Committee to call for phone mast ban near schools

A cross-party Oireacthas committee is to call for a ban on mobile phone masts near schools and playgrounds, it emerged today.

John Gormley, Green Party chairman, revealed the TDs would recommend restrictions on sites for masts over fears about the effects of radiation on youngsters.

The Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications will publish the proposals in a report due out later this week.

Mr Gormley said he would fully support the ban which he had been pushing for in the Dail for several months.

“The Government itself has excluded schools from the schedule of public buildings on which mobile phone masts can be installed,” he said.

“But as radiation from mobile phone base stations is emitted laterally, schoolchildren will be exposed to as much or even more radiation from a base station located next to their school as from a base station located on the school building itself.”

Mr Gormley noted a report from the United Kingdom Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones which recommended adopting a precautionary principle on the placing of phone masts.

He said the Stewart Report had detailed a lack of peer-reviewed scientific research on the biological effects of radiation.

“The Stewart Report also notes that children will absorb more energy per kilogram of body weight from an external electromagnetic field than adults,” Mr Gormley said.

In March of this year Mr Gormley battled plans to build a mobile phone base station on top of the Central Statistics Office in Rathmines, south Dublin.

And he urged the Government to take a cautious approach to sites for masts.