Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 3 March 2026
539. Deputy Michael Cahill asked the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport the progress being made to address the extremely poor mobile phone reception across County Kerry; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16317/26]
Amharc ar fhreagra540. Deputy Michael Cahill asked the Minister for Culture, Communications and Sport further to Parliamentary Question No. 31 of 7 April 2025, to address the poor mobile phone reception in an area in County Kerry (details supplied); if a detailed progress report will be provided; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [16318/26]
Amharc ar fhreagraI propose to take Questions Nos. 539 and 540 together.
Mobile network operators are continuously improving their network coverage across both 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 good coverage, they should contact the customer care team of their mobile phone operator to make a complaint regarding poor coverage and then 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 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. These are referred to as the MBSA2 licences. These awards 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 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 come into effect on an incremental basis 3, 5 and 7 years after the licences were first awarded in 2023.
In a ComReg report, “Mobile and Wireless Broadband licences: annual compliance report for the period July 2024 to June 2025”, published in January, the regulator states that according to each mobile network operator’s own assessments, each operator is currently meeting, or close to meeting, all elements of the 3-year outdoor mobile coverage obligations. It is expected that ComReg will conduct an assessment of operators’ compliance with their 3-year obligations under the MBSA2 licence this year.
Operators continue to add new capacity to their networks using both their newly acquired radio spectrum and by upgrading the radio technologies on their existing 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 my Department has no role in developing site or county-specific strategies for mobile coverage improvements, the Department’s Digital Connectivity Strategy published in 2022 sets ambitious targets for fixed and mobile connectivity nationally. A refresh of this Strategy is currently being undertaken.
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 operators’ outdoor coverage.
It is important to note that emergency 999/112 calls from mobile devices can use any available mobile network, even a network that the end user is not a customer of. This is known as limited-service state emergency calling and is typically identified on the user’s phone by a message “Emergency Calls Only” being displayed in place of the usual mobile network operator name.
