I thank the Cathaoirleach for the invitation to take part in today's discussion. The Minister, Deputy O' Donovan, recognises the key role that telecommunication networks play in Ireland's society and economy. Mobile and fixed broadband networks are key enablers of many aspects of modern life, connecting families and friends, allowing people to work from home, and making it easier for businesses to reap the benefits of the digital economy. The State's commitment to transforming our telecoms infrastructure is exemplified by the Government's target to deliver 100% gigabit connectivity to every premises in the State by 2028.

The State's national broadband plan is progressing well and is on track to complete its roll-out by the end of 2026. Commercial operators are continuing to progress their respective roll-outs in line with this target. Nonetheless, the extent of service outages experienced in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn last January has placed renewed focus on how resilient our telecommunication networks and emergency response systems are. The effect of Storm Éowyn on the national telecommunication sector was the largest in ComReg recording history.

Widespread loss of power and damage to infrastructure during Storm Éowyn on 24 January 2025 triggered a sharp and unprecedented disruption to our fixed and mobile connectivity, with the worst impacted areas located in the north and west of the country. At peak, approximately 280,000 users had no broadband or landline service, and more than 2 million mobile service users were affected to the extent that their local coverage was either degraded or completely off air.

Mobile networks experienced very little structural damage from the storm. It was the extended and pervasive loss of mains power that brought down their services. In line with the restoration of this mains power, mobile services were restored to over 99% of users by 7 February and all users by 11 February.

While the loss of mains power also severely impacted fixed networks, they experienced more extensive physical damage. Approximately 6,000 timber poles and 1,500 km of fibre and copper needed to be replaced to restore services. Fixed services, that is, fibre-, cable- or copper-based services, were restored to 99.9% of customers by 19 February. However, a small number of customers were without services for several months after the storm.

More severe windstorms can be expected over the coming decades. Last June, the Environmental Protection Agency published the National Climate Change Risk Assessment. The assessment prioritises both communications and electricity network infrastructures as being at risk of damage and disruption from extreme wind with critical consequences. In that light, building resilience into our networks will be an ongoing action for many years to come. Improved network resilience involves addresses two key areas, namely, preparedness, taking the appropriate actions before an event to absorb as much of the potential damage as possible without losing service, and response, having the appropriate structures and processes in place to repair damaged networks and restore services as quickly as possible.

The Department has conducted a thorough review of its own structures relating to emergency response. A new communication services emergency plan is being put in place to ensure the Department is well-prepared and ready to respond to the surge demands of any future similar event. The plan will ensure that Department officials can effectively manage the diverse demands of an extended emergency, such as the national emergency co-ordination group interactions, operational engagement with industry and responding to the needs of the political process.

Relevant legislation has also been reviewed to assess the extent and effectiveness of existing powers and obligations in areas such as outage information reporting and consumer rights. Legislative amendments are currently being progressed through the forthcoming national cybersecurity Bill.

The Minister has convened meetings with the relevant companies to hear from them directly and express his concerns and expectations. The Department has continued that dialogue with industry to understand what lessons they have learned from the storm, what actions are being taken to improve their network resilience and to understand how the State can support their efforts. Operators sought help to improve their ability to contact key personnel during an emergency and to facilitate better co-ordination with the State’s emergency response structures.

Investments are being made by industry to address network resilience. The fixed and mobile network operators have indicated they are undertaking a range of network hardening actions. These include reviewing the power requirements of all sites, acquiring additional backup batteries and power generators, making sites ready for mobile generators and improving backhaul route redundancy to key sites.

The Minister is determined that resilience is improved and, therefore, the Department has on foot of these ongoing engagements with key stakeholders established a new group to progress resilience issues that require collaboration and co-ordination. In partnership with ComReg and network infrastructure operators, the newly established telecommunications resilience and response group is focusing on a number of key issues in the short term. The first has been the identification of a list of mobile base station sites that will be prioritised in the event of a future emergency for restoration. A minimum level of mobile connectivity is necessary to ensure that everyone has the ability to contact the emergency services, make calls and send text messages. The second is the tighter integration of the network infrastructure operators into the existing emergency management structures of the State. The third is to improve and co-ordinate communication to the public during emergencies.

In the longer term, as the digital transformation of the State’s network infrastructure progresses, the potential impacts of climate change, whether it is extreme wind, flooding or coastal erosion, will need to be borne in mind in any future investments by the State.

The forthcoming sectoral adaptation plan for communication networks will set out in some detail the scale of the challenges ahead and the actions to be taken by the sector. We welcome the opportunity to discuss these issues with the committee today.

I invite Mr. Blaney to make his opening statement.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach agus leis na comhaltaí uilig as an gcuireadh teacht ina láthair inniu. I thank the Chair and members for the invitation to appear before the committee today.

I have been a ComReg commissioner since January 2019 and I am the current chairperson. I am joined by my colleagues Ms Barbara Delaney, director of the retail and consumer services division, Mr. George Merrigan, director of the market framework division, and Mr. Donal Leavy, director of the wholesale division. We have supplied the committee with three documents. These are our current strategy statement, a note on developments in the communications market and an information note on measures taken by us following Storm Éowyn to address future severe weather events.

ComReg was established in 2002. We are the national regulatory authority for electronic communications services and networks, postal services and radio spectrum. Broadly speaking, we have three core objectives. We promote market competition that leads to investment, innovation and choice through competition. We promote and protect the interests of consumers. We also contribute to the development of the EU's internal market. I will give a little bit more information on our key objectives.

