Angry villagers still without phone service after week

ANGRY villagers have criticised Eircom for failing to fix a fault which has left them without the proper use of their phones for more than a week.

More than 200 customers living in Cullen, north Cork, have been without a proper landline service since last Tuesday week and local businesses are claiming the fault is costing them dearly.

An Eircom spokesman said engineers were working flat out to find the source of the problem but because the fault surfaced intermittently it was hard to locate.

Donie O’Sullivan who owns Bioclear, a sewerage treatment company employing 14 people, said the sales and service side of the business had been badly affected.

“It’s costing me a fortune. I’m having to use my mobile phone so the bill for that will be ridiculous. The business we’ve lost could be phenomenal,” Mr O’Sullivan.

He said that last July, following similar problems, Eircom had to replace a line in the area and promised there would no further interruptions in the service.

“We’ve had problems in Cullen for a number of years, but the latest is the worst.

“They’d want to give us free phones for the first have of next year to make up for it,” Mr O’Sullivan said.

Connie O’Sullivan, the owner of a coach hire company, said he had also lost business.

“A number of our clients weren’t able to contact us and some of them had to go elsewhere,” Mr O’Sullivan said.

He said that he’d had little response on the matter from Eircom. “If this had happened in a built-up area I can’t help feeling that it would have been fixed quicker,” he said.

Communications company owner Conor Hickey said he repeatedly tried to contact the Eircom helpline where he was regularly put on hold.“I was given the run-around,” Mr Hickey said.

Eircom apologised to customers. “Technicians are working on trying to locate the fault.”