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JUST OVER 500 phone calls have been made to date on each of 63 so-called “digital kiosks” Eir installed since 2021 to replace older phone boxes – and to support large LED advertising screens.
At least a third of the “digital kiosks” have been in place for over three years now, with the remainder installed since.
Eir told The Journal that 33,000 calls had been made on the kiosks as of the end of September – an average of 524 per kiosk to date.
While the total number of calls is low, some calls are likely to be important. Eir reported that 40% of calls were to emergency numbers or 1800 freephone numbers, including crisis lines and helplines.
The state stopped requiring to Eir to provide payphones in 2020, following a steady and steep decline in usage.
Eir had argued at that stage that there was “simply no justification for an intrusive regulatory intervention in the form of a payphone universal service obligation (USO)”. By 2020, only nine payphones in the country met the usage threshold above which phone boxes had to be retained under the old USO.
In the late 2010s, that threshold was an average of one minute usage per day over the previous six months, including 30 seconds to emergency and freephone numbers.
At that time, Women’s Aid was among organisations arguing that phone boxes still had value and the USO should be kept. It said some women who called its helpline used payphones, and may not have any other private space to make such a call.
Eir’s new kiosks hold payphones and a touchscreen showing a map of the local area and some local information, particularly aimed at tourists, with the outside of the kiosk comprising a large LED advertising screen.
Clear Channel, the outdoor advertising firm which operates the screens, tells potential clients they provide “strong vehicle and pedestrian audiences while also targeting key communter routes as well as city and town main streets”.
Major brands such as Zalando and AIB, as well as state agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, currently advertise on the screens.
In a statement, Eir said the kiosk touchscreens provided “public information” and allow councils provide links to “local information such as event guides”.
When The Journal visited one kiosk on the northside of Dublin earlier this month its event guide featured events that were already over, including the Dublin Fringe Festival and the Phoenix Park Biodiversity Festival. Some events, such as Music in Monkstown, were both over and located on the opposite side of the city.
Feljin Jose, a Green Party councillor on Dublin City Council, has described the kiosks as a “land grab for ad space” and questioned their overall value to citizens, relative to their value to private companies as a source of advertising revenue.
He said kiosks clutter footpaths, including in city centre areas with high pedestrian footfall.
LED advertising screens which must be bright enough to grab people’s attention both day and night use a large amount energy, he added.
Jose noted that the kiosks have been positioned with their widest elevation spanning the footpath. This makes the LED advertising screen fully visible to oncoming traffic, but leaves less passing distance for pedestrians than if they were turned 90 degrees.
He added that the Dublin kiosks are accompanied by unsightly utility boxes which could have been located under the ground and were not included on drawings provided to the council when planning permission was sought.
“I think there’s some value to having public phones in some locations that people could use,” Jose said, adding that with over 20 across the city now this public requirement has now been met.
“I don’t see why [public phones] need to be given over to private companies and take so much public space away for their own advertising,” he added.
“The one on Mary Street [pictured below last year] blocks up most of the footpath – a phone doesn’t need to take up half the footpath,” he said.
“What’s the city council getting out of it? Why are we just giving away space to any private company that asks?”
Last year, I went through 22 planning applications for these eir 'telephone kiosks' which are primarily just advertising units. This week, I made 7 planning enforcement complaints to Dublin City Council and hope to submit several more. pic.twitter.com/ZIAkPCHed4
— Feljin Jose (@Feljin_J) March 3, 2023
Similar concerns have been raised by members of the public. One objection filed to an application for planning permission for a kiosk on Mount Street in Dublin last year by a woman who walks that way to work in the city centre stated: “Our footpaths are already incredibly cluttered and removing this clutter should be a priority”.
Dublin City Council did not respond to a request for comment.
Decisions by the city’s planners to grant permission for the kiosks have noted that they are located where old phone boxes used to be, and that while there are supposed to be restrictions on advertising in residential and certain urban areas, the particular nature of these screens was not deemed to have an “undue negative impact”.
In its decision on Mount Street last year, the planning department noted that “kiosks are used to contact free phone numbers such as crisis and help agencies and therefore also provide a critical function and service”.
