Large chunks of Galway have been left without internet access for weeks amid storm damage to the county’s ‘crumbling’ telecoms network.

With landlines down, too, a stark warning has been issued that the elderly and vulnerable reliant on personal monitored alarms – also known as panic buzzers – could be left without support if an accident were to occur.

At the same time, there were at least two medical practices in Connemara that were unable to operate properly for days on end while they awaited reconnection to their online systems.

A meeting of Galway County Council on Monday was told that it was damage inflicted during Storm Bert in November that wreaked havoc on the network – but the poor state of this critical infrastructure prior to the storm had led to the persistence of the problems since.

Connemara-based Councillor Gerry King (FF) said Eir – the private company responsible for the network – was struggling to get to grips with damage caused on November 23.

“The vulnerable and elderly are most affected due to the outage of the landline phones and emergency buzzers. There are still quite a lot of older people reliant on the landline.

“This has been going on for nearly four weeks and that’s because the Eir network is falling apart. Years of neglect is coming home to roost,” said Cllr King.

Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.