First, there is connectivity, competition and investment. Connectivity is a core element of electronic communications. ComReg aims to ensure that competition drives innovation so that customers get a greater choice of services. We also manage Ireland’s radio spectrum so that it supports a wide range of communication services for consumers and businesses.

Next is consumer protection and empowerment. Our aim is to protect and empower consumers so that they can choose communications services with confidence. We inform consumers of their rights about new technologies and how best to protect themselves. Through online tools and apps on our website, we also provide information on market offers, mobile coverage and the availability of broadband services. We assist consumers in their dealings with service providers. Between July 2024 and June 2025, we received approximately 32,000 contacts from consumers, of which 10% were complaints. We engage with service providers, where necessary, to resolve consumer complaints and we take appropriate enforcement action, where required. Those consumer-related enforcement actions have led to millions of euros in fines and refunds to consumers. Where we consider that consumers need further protections, we introduce new rules. For example, we have a customer charter and codes of practice for complaint handling and for compensation. We ensure the provision of the necessary universal postal service and the universal electronic communications services and we monitor the quality of the national emergency call answering service.

On cybersecurity and resilience, we monitor cybersecurity and resilience requirements for entities in the sectors within our scope. We do so within our powers under the second network and information systems directive, called NIS2, when it is transposed into Irish law. Our work in monitoring the resilience and integrity of telecommunications networks includes reporting on network incidents. We are also Ireland’s market surveillance authority for the radio equipment directive and our product safety unit works to ensure that all electronic products sold in Ireland with a radio component are legal and safe.

I would like to make the committee aware of a range of new functions that are being assigned to ComReg under EU and domestic legislation. The following are some of our key new responsibilities. NIS2 strengthens cybersecurity requirements across many critical sectors. We have responsibility for four sectors, which are digital infrastructure, ICT service management, the digital providers and space. Under the principle of main establishment, entities that operate in multiple member states fall under Irish jurisdiction if they register their main establishment in Ireland. We will be required to supervise these entities in relation to services they provide in other member states as well as Ireland, to include taking enforcement action, if required. This increases the scale and complexity of our supervision and enforcement function from national to EU-wide.

The EU critical entities resilience directive, CER, focuses on ensuring that the physical and operational resilience of critical entities in the digital infrastructure sector, including telecom networks.

Regulated entities must identify and address risks, whether from naturally occurring hazards or from deliberate sabotage.

The EU Data Act establishes rules on fair access to, and use of, data. We will be designated as the competent authority for the switching and interoperability of data processing services delivered through cloud services. The EU Artificial Intelligence Act is the first EU-wide framework for the safe and trustworthy use of AI. ComReg has been designated as a national competent authority. We will have responsibility for products covered by the radio equipment directive and in respect of critical digital infrastructure, preparations for which have commenced.

These new responsibilities will bring additional challenges for ComReg. We will be active in new sectors with new stakeholders, not only in Ireland but across Europe. We will, of course, need additional resources and extra staff to carry out these new functions.

In conclusion, the loss of broadband during Storm Éowyn last January again highlighted how essential connectivity has become to our lives. We have been working with the Government and industry to learn from that event, and we have put in place measures to mitigate the impact of such extreme weather events when they occur in the future. I refer to the information notice that we published recently, entitled “Severe Weather Events - ComReg’s Measures”, and we would be happy to speak to its content.

ComReg is a member of the telecommunications resilience and response group, TRRG, which is led by the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport. The purpose of the TRRG is to promote resilience and high availability of our telecommunications infrastructure and to provide a co-ordinated sectoral emergency response capability.

We also engaged at length with Telecommunications Industry Ireland. As a result of those meetings, our incident reporting portal has been overhauled and moved to a new platform. During severe weather events, telecom service providers report to ComReg and ComReg, in turn, reports to the national emergency co-ordination group. We will be consulting on possible improvements to that reporting process.

We have also created a webpage, comreg.ie/severeweather, to inform consumers on how severe weather can impact communications services, actions they can take to prepare and what they can do during any service outages or disruptions. Our consumer care team also has an escalation process to help expedite service restoration. We are also reviewing service providers’ current practices in communicating with their customers in relation to service outages. We will engage further with service providers regarding their plans to provide their customers with alternative connections during outages, such as mobile broadband modems or connection hubs in public areas.

We have ensured that over €1.08 million has been refunded to customers who lost service during the Storm Éowyn, and we will ensure that people who suffered prolonged outages will get refunds or service credits. We have worked with the industry to identify priority sites for mobile communications. This list of locations is being revised and will be finalised with the Department.

The resilience of this infrastructure is essential for our society and economy. Now that high-speed networks are in place, the challenge is to keep them running. Those networks must also be as secure and resilient as possible in the face of external threats. We will do what we can to ensure the country stays connected.

I thank Mr. Blaney. We move to questions and answers with the members. I call Senator Ní Chuilinn.

I welcome the witnesses. I know this is a rescheduled meeting so we are grateful that they were able to come in again.

I have a couple of different lines of questioning. I might start where Mr. Blaney left off with regard to making sure that if there is another storm, there is more readiness, and preparedness was also mentioned by the Department. For the people who were affected most in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn, in counties in the west, the north and in Monaghan, Westmeath and Longford, if we had a storm like Storm Éowyn tomorrow, what is the biggest difference in preparedness? What peace of mind can the witnesses give to people? If that were to happen again, what is different today and tomorrow for those people? If the network were to go down, what would ensure they are not without connectivity for that length of time again?

We have taken a lot of learnings from Storm Éowyn. There has been intensive engagement to try to ensure we are better prepared for future significant events like Storm Éowyn.

