Youghal is hanging up on the public telephone box with all kiosks to be removed from the streets of the town in the coming months. Photo Kieran McCarthy (YoughalOnline.com)

The nearest alternate payphone is located in the Square, Dungarvan! The once familiar and iconic site of the illuminated payphone on the streets and estates of the town looks set to be the stuff of nostalgia. This means there will be no more public phone service in East Cork’s leading tourist town especially for visitors who do not have mobile phones. Interested parties are invited to submit their views in relation to the proposed removal in writing before 16th March 2009. Please contact- S. Culbert, Regional Payphone Manager, Eircom HQ, Waterford City, Co. Waterford.
Eircom said it will disconnect and remove 2,151 of the remaining 4,850 public payphones dotted around the country’s, starting in April. In the early 1990s, there were more than 8,500 public payphones across the Republic.
Michael Ring, Fine Gael’s community and rural affairs spokesman, denounced the move as an attack on the poor and people who live in the Irish countryside.
“They have taken away the railways, the post offices and this is another attack on rural Ireland and an attack on the most needy in society, who can’t afford mobile phones,” he said.
But Eircom spokeswoman Dearbhaill Rossiter insisted usage of payphones had plummeted by more than 80pc over the past five years, simply making many no longer financially viable.
She added: “We are not removing every payphone in Ireland, but in the case of these particular payphones there is little and in some cases no usage. It is actually costing us money to retain them.”

Price
Calls from payphones now incur a minimum €1 charge — compared with just 11c for a local call from other landlines — but Eircom said cost was not the issue putting people off using phone boxes as there had been no increase in calls when they ran price promotions. The €1 charge also went towards cleaning and repairing payphones, a spokesman said.
Asked why so many Eircom payphones do not work and swallow people’s money, the spokesman said that they endeavoured to keep them working, but they were prone to vandalism and robbery.
Mr Ring said there was a social context to public payphones and they should not be looked at only in terms of financial returns.
“These payphones might be the only contact an old man in a rural area has with a doctor or a hospital, if they don’t have a mobile or a landline,” he said.
ComReg, the phone industry regulator, said Eircom is obliged to provide “enough” payphones and “spread them fairly around the country”.
However, there are no set minimum figures or hard rules on the geographic spread needed, with the numbers being determined by demand, according to a ComReg spokesman.