I am the owner of a mobile phone which facilitates my everyday business. Like many other Deputies I am deeply concerned at the huge rash of planning applications which have been received in the local authority, of which I am a member, and in all other local authorities during the past five or six months. I have been trying to raise the issue since then when I tabled a parliamentary question to the Minister for Health.
I do not understand the reason we need more than one mobile phone transmission network. In the case of any other utility, for example, gas, electricity or water there is a single basic delivery system. The mobile phone network seems to be the only example where we must have two competing systems. At a meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts today, Mr. John Loughrey, Secretary of the Department of Transport, Energy and Communications, agreed that there should be one network and that, perhaps, the Minister, Deputy Lowry, should have insisted, from the beginning, on one network for this facility. I accept the comments made by the Minister for the Environment, Deputy Howlin, last evening in relation to the planning authorities, but the creation of a national grid cannot be left to a number of planning authorities. It was not done with the ESB or with the other utilities.
Deep concerns have been expressed about exposure to microwave and electromagnetic radiation. The Bristol study released yesterday suggests a link between electromagnetic radiation and the attraction of radon in the substructure and cancer. We will have 600 high frequency electromagnetic transmission masts which will surely have similar effects through creating intense electromagnetic fields. If I had more time I could refer to American and Canadian experts who have expressed great concern on health grounds.
My constituency, which is one of the most beautiful in the country, stretches from Coolock to Howth. It has been defaced recently by the erection of these new transmission networks. The masts are unbelievably ugly; they are often up to 40 metres high and may be three by two by four metres in area. A pleasant suburban street in Sutton now has a mast dominating its skyline which looks like an alien craft. In Raheny, Donaghmede and in other areas on the north side of Dublin, applications are pending or have been approved for these horrendous structures and, indeed, some have been built. They are a form of environmental pollution. One of the applications before Dublin Corporation was for a site at Our Lady's Hospice and another is for a Christian Brothers School, which is unbelievable when one considers the consequences.
The Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications should call in Esat Telecom and Telecom Éireann and ask them to consider the possibility of creating a single transmission network. The Minister for the Environment could insist on this being implemented at local level through the planning authorities and the Minister for Health could closely monitor the resulting single network. The deregulation of important utilities under EU provisions carries with it significant consequences. This is the first time a totally new facility has come onto the market which needs a new nationwide transmission network. In the past it was taken for granted that there would be a single network and I see no reason there cannot be a single network in this case, if necessary independently operated and facilitating a number of competing users.
On environmental and health grounds the rash of applications for these monstrosities which are beginning to appear requires urgent action from the Minister, Deputy Howlin, and his colleagues.