In the Dublin suburb of Crumlin people rely on a service where eight out of ten telephone boxes are not working.
Due to a strike the entire Dublin area has been left without any maintenance workers to repair telephones. This has left many homes, businesses and districts without telephone connections. Installation of new telephones cannot take place.
8 of the 10 phone boxes we visited in the Crumlin area were out of order.
In the south Dublin suburb of Crumlin, private phones are the exception rather than the rule. People depend on local telephone boxes to be in perfect working condition. However evidence suggests that eight out of ten telephone boxes are out of order.
A Crumlin resident says the situation is worse since the strike, but coins are always stuck in the telephone boxes rendering them unusable.
One woman says the nearest telephone box to her is a ten minute walk away. If that box is out of order then she has to walk for further ten or 15 minutes.
Two women list the number of out of order telephones in the immediate area. If they need to telephone a doctor at night their only option is walk until they find a telephone box that functions.
While the general consensus is the boxes are usually out of order and the strike is not to blame, a young man disagrees. He is annoyed that his job seeking is being hampered due to his lack of access to a working telephone.
It's worse now, it was never like this before.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 3 February 1976.