One of the key actions that has been completed is ensuring a minimum level of mobile coverage is brought back on air as quickly as possible. The operators have identified critical priority sites that cover quite a large number of people. They have hardened those sites with mobile generators so that they are unlikely to go down in the first instance. If they do go down, there is an emergency response prioritised with ESB to bring them back on air as quickly as possible. That is one tangible action. A minimum level of connectivity will be brought back to people in a very short period. That has come out of the work we have done to date.

Mr. Neary mentioned in his opening statement that legislation was needed. I think it was in relation to a reporting structure or a text message structure. Will he elaborate on that?

We have done a full review of the legislative powers available, primarily through the regulator, for information gathering and information reporting to ensure consumers get accurate and up-to-date information on a regular basis. We are looking to improve those powers. We have identified a vehicle to bring forward that legislation. We were in the midst, through the national cybersecurity Bill, of looking at the powers the Minister will retain in the event of a national incident, whether a cyber or physical incident. We are looking at how we can refine those information gathering powers for the Minister in particular.

I thank Mr. Neary very much. I want to ask ComReg about scam text messages. The number of messages we are all getting on our phones is getting out of hand. I consider myself well educated and fairly aware of these scams but sometimes I get them and would nearly click in, thinking "God, I was meant to collect the post" or "I didn't pay the customs". It is getting confusing for me and then I speak to my parents. They are in their 70s. They are two teachers, very well educated and very sharp, but they are getting caught. What are we doing to cut that stuff out and make it safer for people to have a mobile phone and get text messages without being badly affected by giving their details or bank details inadvertently?

This has been an important issue and a big international issue. We signed an MOU with our counterpart in Canada to get the best international experience and make sure we address this with the powers we have. I will hand over to my colleague Mr. Merrigan who has been working closely with industry on this.

ComReg manages Ireland's national telephone numbering scheme. Our primary role in this space is the efficient use of telephone numbers and ensuring they are not misused. That has been our focus. We do not have a role, as such, in fraud. With the help of the industry, we have introduced a suite of interventions. We have introduced six interventions so far: five on the voice side and one, so far, on the SMS side. These people prey on people like the Senator's parents, and mine are the very same. We cannot talk about either in isolation; we have to tackle the lot.

The five interventions on the voice side include stopping do-not-originate numbers. Those are numbers that appear on the back of a credit card. You do not receive calls from them because those people never dial from those phones. We have also prevented people cloning number ranges which are not issued by the State. We have introduced fixed call blocking and mobile call blocking from abroad, with the exception of people roaming from abroad, so people will not get calls using Irish numbers from abroad. Most recently, work on the voice side has been focused on the roll-out with the industry of voice firewalls on each network. Since the first of those five interventions was introduced around this time last year, we estimate we have blocked 120 million calls that otherwise would have been delivered to unsuspecting consumers.

The SMS side is a little bit more complicated.

We are working with colleagues in the Department on SMS content filtering, which is used extensively across Europe at the moment. We are looking for a legislative basis by which we could bring that forward. We have already introduced the SMS sender ID registry, which is effectively a way of dealing with messages coming from legitimate users that carry a banner as to who they are, for example, the HSE or whatever. This intervention was introduced last summer and we are still in the first phase of it, which is the banner message warning.

I just have one follow-up question because I am nearly out of time. Is there any way of just blocking these text messages from getting to the phone in the first place? Is there any way of recognising that it is a scam and blocking it outright? I understand the amount of work that has been done on the calls, with 120 million of them, which is brilliant, but the text messages are really damaging.

The issue of text messages is very complicated. For example, in our nuisance communications information forum, we have 59 member organisations from around the world, and there are 94 organisations on our SMS sender ID list. It is a complicated matter trying to integrate 94 networks but that is the work that we been doing so far. That piece of work just focuses on the sender ID registry. We are hopeful that we can do more in the SMS space, maybe through content filtering and the likes of things we see in other European countries. We would like to be able to bring more of those things forward. We are working with our colleagues in the Department and we are hopeful we can get legislation to that end.

I thank the witnesses for being here and for rescheduling. It is good to see Mr. Blaney again. I know we are both ACESA members, but it is nice to see him in this context. I will start where Senator Ní Chuillin left off on scam texts because, as has been outlined, this area is immensely complex. The scams themselves are getting more and more sophisticated as time goes on. How is it being ensured that genuine texts are getting through, particularly things like hospital appointments and other crucial information for citizens, and that they are not being filtered out by the same mechanisms being used to block scammers?

We have been working extensively with the information service providers and the organisations themselves. I should say there has been a massive interest in this from organisations in the State. We now have over 18,000 sender IDs registered, from over 13,000 organisations, including organisations like the HSE and such like. In the very early days of this there is no denying we had quite a number of false positives. There are far fewer of them now than there were before. The idea that people would never get a text marked as a likely scam is a bit naive because that is part of the purpose of it, but not to the extent that they were getting them heretofore. We have a view that we are pretty much getting on top of that problem now. There are a couple of technical issues that we are dealing with on the operators' side, not our own. Our own database, in point of fact, has not been down at all since we stood it up. That has been operating completely through it but we are working through a couple of technical issues.

The other matter, obviously, that we need to get better on is metrics and we are pushing the industry hard on this. Next month, we will be launching a new portal for the industry to provide us with metrics. This is an attempt to bring some standardisation to that so that we can actually make better decisions.

