Widespread network outages experienced by eir customers across the country have been labelled as “unacceptable” by a Clare TD.
Thousands of customers including individuals working from home, frontline workers, teachers, students “continue to be undermined by a service that falls far below the standards expected of the country’s main telecoms provide,” Deputy Michael McNamara (IND) stated.
He said, “It is disappointing but not surprising to see such extensive issues continuing less than a week after eir told Oireachtas members that customer complaint levels in late January were back to pre Covid volumes”.
Minister for Transport, Environment, Climate and Communications, Eamon Ryan (GP) and the Tanáiste Leo Varadkar (FG) met with the company to discuss ongoing service issues in November, after which they expressed their “hope” that consumers should see improvements in services from both providers “in the near future.” ComReg also said at the time that the problems with Eir were “so deep and so problematic that customers were really left out in the cold, and that is very unacceptable”.
Network issues in West Clare plus more widespread faults across the country have led Deputy McNamara to call for eir to face “greater scrutiny and sanctions from ComReg over its repeated failure to deliver for all of its customers”.
“Despite having been mentioned three times in the Programme for Government, no additional supports have yet been provided to ComReg to keep pressure on telecoms companies to provide services they have advertised and are contracted to provide. Without additional resources to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute providers for not fulfilling their responsibilities to consumers, ComReg will remain a barking dog that doesn’t bite,” the Scariff native stated.
McNamara added, “We are gone beyond the point of ‘hope’ espoused by Ministers Varadkar and Ryan. Government must adequately resource ComReg if real positive change is to occur for telecoms customers”.
