Thousands of Munster residents still without landlines after storms

More than 5,000 homes in Cork, Kerry, and Limerick are still without landline phones after recent storms.

Many elderly people, living alone or in isolated areas, are affected by the delays in repairing the network.

Some consumers have been without a service for several weeks and it will take about two weeks to clear the remaining fault backlogs, according to Eircom.

There are 2,700 faults in Cork, 1,500 in Limerick, and 850 in Kerry.

“In the case of all three counties, there is a significant level of cable and pole replacement jobs needed and this can be a lengthy and difficult process,” a spokeswoman said.

“We are prioritising those areas with large numbers of customer faults and the oldest [non-network repair] faults are also being given priority attention in all three counties.”

Kerry county councillors Brendan Cronin and Bobby O’Connell highlighted the plight of the elderly in particular.

Mr Cronin branded the service a disgrace and said he was aware of an elderly person living alone in the centre of Killarney without a landline for a month.

“There are still thousands of older people who do not have mobile phones and who are totally dependent on their fixed phones,” said Mr Cronin.

“Importantly, their alarm systems are worked off the fixed phone system. I’ve come across some of these people in isolated rural areas who’re living in fear and panic and are wondering what they could do to raise an alarm if anything happened them during the night.”

Mr Cronin also criticised the Eircom fault reporting system which left customers “talking to answering machines”. He said the loss of hundreds of Eircom staff late last year had led to a massive deterioration in the service.

Eircom corporate affairs director Paul Bradley rejected claims the company was short of staff or resources to deal with the crisis.

He said the vast majority of staff who left were desk-based employees and Eircom had lost less than 100 field technicians.

Some Eircom staff, he said, have been working on faults and repairs since mid- December while crews from the eastern side of the country were drafted in to the south-west to assist in the aftermath of the storms.

Meanwhile, Cork Fine Gael Senator Colm Burke has criticised mobile phone providers for failing to provide a proper service to the Courtbrack, Foxes Bridge, and Mathey areas near Blarney. He said it was a disgrace that an area within 24km of the second largest city in the country did not have adequate telecommunications services.