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Methinks Feljin Jose of the Green Party should stop being such an attention seeker & consider that 40% of calls originating from these are made to emergency services. Surely, if these phones “only” save a dozen lives per annum they’re a very worthwhile service. Yesterday, we had an article how Roderick OG was ‘concerned ‘ about the demise of the greens & they’re not required anymore…..looking at this chancers contribution to society I can see why
@Frank Mc Carthy: I’d say very few of those calls were genuine and mostly just kids messing around making free calls
@Frank Mc Carthy: that’s an excellent point Frank
@J B: They have a much better system than that and besides, they all have mobile phones!
It’s like every endeavour this country takes on the simplest of projects is absolutely terrible planning and execution. How do they get simple things so wrong time and time and time again.
Advertising helps with the revenue to keep them running, there’s no need for them to be so large.
How hard is it to keep information up to date? How hard is it to link in traffic news, weather events, or other relevant information.
This is just so basic. And I bet the people who came up with the idea and run are paid a fortune for this – how are these people in this position??? It’s beggars belief how everything in this country is absolutely backwards.
@Rafa C: They are as large as possible for the advertising revenue, That is all they are advertising hoardings in prime locations.
The people who came up with the idea were a London Advertising firm and Eir copied BT. Most of the ads are from DCC. All paid for.
Just an eyesore and a target for vandals. They serve absolutely no purpose in today’s world. Another complete waste of taxpayers hard earned money!
@Maurice Lee: serve absolutely no purpose? Did you read the article at all? The 40% bit? And as for the “taxpayers money” comment, eir hasn’t been in State ownership since 1999. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good rant
@Maurice Lee: Wrong they are belong to a private company EIR. Cost the taxpayer nothing!
Clearly it’s an advertising board with a phone attached to circumvent planning.
Many moon’s ago when i was a kid a length of string attached to two tin cans was my phone.
The councillor is late to the party. A councillor complained to the council and was supported by others.
HIS PARTY supported these phones replacing the old ones.
How do I know that, easy I was involved in the fight against them.
Eir removed the old phones but still owned the sites but were giving them up when they found out that this was possible. It is a cash grab. We fought it as they are blocking the pavements across the city and when added to the outside drinking areas, the footpaths become extremely narrow. Again the councillor missed all of that too
Wow, a meaningless story that the plebs are allowed comment on.
Get rid.
Just a megaphone on a string should do…. Back to the Middle Ages.
When I tried to use the one that was put up in Dundalk, I couldn’t get it to work no matter what I tried. Tried it with the €2 coin charge that’s on them without luck and also failed to get it to work with my debit card. I’m not sure what I was doing wrong as I followed the instructions….
Sounds like public clutter to me?
Absolutely pointless get rid of them
@Trump24: Funny, I used to hear the same sentiment from a friend of mine concerning the old phone boxes years ago. Kept going on about how there was no need for them as only a matter of time until everybody would have one, and instantly contactable. Then his car broke down when he was travelling alone, and when he reached for that brand new fancy phone, the battery was dead! He had to walk a couple miles in the pitch black to the next village and use the phone box there. He’s kept his mouth shut on the subject since. Yes, phones are much more advanced these days, with longer battery life and everybody has one and so on, but people do not realise how important public phones are until they find themselves in trouble, with a dead phone, and no one around to help them.
@Pat Barry: would there have been a public phone box convenient to the location where his car broke down? If there was, how would he have known about it? More relevantly, how would he have known in which direction to go to find the public phone box?
@Minnie Mouse: You seem to think he didn’t know the area, Of course he knew where the phone box he used was, and he knew where he was when he broke down and he knew how far he had to walk. We all knew because we needed to back then. I’m going to ask you a serious question. Are you under 40? Because your reply to me has the air of someone who does not realise that there was a time before mobile phones. Even 30 years ago, not every house had a landline, and having google maps on phones is only a relatively recent development. Back then, we had to know where things were for when we needed them, such as where the phones were along the routes you travelled often. Because unlike today, the infornation was not at the tip of our fingers, but that’s only as long as the devices are charged.
I’m only assuming are all these phone things in Dublin. This is the first I’ve heard of their existence. I’m totally blind so there would be no accessibility features to enable a person like me use them, it does sound like its yet another obstacle in certain parts.
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