I might come back to ComReg on AI in a minute, but first of all, I want to come to the representatives from the Department, and I thank them again for being here. In the documentation provided to us several references were made to the difficulty of commercial viability of connecting everyone to a gigabit network or other essential mobile telecommunications infrastructure. In the world that we live in this is essential for many and it is certainly a public good at least. In that context, is there a bigger role for the State to play in ensuring that these services are available and at a high quality for everyone? As most of our infrastructure roll-out is within the remit of private companies, what role do the witnesses see for the State?

Gigabit networks are being deployed across the State primarily through commercial operators. There are 2.55 million premises in Ireland and just under 2 million of those will be served by commercial operators. This is because they are commercially attractive to address.

It is not cost prohibitive for the operators to roll out their networks towards those 2 million. The State's main role is to look at the cohort the commercial operators will not address. That is being addressed through our national broadband plan. We have identified 560,000 premises through that project. The State is investing more than €2.7 million over 25 years, which is mostly upfront because we are building a network through NBI. That is where the market failure exists so that is where the State's emphasis-----

We had NBI in. Will that be the same quality, though? That is the point. Will people availing of the public offering get lower quality?

That is an interesting question. What is happening in Ireland is quite unique. In 2014 the Government decided to take a long-term view of the infrastructure that was to be deployed through the intervention. The decision was made in Ireland to look at the most remote, rural and difficult-to-reach premises and bring to them a state-of-the-art long-term infrastructure product, which is now being deployed by NBI. We have taken the most difficult and addressed them in the first instance. That standard is better than anywhere else in the country. The commercial operators are driving services that give them a return on investment. In the main, it reaches a similar standard and is benchmarked very similarly.

Because of the commercial role, there is potential for prices being pushed up. For people who cannot afford Wi-Fi, maybe particularly older people, how are we dealing with the cost of connectivity to make sure everyone has the same access?

That is a question about the market that exists. It is a liberalised market. Cost pressures are created through competition. The regulation in place is pro-investment, balanced with consumer protection and ensuring competition in the market. There is always that balance between attracting investment into the market and ensuring there is strong competition. Evidence suggests that is working really well in Ireland. Mr. Blaney may speak better on that than I can. There has been no cost escalation on a retail basis for consumers. In fact, prices for broadband services have been steady or in slight decline.

There are two markets here: a wholesale market and a retail market. In the wholesale market, one entity has significant power. We have intervened on the basis of its significant market power. That is Eir. There are many players in the retail market and what we are seeing is competitive and healthy but we will need to keep an eye on it. It is okay today but the job of the regulator is to continue that and make sure it stays that way.

I want to ask about municipal Wi-Fi. Obviously, there are cities doing this really well, such as Mexico City and Barcelona. There was something in Ennis a few years ago around this. Is there any ambition for Irish cities and towns to get good-quality, free municipal Wi-Fi?

An initiative has been rolled out across Ireland, driven through the local authorities. It is called Wi-Fi4EU. There is free Wi-Fi in public libraries and certain locations in towns. It is part of local-----

There is nothing like you could arrive in Dublin and be on Dublin Wi-Fi. It is amazing when you go to cities that have that. Is that level of ambition there?

I have not seen that. It is driven through the local authority plans, basically.

Okay. I have more questions but will have to leg it in a minute.

No problem. We now have a visitor to the committee, Senator Duffy. He wants to ask some questions. He is very welcome.

I thank the Chair for facilitating my contribution. I appreciate it. I welcome all the witnesses. I have a general comment on cellular connectivity in my county of Mayo. I am sure it is also seen in every other county in the country. In Mayo there are many areas with zero cellular connectivity but which may have 4G or 5G coverage.

There has been a total failure and this has been going on for two decades. There are blackspots in certain areas, including on some regional and national roads. We have networks that speak on this. For example, Vodafone has 99% population coverage and Eir says it has 99.9%. When I heard those numbers at first I thought this was brilliant. I thought that finally we would be make a phone call while going from A to B, from one place to another, but then you engage in a contract and the line drops every time you use the roadway. We talk about moving from 3G to 4G and to 5G yet cellular coverage is still non-existent in locations. For example, a town in a rural location may have a population of over 5,000 but when you travel to it you go through blackspots. Where is the failure? Is it political? Is it in the private sector? What hope can we offer commuters or users in County Mayo that this coverage will be addressed?

My colleague, Mr. Merrigan, will talk about the spectrum auctions and what we have done on that. Historically, coverage has been a big issue for Ireland. We have a relatively small population in a large area so coverage has always been a challenge. I think that coverage has significantly improved. When we look at where we are today compared with where we were traditionally, there is a significant improvement. In order to get coverage the operators need spectrum. As part of that spectrum-issuing process by us, we make sure in the licences that operators have coverage obligations. Mr. Merrigan will talk about those coverage obligations and not just where they are today but how they will improve under the current licences, so, hopefully, things will be better in Mayo.

I will first point out that this is provided on a commercial basis. There is not a universal service for mobile in Ireland and, as such, how they roll out is primarily a concern for themselves.

In terms of the most recent radio spectrum award, which we completed in 2023, we inserted a series of coverage licence obligations and each one kicks in at a certain time. The first one is due to be in place and delivered, which we will measure, in the first quarter of next year. That is a coverage population of 85% that is due to be in place by the first quarter of next year and we will measure then because that will be three years since the date they won that licence. That particular licence increased the amount of radio spectrum available to mobile operators by 46%. The State has not been slow in making sure the commercial operators have the tools to meet high levels of population coverage. The second emolument in that particular licence is at five years and moves the 85% population target to 92%. The third one is at seven years and moves it to 95%.

