Back to The Future in 1981

Sponge Bob

The Opposition Spokesperson for Communications Stood Up In The Dáil and made the following speech (hint FF were in Governmment , Early 1981)

It is unfortunate that we have the worst telecommunications service in western Europe because we are a small island on the periphery of Europe and the lifeblood of our economy depends on exports and foreign trade. It is vitally important that all our industries should have available to them the most efficient and sophisticated telecommunications system that can be provided. There are jobs at stake. There are businesses at stake. The entire western seaboard is dependent on tourism. It is constituted of regions to which successive Governments have been trying to attract industry in order to create jobs. Business has been stymied and impeded and severely disrupted because of the inadequacy of the telephone service. When I was Minister for the Gaeltacht I met industrialist after industrialist suffering extreme frustration because of the inadequacy of the telephone service.

Reference has been made to the extension of the data processing service. This is very important. I had a very bad experience in relation to a computer operation established in Furbo in the Connemara Gaeltacht which subsequently folded up because of unsatisfactory telephone connections. The transmission of computer data is done through the normal telephone system. Because the system was so bad the industry was lost.

Then a party colleague lepped to his feet

I appeal to the Minister to stop installing telephones. I appeal to him to try to get those which are already installed working. Apart from the fact that we have the worst telephone service in Europe and that the Minister of State in the Department seems to have some special reason for changing the criteria for the erection of telephone kiosks and installs telephones at an enormous rate, the cost of the telephone call has risen enormously. When one pays a high price for something one expects to get a good service. I do not mind what the Minister does in the rest of the country, but will he please stop installing telephones in County Galway and will he get those which are already connected working?

and then up lepped Albert to answer these points

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Reynolds):

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I will give the Deputy the worst places in the world. I will give him the worst places in Europe, if he wants to know them. If the Deputy wants to go to parts of Spain, parts of Scotland or parts of Wales, he will see a worse telephone system than we have here. But it is an Irish trait to continually knock our own, so we are told we are the worst. That is typical of what I hear from people like Deputy Donnellan and others, who constantly reject any efforts made here to raise our standards to EEC levels or beyond them. If the Deputy wants to go to the west coast of America he will find that in California there are ten party lines, which does not exist in Tuam or anywhere else in County Galway

Great Stuff , of course they know just as little in that place some 25 years later , have a look at some of these for a laugh .