Inch residents dismayed at plans for telecoms mast

RESIDENTS in Inch are hugely concerned about plans by telecommunications company Eircom to erect a telecommunications mast close to people’s homes in the village.

Eircom has submitted an application to Kerry County Council seeking planning permission for a 20-metre mast with antennas, dishes and associated telecommunications equipment at East Inch. However, local people don’t want a mast built near their homes.

According to Dora McCarthy of Inch Tourism people in the area are not in favour of the development which would see a 20-metre mast constructed “virtually in someone’s back garden”.

Kerry County Council previously banned the construction of masts within a kilometre of people’s houses but the ‘1km Rule’, which was often the subject of heated debate, was abandoned in 2015. The mast now proposed for Inch is only 20 metres from the nearest residence and 200 metres from a cluster of 13 houses.

“We are definitely not in favour of it, and we can’t understand why the 1km Rule has been dropped,” said Dora.

The site of the proposed mast is across the road from Inch graveyard, on a site owned by Eircom and known locally as the ‘eir exchange’. At present a 12-metre wooden pole stands on the site with some Vodafone network equipment mounted on it.

In their planning application Eir state that the existing pole is unsuitable for sharing with other providers, which is a normal practice where two or more mobile phone service providers have separate equipment on the same mast. Monopole masts, such as the one proposed by Eir for Inch, with numerous disks attached can be seen on roadsides and hilltops all around the country.

In the planning application Eir claims: “The proposed development shall release eir to significantly improve its next generation services for the benefit of residents and tourists from within its own telecommunications exchange compound”.

However, the people at Inch Tourism feel confident that the service to be provided by the National Broadband Rollout will fit their needs, without any need of an Eircom mast in their midst.

Submissions or observations on the application can be submitted to Kerry County Council before 1am on August 9.

Eircom Ireland operates a national network under both its own Eir brand and GO Mo according to the submission the network provides 5G, 4G(LTE), 3G and 2G services.