A Donegal County Councillor has said ongoings issues with poor phone coverage in a south Donegal village should be rectified within days.
Concern has been raised locally in Malin Beg over the continuous lack of signal strength in the area, with Community First Responders prohibited from being contacted in the area due to the lack of coverage.
However, Cllr Niamh Kennedy said funding had been granted and workers would be addressing the issue imminently.
She told Donegal Daily: “This has been going on for years now, which is far too long, and you can understand why people in the community are so upset over this issue.
“Funding has been sought and granted and the (Donegal County) Council have granted permission for them to carry out the work and a contractor has been appointed.
“It should take two or three days for the work to be completed and we are just waiting for them to arrive any day now.
“They are going to erect the mast in the old school and that should finally sort the problem.
“I am just waiting on an actual date from the council and I have been working on this for such a long time, so I will be happy for the people of Malin Beg to get this long-overdue work completed.
“And it is first of its kind in the country, the way we are doing it, where the local community, a local councillor, local authority and government department are all getting involved.”
Meanwhile, funding had been granted to the local community recently for extra defibrillators, but Cllr Kennedy said they were of no use if the emergency services or first responders could not be reached.
She continued: “It is a huge concern for the area (that emergency services cannot be contacted) and it would have been one of the presentations that Donegal County Council would have made to the Department of Communication in regards to Malin Beg.
“We had a situation where the doctor refused to come into the area because they couldn’t be contacted so the patient would need to go to the local surgery rather than the doctor coming out.
“And it is the same with the Silver Strand beach,” she added. “If anything was to happen, it is 200 steps down to the beach and there is simply no coverage.
“It was getting that bad that there was a consideration in the area to get a phone box because people didn’t want to be annoying people in their homes if something did happen.
“But it is definitely on the way and the community should be assured of that after an awfully long wait.”
