also focus on improving network coverage of the national primary road network. Those obligations will come into effect on an incremental basis three, five and seven years after the licences were first awarded in 2023. As such,it is expected that ComReg will assess operators’compliance with their three-year obligations under the licence this year. Operators continue to add new capacity to their networks using their newly acquired radio spectrum. The timing of the improvements delivered by mobile operators are influenced in part by their ability to acquire and build new sites for increased coverage. While the Department has no role in developing site-specific strategies for mobile coverage improvements, its digital connectivity strategy, which was published in 2022, sets ambitious targets for fixed and mobile connectivity. To assist consumers to choose the network provider that best meets their needs, ComReg continually updates and enhances its online national outdoor mobile coverage map at coveragemap.comreg.ie, which provides information on mobile network providers for 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G mobile networks.

I thank the Minister for that comprehensive response. People have made calls to the relevant service providers. Unfortunately, that has not changed matters as they stand. My concern is that Mountbellew is a thriving town. It needs the interconnectivity to which I refer. What is happening is not just an inconvenience. Obviously, safety is an issue. Older people all require access to mobile phone coverage. Regrettably, people have to drive at least two or three miles outside the town of Mountbellew before they can use their mobile phones. That is fundamentally damning in this day and age, particularly in the context of a thriving village where many things are happening in the very busy co-operative mart, on the ATU campus and in the secondary and national schools. It behoves us to exert pressure wherever is required in order to make sure that Mountbellew is not left behind. At present, it is being left behind.

I will refer the Deputy's queries directly to ComReg and get a more comprehensive reply with regard to the specific geographical area. I do not know whether operators have, for instance, sought planning permission for masts or other infrastructure in the area or whether, if they have, these have been looked upon favourably by Galway County Council. Anecdotally, all of us in this House know of situations where mobile phone coverage is poor. This is always linked back to the lack of mobile phone infrastructure. We have all been at meetings where people are present who do not want mobile phone masts but who also probably will contact our constituency offices to state they have poor mobile phone coverage. What will make an improvement is the roll-out of the national broadband plan because it will provide for improvement for indoor wireless coverage. That can be vastly improved. The roll-out of that plan by commercial operators is significantly improving across the country, including in County Galway.

Just by way of conclusion, Mountbellew has people, businesses, educational institutions and ambition but what it lacks is the urgent need for basic, reliable mobile phone coverage.

In a lot of cases, existing public infrastructure is used for the installation of mobile telephony infrastructure and other infrastructure, for example, by the Office of Public Works for Garda stations and by local authorities when it comes to water towers, reservoirs and other such sites. In its own way, the national broadband plan will improve the quality of internal calls because people will be diverted directly on to their Wi-Fi. They will also be able to make calls via the Internet, which will make things an awful lot easier. I will get a more comprehensive reply from ComReg to the specific issue the Deputy has raised, which relates to the town of Mountbellew.