asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs the total number of phones destroyed or damaged by vandals in the past year; the cost of this damage; and if his Department will consider setting up a post office patrol service as a deterrent.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Damage to Telephones.
145.
About 600 public telephones were damaged by vandals during 1971, many of them on numerous occasions. I regret that the figure of cost of damage in 1971 is not available yet. Patrolling both as a deterrent and with a view to detecting offenders is a matter for the Garda Síochána.
Would the Minister consider the suggestions I made this year and last year on the Estimate that fibre glass should be substituted for plain glass in the telephone kiosks and so ensure that at least the structure of the kiosk will not be damaged.
The Deputy will probably be aware that we are changthe structure of the telephone kiosks concerned.
I have been looking at one which has been wrecked four or five times in the last couple of months. They have not got around to that particular one, and so I was not aware——
There are areas where boxes are destroyed as soon as they are repaired. We repair them a certain number of times, but if they are continually wrecked we leave them there for a certain length of time.
The Minister is aware that it is not the people who use the telephone kiosks who wreck them, so it is wrong to punish the people who want to use them.
Would the Minister consider making the receiver more vandal-proof, say, embedding it more in the wall.
I am not making a short answer to the Deputy when I say that if a vandal wants to wreck a telephone kiosk there is nothing you or I or the best technicians in the world can do about it.
If it takes a little longer to break the equipment may be somebody would arrive in time to catch the culprits. If they can be broken very quickly——
Possibly if you get concrete kiosks——
It has been reported that people who were interested in taking away a concrete telephone kiosk came along with a lorry with a hydraulic lift on it, jacked the kiosk up on to the lorry and went away with it.