ComReg has identified this as a problem. As customers need to know that each provider has different coverage, we have provided a map on the ComReg website. The map shows the coverage by each provider for every inch of the country.

Is it misleading that the network providers are saying 99% and 99.9% population coverage?

To clarify, is it not the case that they are referring to population, rather than geography? I think that is the issue. They are saying 99% but it is 99% population coverage, not geographic coverage. Is that correct?

Yes.

It is the static population. Basically, it is household coverage or urban centre coverage..

The important factor for us is what providers are legally required to do under the licence and we can take action against them if they do not meet that. As Mr. Merrigan has explained, it takes time for them to fully meet that requirement under the licence.

It is not just at home. The same licences require them to cover business and technology parks, hospitals, higher education campuses, air and sea ports, trains and bus stations and the top visitor attractions. Again, they are on a phased basis.

That is positive. Can that obligation be expanded to include all regional roads, all railways and all bus routes?

There is an obligation to provide coverage on roads in the current licences as well.

That has been failed.

How can they be challenged on that? It is a big issue, it has never been addressed, and it causes everyone frustration. It causes it for everyone, surely, and we need strong action on it. I do not know who can do that, but someone needs to do that. I am sure at a political level ComReg would have support.

The licence is to provide them with three years to meet those targets from the award of the licence.

When was the road first mentioned in a licence?

It is mentioned in those licences.

Which licence? What was the earliest licence in which a roadway was mentioned?

The most recent licence.

Which was 2023.

Which was in 2023.

Okay, so they have one more year to upgrade all road connectivity.

Early next year, we will be out measuring how they are doing against their obligations in the licence.

Obviously, they are unlikely to address that between now and early next year, so-----

No, the idea of giving them three years to do it is to roll out within those three years so that when ComReg does measure, they are to hit those targets and then the targets are incremented to allow them to roll out over a period of time. So, I-----

However, that three-year period is the period for them to roll it out because it is mentioned in that one.

For the first set of targets, yes.

Which include roads.

There are roads. I do not have it on my list. I can provide it to the Senator afterwards, but there are roads on it, yes.

Okay, and if they do not include those roads, what is the penalty?

The penalty will be that we would have to look at whether they are complying with their licence conditions or not and then we would have to engage with them at that point.

I know, but, obviously, when engaging with someone, they are going to talk their way out of it. What is the penalty if someone is not complying with their licence? Is there a penalty?

The ultimate penalty for anybody would be to lose their licence, but the Senator will understand there would be a lot of steps before that.

I think they should lose it if they are not offering proper coverage to customers who are affected by it. I would welcome - I cannot speak for everyone else - strength on that to the network providers because it is clearly something that is an issue that needs to be addressed.

We will certainly know better next year when we do the three-year measurement as to where they stand against the licence.

Those were very good questions, Senator. I was actually going to raise that issue myself. I will refer to the blackspots. What I am getting from this is that when it comes to mobile phone coverage in general, while they have the commitment - I know about all the commitments they have - where they do not meet a commitment, there is engagement. As far as I am concerned, however, in any contract into the future, there have to be graduated penalties. I would encourage the witnesses to do that because, as Senator Duffy has outlined, I have the same issue in Tipperary. I know exactly where the phone signal is going to drop. In some cases, it is rural, but not very rural. I cannot get to my house from where I turn off the motorway to go back to Portroe without the phone signal dropping. I know it is going to happen; I just say, "I am going to lose you now." That is it. We have all done it. There should be some graduated fines or graduated penalties. I would suggest that is implemented. We as a committee would agree that should be implemented in any future contracts whereby after a period of time, they have to be penalised.

The other thing I would ask is that in any future contracts or future deliberations there is an insistence that when they are advertising, their coverage advertisement is based on facts. If they say 99.9% coverage, people take that as geography. It is not geography; it is population. I would say that they have to say population or geography and be very clear.

There were some very good questions by the other contributors earlier. I was going to raise the issue of scam text messages. Have the Department or ComReg - it is probably more for ComReg - engaged with the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, on this?

On the scam texts?

Yes.

Does Mr. Merrigan want to talk about all the people we have engaged with? We have engaged with quite a few people on-----

It could be working with the CCPC to actually outline to people what they need to do, perhaps for a campaign in relation to this from them. Has ComReg met with the CCPC?

We speak with the CCPC, the Department of justice, our own Department and the people in the Banking and Payments Federation Ireland, BPFI. As Mr. Blaney said, we speak with colleagues abroad in other countries, and we have a couple of memorandums of understanding with Australia and Canada at the moment, all to basically gather better information and allow us to deal with the matter better. However, we do indeed speak extensively with all the agencies in the State.

How is the copper switch-off going and when is the end date?

Copper switch-off is mandatory migration, so all the other options have gone and the person has been told they must have their copper switched off. Our objective in this process is that as few people as possible are caught at that point and that people voluntarily move away from copper, rather than being forced to.

Okay, what is the end date or is there an end date?

There is no date. The process is that we will get a submission from Eir on when this copper switch-off will happen. We are still waiting for this submission. We have set out in a decision the things that Eir must do to try to protect consumers as part of this, so we avoid a situation where customers are being told at short notice.

In relation to loss of service to storms and everything else, what is being done to strengthen the capacity of consumers to get rebates, refunds or compensation?

I might ask my colleague, Ms Delaney to talk through the work we have done in this area.

In advance of Storm Éowyn and on foot of it as well, ComReg has been looking at consumer rights. I will come back to information we are looking at as well, but on the consumer rights-----

If you could be just a bit quicker.

