asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs when the building of the automatic telephone exchange will start at Carrick-on-Shannon, County Leitrim.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Telephone Service.
16.
The Commissioners of Public Works have advised that, if all goes well, work on this building will commence before the end of this year.
17.
asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs if he will provide a telephone service for a prominent member of Alcoholics Anonymous (name supplied) in County Cork who requires the service urgently in connection with his work on behalf of that organisation.
It is expected that the application in question will be attended to by the end of August next. Earlier attention to this and other applications in the area concerned is not practicable pending completion of an underground cabling scheme.
In view of the importance and urgency and the confidential nature of the work done by this person for this organisation, would the Minister not try to bring forward the date?
This is a structural and technical matter rather than one of priority. Provision of service is dependent on the cabling position and priority, if accorded, would not result in any significantly earlier installation of the telephone.
(Dublin Central): Would the Minister agree that people engaged in that type of humanitarian work on a voluntary basis should be accorded some kind of priority?
I do not think priority arises here; it is a matter of cabling, a matter of physical capacity to install the telephone. For a good many years past the procedure has been that priority on grounds of liability to receive emergency calls for medical reasons is limited to doctors and nurses employed by health authorities on district nursing duties, that is, not even to all nurses. To extend priority to telephones to be installed in the homes of people doing welfare and charitable work would swell the priority list and open the way to representations in a kind of grey area. I am not at present satisfied that requires to be done. In the particular case with which this question is concerned it is a matter of physical incapacity to deliver.
Would the Minister say whether or not hairdressers are on the priority list?