Parents slam rugby text message ‘racket’

PARENTS have criticised a good luck phone text campaign for the Irish rugby team as a “money-making racket”.

Mobile phone company O2 are charging fans up to 61 cent to send a text message of support to the Irish rugby team in advance of the crucial Six Nations matches against Wales and England.

Although it has been promoted as raising money for charity, just 17c from each message will go to the Irish Rugby Football Union Charitable Trust. The trust provides financial support for players who have suffered serious injuries playing rugby.

The National Parents Council (Post Primary) said the deal was another example of students and children, the biggest users of text messaging, being targeted by commercial interests.

“People should steer clear of this. If it was all going to charity, it wouldn’t be so bad. But it’s targeting young people and it’s just a money-making racket,” said president Michael O’Reagan.

Text messaging has become an increasingly lucrative area for mobile phone companies. Irish people spent more than 2 million sending 15 million text messages on New Year’s Eve. More recently, O2, RTÉ and service provider Eircom Response earned 2.7m from text and phone votes during the You’re a Star TV programme.

The good luck messages have been welcomed by Ireland manager Eddie O’Sullivan.

“The next couple of weeks are incredibly important for rugby in Ireland and any support will be gratefully accepted by the squad and management,” he said.

If the target of one million good luck text messages from Irish rugby supporters is reached, more than 600,000 will be raised with 170,000 going to the IRFU charitable trust.

O2 has defended the amount allocated to charity, saying that it was barely covering its costs.

“We’re not making any money from it. We have to pay the service provider, RegTel and pay for the 6,000 holiday for the winner and the cost of advertising the competition,” said spokeswoman Fiona Downing. RegTel, the regulator for premium rate services, said its levy on the good luck texts only amounted to one cent.

“If O2 are saying our levy is pushing up the cost, that is a bit of a weak argument. And the cost to O2 of carrying the message would only be 11 cent, the price of a standard text message,” regulator Pat Breen said.

He said he would be “very sympathetic” towards waiving the one cent levy if approached by the IRFU’s Charitable Trust.