Ring: ‘Eir acted like a spoilt child over broadband’

Rural affairs minister takes on telecoms company and RTE

RURAL affairs minister Michael Ring has described telecommunications company Eir as a “spoilt child” for challenging the cost of the National Broadband Plan after it pulled out of the bidding process.

Mr Ring also launched a scathing attack on RTE, which he said only covers “bad news” and will not report on the major investment his department has made in rural communities.

“I have invested in some very important schemes around the country but if we had one post office closing, we would have two television cameras down,” he told the Sunday Independent.

The minister said he was “sick and tired” of listening to people being “anti-rural Ireland” and added “Eir can’t even go out and fix telephones”.

“Nobody can get in touch with them and they remind me of a spoilt child — when the sweets are taken away from them, they start crying,” the minister said.

“It annoys me that I can’t get them out to people when their phones are out.

“Elderly people with their senior alert alarms, we can’t get them out to fix the phone and these are the ones who want to roll out rural broadband,” he said.

Eir chief executive Carolan Lennon told an Oireachtas Communications Committee meeting last year that she believed her company could provide rural broadband for far less than the €3bn contract awarded to a consortium headed by US businessman David McCourt.

“They had the opportunity, they were in the process,” Mr Ring said. “We now have a provider and we want the broadband rolled out in rural Ireland,” he added.

The minister said a child living in Belmullet, Co Mayo, is as entitled to have broadband as a child in Blackrock, south Dublin.

“The child in Belmullet should not have to go in at 7pm at night to a library or to an aunt or uncle’s house who live in a town to draw the information they need for their Junior or Leaving Cert,” he added.

Mr Ring said there was “misinformation” being spread about life in rural Ireland by opposition politicians and other groups.

“People have made a living out of knocking rural Ireland and there are more people living and working in rural Ireland than there ever was before,” he said.

Mr Ring said the Government was paying some people who were criticising them over their lack of investment in rural communities. However, he would not say to whom he was referring.

On RTE, the minister said the broadcaster’s news coverage is “all negativity” and the station never reports on rural Ireland when there is some “positivity”.

“They can send down the cameras when it’s a bad day. When it’s a closure of a post office.

“A closure of a post office doesn’t define rural Ireland,” he said.

“It’s not about propaganda and I don’t expect them to be there every day but I expect them there for major announcements.”

The minister said he was referring to RTE’s news coverage and said he considered the reporting of rural affairs by other television shows on the station such as Nationwide to be fair.