County plan to blame for lack of mobile coverage, says O2

UNLESS planning restrictions on masts are eased, people in parts of Kerry will not get mobile phone coverage, a leading phone company warned yesterday.

There was outcry this week when the wife of an elderly man, who developed a heart problem in the Black Valley, was unable to make contact with doctors.

Mobile phones do not work in the valley, in the heart of the Kerry mountains, and, instead of landlines, the 70 residents use radio-link phones.

Though councillors protested at the absence of a mobile service, the onus is on them to amend the county development plan which bans masts from certain areas of Kerry, according to O2.

Early on Sunday morning, a doctor spent several hours in the valley trying to find the home of the sick man, John Downing, after a radio-link phone failed to work in the valley. Mr Downing is well again and recovering.

The case was highlighted by independent councillor Danny Healy-Rae, who claimed lives were being put at risk. He called on mobile operators to provide a proper service in disadvantaged and remote areas.

O2 Ireland technology director Oliver Coughlan yesterday said his company was committed to investing in Kerry. However, he added that unless current planning restrictions were removed, customers would continue to suffer inadequate coverage.

The spectacular Black Valley, near Killarney, is a High Special Amenity Area and Secondary Special Amenity Area in the 2003 county development plan.

“Development is highly regulated in this area and attempts by telecommunications operators to provide coverage, via sensitively placed infrastructure, in the area were unsuccessful,” Mr Coughlan said.

He said the development plan prevented mobile operators from locating base stations within certain distances of designated buildings and amenities. This new provision was put in place in 2003 against the advice of Kerry County Council forward planners.

“The councillors themselves authorised this provision into the development plan. Were it not for An Bord Pleanála overturning local authority decisions, it is certain that many existing masts throughout the county would be removed and new masts permitted only in the most remote areas,” Mr Coughlan continued.

There was strong opposition, he said, from some councillors to mobile phone infrastructure. The development plan banned masts within designated townlands such as Farmers Bridge, Lissardboola and Dromavally.

“No one in Kerry County Council has opposed this limitation,” Mr Coughlan said.

He also said criminal damage to mobile phone infrastructure in Kerry was a major issue. In 2004, a monopole of a competing mobile operator was taken down in the Fenit area.

In 2003, a monopole used by O2 in the Beaufort area was taken down. The structure has since been re-erected and those responsible had been before the courts.