Sir, - As Chris Kimmerling (May 5th) points out, the Telecommunications Bill as proposed would allow telecommunications companies (including mobile phone companies) "to acquire compulsorily the rights over land for the purpose of establishing or maintaining fixed telecommunications infrastructure, including any associated physical infrastructure." (Section 7.2.)
This is one of the most draconian pieces of legislation in the history of the State. The government is indeed facilitating megarich telecommunications operators to compulsorily acquire the land and rights of Irish citizens whose property rights are supposedly guaranteed by the Constitution.
The Green Party is calling on all residents' associations, property owners and farmers to band together and resist this Bill. Section 14.3 of the Bill will also give company personnel the right to "drill, bore, probe or excavate, carry out soil tests and remove soil" - even before a licence or order is granted.
Contrary to former statements by the Minister for Public Enterprise, Mary O'Rourke, the Minister now admits that mobile phone companies will be able to exploit the provisions of this Bill and I quote from her answer to a question on this issue:
"Apart from these provisions regarding compulsory acquisition of rights over land, one of the other purposes of the Bill is to encourage the sharing of infrastructure by operators, both fixed and mobile."
"The Bill recognises, in the first instance, that infrastructure sharing is a matter for commercial negotiation among network operators."
"The Bill does not exclude the possibility that infrastructure established along a right of way compulsorily acquired by a fixed operator could be shared with a mobile telephone operator."
The European Commission has confirmed to me that the EU directive (97/33/EC) on which the Irish Bill is based allows for the points of interconnection between mobile networks and fixed telecommunications infrastructure. This means that mobile phone companies will be able to avail of the Bill.
The Minister and her Department have been running a campaign of misinformation to try to cover up the fact that the Government is legalising the theft of people's land and property by the telecommunications industry, including mobile phone companies. They have now been rumbled. - Yours, etc.,
Nuala Ahern, MEP, Greystones, Co Wicklow.
