Phone masts are an integral and vital part of mobile telephony. Without these masts mobile phones would cease to function. Some 2.5 million mobile phone users in Ireland would need to find an unoccupied public phone booth should they wish to make a call while outdoors.
On the question of health, no national or international health advisory authority has declared or even suggested that the radio signals from phone mast antennae are a hazard to health. The World Health Organisation, WHO, states explicitly in its phone mast fact sheet No. 193 that radio frequency fields around such masts are not considered a health risk. This view is supported by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, ICNIRP, and by the European Union Council of Health Ministers in their recommendation of July 1999 concerning limiting public exposure to electromagnetic fields. Individual countries who have issued statements in recent years reassuring their populations of the absence of health risks from phone masts include Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.
To further reassure the Tallaght residents who are concerned about their exposure to phone masts I will arrange, if required by the residents, that the national survey of public exposure to phone mast radio emissions, which is now being commenced by the Commission for Communications Regulation, will include measurements in their area. This should demonstrate whether actual exposures are typically thousands of times less than the exposure levels recommended as safe by expert organisations.
