Mobile phone charges - Yet another symptom of our failure

This week’s first indication that Ireland is indeed a different, peculiar place came yesterday when the European Commission reported that Irish mobile phone users pay, on average, five times more for calls than users in the EU country where calls are cheapest.

The commission recorded an 800% gap between mobile fees in the cheapest and most expensive EU states. Lithuanians pay 1.9c a minute; we pay 10.2c.

“Cheaper mobile charges” may not be the rallying call to turn St Stephen’s Green into a Tahrir Square, but the confirmation that we are being treated like suckers on yet another level is, tragically, another piece in the jigsaw showing why Ireland seems so utterly confounded by what it takes to be a modern, progressive, fair, and efficient society.