James Cox
The widespread network outages being experienced by eir customers across Ireland today are being branded as “unacceptable” by Clare Independent TD Michael McNamara.
Deputy McNamara says thousands of customers, including those working from home, frontline workers, and teachers and their students “continue to be undermined by a service that falls far below the standards expected of the country's main telecoms provider”.
He said: “It is disappointing but not surprising to see such extensive issues continuing less than a week after eir told Oireachtas members that customer complaint levels in late January were back to pre-Covid volumes.”
Deputy McNamara criticised eir for the ongoing services issues which were the subject of a meeting between the company and the Tánaiste and Communications Minister Eamon Ryan in November, after which the Ministers expressed their “hope” that consumers should see improvements in services from both providers “in the near future”.
Problematic
ComReg also said at the time that the problems with eir were “so deep and so problematic that customers were really left out in the cold, and that is very unacceptable".
He explained: “It is clear from network issues in parts of west Clare in recent weeks as well as ongoing widespread outages across Ireland today that the company should face greater scrutiny and sanctions from ComReg over its repeated failure to deliver for all of its customers.
“Despite having been mentioned three times in the Programme for Government, no additional supports have yet been provided to ComReg to keep pressure on telecoms companies to provide services they have advertised and are contracted to provide. Without additional resources to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute providers for not fulfilling their responsibilities to consumers, ComReg will remain a barking dog that doesn’t bite."
He added: “I fully support ComReg in its efforts to obtain increased enforcement powers. I call on Government to expedite its proposed plan to provide ComReg with additional powers to impose additional sanctions on service providers.”
“We are gone beyond the point of 'hope' espoused by Ministers Varadkar and Ryan. Government must adequately resource ComReg if real positive change is to occur for telecoms customers,” he concluded.