Sorry?

I only have two and a half minutes.

Sorry. On the consumer rights, we have been trying to ensure that people are not charged for a service that they did not get through all of that.

That does not happen at the moment.

It does and in fact, as my colleague, Mr Blaney said in the opening statement, we have achieved over 1 million refunds to consumers for prolonged outages and this process has not actually concluded yet.

Educate me here. How is that achieved?

At the moment, it is being done-----

My broadband was gone for a couple of weeks.

-----proactively and we are still going through that. What we want-----

Does the consumer have to apply or does it happen naturally, because it should happen naturally?

Yes, there are a couple of things. There is a proactive refunding of it. A couple of other things must happen as well. The consumer must report the outage. We are looking at that more thoroughly to see how that works. At the moment, that process has not concluded for Storm Éowyn, unfortunately. Hundreds of thousands of consumers have got, on average, €42 back, depending on how long they were out. We want this process to be much smoother and we will work with service providers so that it is a quick process.

I think this is necessary because this is going to be an ongoing issue. No matter how much resilience is put into it, there will always be issues, in fairness.

Yes, that is definitely something we are looking at.

In November 2023, the Department said that by early this year, the universal service obligation, USO, would be in place in relation to broadband, as would the definition of what adequate broadband is. These things did not happen. I am sure it is going to happen before Christmas, is it not?

The Cathaoirleach is correct. They did not happen but we are working on them. We have engaged-----

When will it happen?

We are hopeful it will happen next year. We have a-----

Why commit to something if it cannot be done? Being six months out on something like this not a big deal but this will be nearly a year and a half.

Yes. We have engaged-----

Remember this commitment was made two years in advance, so that is four years.

Yes, and we are working on it. We are-----

What is holding it up?

We have done a lot of work on it. We have engaged consultants and they are working through what would be an appropriate definition for adequate broadband. Mr. Ryan might want to say something further on this.

It is because it requires data collection for us to make sure that we set an appropriate level of adequate broadband because the standard will step for a number of years. We are trying to get planning for what the network is going to look like in total on the island in the next three to four years, so that we set an appropriate level. For the data we have, we have summary conclusions. At the moment we are working through the implications of these conclusions to make sure it is fair.

Can we as a committee take it that it will happen by this time next year?

I would feel confident.

Would you?

Yes.

You will be having a chat later about that.

We will certainly be updating the committee as that progresses.

I know. I will take your colleague’s commitment. That is fine.

There is a question I should have asked earlier. I think it relates to the former Minister of State, Ossian Smyth, who, in fairness, was proactive in this whole space and quite knowledgeable. I am working from memory here. Was there a commitment in relation to doing full map coverage of blackspots across the country? Where is that at?

I am not sure where the market is at. Mr. Neary might be able to comment.

The Department has been directly monitoring the-----

Has the Department published?

Not so much. I will give the broad sweep of this. A blackspot is defined as a location that has less than 30 Mb service available. If we look at the market today, there are some 150,000 premises that have less than 30 Mb broadband service available. We are monitoring the deployment of the operators to address those areas. The vast majority of those are in the intervention area that is covered by NBI. It is planning to complete its roll-out by the end of next year. That will remove about 140,000 of those, so we would be down to between 10,000 and 15,000 that are dependent on commercial operators to deploy.

I am sorry for taking up so much time. Why can the map not just be published for consumers?

There is information on what service is available in your area.

I know. I have often used it.

Blackspots are a moving entity. There are 10,000 new premises being addressed every month, so every month, 10,000 of those are coming off that.

The previous Minister committed to it. Why did it not happen?

I do not know exactly what that was. The Minister referred to the map that has been published since. It gave exact information as to what broadband cover is available in your area.

Will a blackspot map ever be published?

No, we are not publishing a blackspot map.

That is the most direct answer today. I call Deputy Carrigy.

Ironically, there is currently a joint meeting taking place with the Department of climate action and the Department of housing on Storm Éowyn. To follow on from that, what have we learned from it? Are we resilient with regard to our network going forward? It really showed how dependent people are on broadband connectivity, particularly in rural areas.

With regard to refunds, I do not know of any person who has told me they got notification from their provider that they are entitled to a refund if they are out of service. Have the companies made their customers aware that they can get a refund? As I said, I do not know of anybody and no one has ever said to me that they have.

The issue of blackspots has more to do with mobile phone coverage. My local authority carried out a survey a number of years ago throughout the county to mark where the blackspots were with regard to coverage. It then went to the market and informed the various companies where the blackspots were, and left it open to them. They have since come in, applied for planning and built on public infrastructure to be able to provide that coverage. There is a mechanism in our local authorities to work with the companies to identify where the blackspots are. They know where they are, whether it relates to broadband or otherwise.

The witnesses might answer those questions first.

I will start with the resilience side. Intensive work has been done since Storm Éowyn. We have taken lessons from Storm Éowyn as to how to prepare for future events and how we can harden networks in a number of different ways so there is not the same impact on the telecoms networks. Second, a series of actions has been taken to ensure that when an incident happens, we can respond quickly.

I will ask Mr. Forde to deal with the initiatives.

I might jump in with a question. When we met ESB Networks, the issue of cutting trees beside lines was brought up. Has an audit been done on that with the network?

First, on resilience, a lot of work is focused on preparedness and making sure the networks are better prepared for storms to lessen the impact they will have.

