Phone masts affecting health nationwide, claim campaigners

Group spokesman Con Colbert said electrosensitivity was not just an Irish phenomenon but a global one, with people suffering from physical pain and discomfort all over the world.

Many members, some suicidal, have been forced from their homes due to radiation levels from nearby phone masts. Their quality of life – domestic, social and economic – has deteriorated with families being disrupted and sufferers unable to shop or work in areas with a high energy capacity.

Mr Colbert himself sleeps in a chalet at the end of the garden of his Raheny home to try and escape the burning sensation from radiation from nearby phone masts.

Fellow sufferer Helen McCorry and her two children were forced to flee a new apartment in Dublin’s inner city due to the erection of antennae.

Once rehoused in Clontarf their health improved until antennae appeared on a building just 80 metres from their home. All three are now forced to sleep in their car at night to avoid the radiation.

Mrs McCorry, who was physically distressed during the committee hearing from the use of phones in the building, called for the homes of all sufferers to be screened from radiation waves with specialist materials.

“I have pleaded with phone companies to turn the masts down,” she said. “We are sitting in our homes dying from this. There is nothing we can do.”

Others, including farmers, reported the erection of masts near their land having a detrimental affect on their lives and that of their livestock.

John Gormley TD told the speakers they were the forgotten victims of a lucrative business.

Senator Fergal Browne contacted Beaumont Hospital to research any links between brain tumours, particularly in young people, and radiation.

He said: “A big difficulty is that we have no significant evidence proving that masts are bad for you.”