SEANAD REPORT:MINISTER FOR Communications Eamon Ryan said he would seek to amend the Broadcasting Bill to deal with mobile phone service scams. He would bring forward provisions for the more effective regulation of premium rate services.
Scams were a common occurrence, particularly for young people, and this caused real anger for parents and young people when they discovered that they inadvertently ran up large bills on their mobile phones.
He said up to 30,000 complaints had been made last year by people who were victims of these scams. “The mobile phone industry is getting a bad reputation from all this, which is not in its interest. The industry leaders are as keen as anybody else to rid the public of this nuisance marketing activity.”
Joe O’Reilly (FG) emphasised the need to curb alcohol advertising in any new arrangements concerning broadcasting.
Martin Brady (FF) said the glamorising of alcohol in advertisements had reached the stage where many people would think that it was more important than medicine.
Eugene Regan (FG) asked if the Taoiseach had directed that there should be no clarification as to whether Ireland had a veto on the WTO negotiations.
The Minister for Agriculture had failed to clarify this in his address to the House on Wednesday. The Progressive Democrats leader Ciarán Cannon had sought clarification and a Senator from the Green Party had said last week that we had no veto.
He said farm leaders had raised a legitimate question that would influence many farmers in how they would vote on the Lisbon Treaty. It was imperative that the Government clarify the situation and state its position.
“I question whether the Taoiseach has given a diktat on this matter, whether he is in a sense getting combative with farm leaders and trying to isolate or punish them by giving a direction that there is to be no response to what is a very legitimate question. The lesson from this is that the problem farmers have is not with Europe but with the Government.”
The so-called cancer czar Prof Tom Keane should immediately withdraw an incredibly insulting remark about doctors, Dr Liam Twomey (FG) said. The professor had claimed that doctors referred their own family members to Dublin hospitals when they were ill. That was an incredible charge to make.
Dr Twomey said he and Fine Gael colleague Deputy James Reilly both had close family members who had had cancer and had been treated at the nearest available hospital. “We did not deliberately send them to a hospital to which we would not send our own patients.”
The remark should be withdrawn because the implication was that doctors provided one level of service for family members and another for their patients.