On the emergency response, the focus is on us being able to bring services back on. The immediate example of where we should be better prepared for this winter is the mobile network. We have worked with the industry. It has identified a subset of base stations that will be given priority status for hardening before next winter. Many of the operators have already invested in additional battery capacity and mobile generator capacity, which should ensure that those networks would go off air for less time and give a chance to ESB to repair the network. It also allows us to work with local authorities to ensure that we are able to clear routes up to those hilltop sites to allow for the refuelling of generators, etc.

A lot of work is going on at the moment in co-ordinating between us, ComReg, the industry and the local authorities to ensure that we are better prepared should a major event occur this winter. That is a signal of how things will progress. That is at the start of a longer journey to ensure better preparedness is baked in across the sector.

On the tree side, it is an issue for us in terms of the networks. Primarily, the mobile networks were not affected by physical damage. It was just that the power was unavailable for an extended period and could not sustain the generators for that period. We put a lot of emphasis on ensuring that mobile coverage has mobile generation available for those critical sites for a long period and on ensuring that connectivity is sustained even if power is unavailable. In the event that there is an incident, that we can clear access routes towards those mobile connectivities.

The trees are affecting the fixed networks. On a local access basis, trees are falling on fibre cables and copper cables, pulling on poles, etc. That is still an issue. We do not have a full answer for that. There are 120,000 km of fixed network all over the country. The emphasis is on securing the core trunks, if you like, in the network. It is probably similar for ESB Networks. It is looking at the lithium voltage networks trying to secure and make sure there is no damage to them. In a telecommunications network, a lot of that is underground already, but it is the access network where there is still an issue. We are really looking at, and the operators have invested in, how you repair fibre as quickly as possible, locating where the breaks are and getting out there to repair poles and fibre as quickly as possible in the event of an issue.

Ms Delaney might discuss price refunds.

It is an area we are investigating because anybody with prolonged outages should proactively have received a refund. Some have to date to the tune of €1.08 million. While the investigation is ongoing, that is okay. It will proactively happen as we work through every retail service provider. I would say to anybody who has suffered a prolonged outage that they can contact our consumer line and we will look into the circumstances of that. Come to us directly and we will assist any consumer who has or had issues on that front.

Given the technology we have, should a national messaging service be set up - in whatever area, be it broadband, telecommunications networks or the ESB, and given that 99% of people have mobile phones now - to inform people, working with the various providers to get updates specific to their respective counties because the providers are able to know where those phones are based? Is there merit in that on a national basis?

Yes, there is. We are working on proposals to Government on bringing forward such a system. The Minister has powers to send messages directly to consumers through SMS, but it is not a precise solution. We see in other countries, and have done a lot of work on this, a cell broadcast system. I am not sure if Mr. Price wants to say anything further.

We are in the midst of bringing forward such a system.

We are preparing proposals for the Government around a cell broadcast public warning system that offers, as Mr. Neary said, a more localised system that can target specific areas to give specific messages. It is not impacted by things like network capacity congestion or character limits. We are hoping to get Government approval of those plans shortly.

The witnesses are welcome. I apologise that I was late; I was at a meeting.

My first point is in relation to the implementation of an SMS scam filter. We need to clamp down on fraudsters. It is a massive issue, particularly for the most vulnerable in society. I get representations to my office on a regular basis of people who are embarrassed because they have been defrauded. Sometimes, the fraudsters are so skilled and the messages are so professional looking that it is very easy to get caught. I am not talking about the email that a Nigerian prince is going to give you €10 billion. I am talking about a message from An Post asking for bank details and that a parcel is waiting, for example. We have to clamp down on these fraudsters. A lot of the time, they are pretending to be big businesses in the hope of exploiting the customer base.

Research shows that we are way behind other English-speaking countries. The likes of the UK, USA, Canada and Australia are all way ahead of us in terms of this SMS scam filter. Even at European level, an SMS filter is already in place in some member states. I know the introduction of an SMS scam filter in Ireland would require new legislation by the Department, but I think we need to do more in this space. We are potentially failing our citizens by not protecting them more. I am looking for feedback from the witnesses in relation to that. I know work has happened behind the scenes but there needs to be more of an energy around this because people, be they vulnerable 80-year-olds or young people, are getting conned out of money. Good, hard-working people are getting these messages and it is costing them hundreds of thousands of euro. What are we going to do to sort this for them?

I will take this initially and then hand over to Mr. Merrigan, who can explain a little bit more about the detail of what we do. This is a much bigger issue than just telecommunications. It is a whole system problem. We have been working closely with An Garda, the Department of Finance and numerous other entities to try to see what we can do. We have looked at specific actions that we can take with regard to the telecommunication system and using telecommunications systems to try to help in this. I mentioned briefly earlier on working with the Canadians and Australians. We are trying to get a best international practice approach here. Some countries are slightly ahead in some areas. We are ahead of other countries in other areas. Everyone globally is struggling with this challenge. Mr. Merrigan might talk about the specific actions that we have taken.

So far, we have taken six specific actions. I might come back to the content scanning piece thereafter. Five of those actions, as I explained just before the Deputy came in, are on the voice side. I will not call them out again. We need to look at this in the round because scams are best perpetrated through a mix of text and voice. On the voice side, the five interventions that we have introduced have already succeeded in the last year of blocking over 120 million scam calls going to consumers in Ireland. On the SMS side-----

ComReg has blocked 120 million scam calls. How many calls have got through? I often get these calls from Belgium and all these places. Maybe my phone is being targeted a bit more.

