Microwave radiation is potentially as danger as asbestos and an "even more insidious threat", a Dublin TD claimed. Mr Joe Higgins (Socialist Party, Dublin West) said that the proliferation of masts for the mobile phone system in urban and rural areas was giving rise to serious public concern on health grounds about the emissions of non-ionising electromagnetic radiation.
In a debate on the adjournment of the Dail he told the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms O'Rourke, that there was also "huge concern in every county about the imposition of phone masts in residential areas".
The Minister said that her Department was looking at the possibility of legislation for the mandatory sharing of masts and other telecommunications infrastructure.
She told Mr Higgins that the mobile telephones in use in Ireland met the exposure standards recommended by major health advisory bodies world-wide.
Mr Higgins called on the Government to introduce new, stricter guidelines and said that those issued last year by the Minister for the Environment were "so weak as to be absolutely useless".
The Minister assured the House that "development in the telecommunications sector will not take place at the expense of health or environmental concerns" and she gave her commitment to ensure that the views expressed in the Dail would be taken fully into account in the future development of the sector.