Maybe, but maybe not, judging by my own phone. What we have done on the international side is we have blocked both on the mobile and on the fixed side people using Irish numbers to dial into Ireland from abroad. That is no longer possible. At the very outset of this when it started to become something of an epidemic, you would have been getting calls from Irish numbers with very funny numbers and stuff like that. They were originating from abroad, far away from Ireland.

That is not possible anymore. We have blocked both of those possibilities.

If a scam call comes in to Ireland, that call has to have been generated from somewhere on the island because the external ones are blocked. Am I right in saying that?

Yes, that is correct. One of the interventions we have introduced is the voice firewall, which is a dynamic intervention that is being rolled out currently. It will not be entirely live until March of next year on all the networks. In terms of those two things, using Irish numbers abroad to basically fool Irish people in the country is not possible. If someone gets a scam call with an Irish number now, that is originating in the State.

That information should be put out there, as it is good to know.

It is really important, and if the media are listening in, it is really important that this message gets out there. We have a lot of information. We publish information notices on this and there is a lot of information on our website. To be fair, great efforts have been made by the industry. A lot of players are involved. People talk about the telecommunications network, but it is actually a web of different networks, so there is a lot of interconnection involved and it can be tricky.

To come back to the point on SMS, at the moment we are working on the sender ID registry. This is settling down very well now. We are moving along with that in terms of some of the technical implementation issues that some of the operators have had in the field. There are 94 entities involved in ComReg's circle of trust, providing for the provision of SMS.

We have a great interest in content scanning. We have seen that being done abroad. We have been talking to our colleagues here about getting-----

Would we have any line of sight of the number of scam SMS messages that are sent every year? To give an example, last week a pensioner came into my office crying because she got a message from what she thought was Revenue looking for her details to update the system. She gave those details in good faith and was scammed out of a couple of hundred euro. That is just one example that happened last week. Many people come in to me saying they are getting messages from various State agencies such as An Post. So many of them are coming. There are two types of digital people: digital immigrants and digital natives. I am a digital immigrant, as I did not have a mobile phone growing up until I was 18 or 19 years of age. Even our younger generation are getting caught and they know no different. They are experts in terms of the digital side of things.

The Deputy referred to An Post and Revenue. Cases like these are what sender ID is targeted at. Over 600 million commercial messages - what the industry would call A2P messages - are sent every year. Overall, more than 2 billion SMS messages are sent every year in Ireland.

So 2 billion SMS messages are sent every year in Ireland.

Yes, every year. When you get a mobile phone and take it out of the box, there are two things on it-----

Does that figure include WhatsApp?

No, it does not include WhatsApp.

So 2 billion pure text messages are sent every year in Ireland.

Absolutely, 2 billion text messages are sent in Ireland every year.

There is probably five times that on WhatsApp.

Absolutely.

As I have said, SMS is favoured by business because it is on every phone, whether it is a smart phone or the type of phone I had to buy for my father the other week because he is in hospital. He can send SMS messages. It is on every phone; it is ubiquitous.

That is a good point.

I am conscious of the time. I feel really passionate about this because I have come across it so much in the last 12 months in particular.

We share the Deputy's passion.

I have seen really good, clever, articulate people with degrees and master's degrees who have been duped and scammed.

It only takes a second to get caught. We fully agree with the Deputy and we are engaged with our colleagues here to try to see if we can move forward on content scanning as well. The SMS sender ID registry has settled down well. It has a bit to go yet but we are generally happier now than we were with where it was when we launched it.

I am conscious of time so I will leave it at that.

Senator Noonan, do you want to ask any questions?

I have one question. Representatives of National Broadband Ireland appeared before the committee last week, if I am correct. There are still parts of the country that perhaps the commercial networks will not be able to get to. A project in Piltown recently won a Pride of Place award, but I would like to ask about what are known as blue town, community-owned broadband initiatives. I would like to hear a general comment on the support for that type of initiative, where there are community-owned broadband projects like the one in Piltown. I am not sure how many there are in the country but they tend to be in areas which are perhaps not as commercially viable to reach as certain other parts of the country.

The Government decided in 2014 to go with a centralised, national intervention scheme rather than taking a community-based approach. The most remote and most difficult to reach premises that commercial operators are not willing to address are now all included in the national broadband plan intervention. The Exchequer funding that has been made available to address those premises - over 560,000 of them - is through the national broadband plan only.

I was at another committee so I do apologise I did not get all of the questions asked.

That is okay. Before I let the witnesses go, it would be useful if the committee could have a list of the attendees at all meetings between the Department and ComReg for the last two years, maybe, and also meetings between the Department of forestry and Coillte. It was suggested that we try to tally those.

Can I come back in?

Work away.

I would like to refer to Kilkenny and Carlow specifically. I am going to get a bit more parochial here. I would be grateful if the committee could be furnished with a map of the blackspots for Kilkenny and Carlow and what is being done to remediate them. I do not expect the witnesses to have the information to hand but it would be useful for the committee.

We can give information on what is there today and what is anticipated to be there at the end of the NBI roll-out and the commercial operator roll-out so that the committee can see the data.

In fairness to the NBI, we are at full capacity in Kilkenny in terms of its particular element, which is brilliant. I would like the information for myself. I am aware of some blackspots but I would like to get an overall view of the position in County Kilkenny and in County Carlow, perhaps highlighting the five, six, seven, eight or ten most significant blackspots, setting out what is going to be done and indicating how quickly they can be turned into fully functioning broadband areas. I do not expect to get this information today but I would appreciate it if this information could be furnished to the committee.

No problem.

Thanks very much. I propose that we go into private session and allow the witnesses to leave. I thank them very much for their attendance.