Councillors highlight difficulties public experiencing with Tipperary council's telephone system

Two councillors have highlighted that the public are experiencing difficulties getting through to Tipperary County Council departments when they telephone County Hall.
Complaints about the council’s telephone system were made at the monthly meeting of Clonmel Borough District’s meeting.
They were raised by Independent Cllr Richie Molloy and Fine Gael Cllr John Fitzgerald during a discussion on housing and the introduction of the new Choice-Based Letting system. Cllr Molloy said he felt it was more difficult for people to get through on the county council’s telephone system to different departments of the local authority.
He complained that the automated message you get when you call the county council office tells callers all the time that “we are experiencing a high volume of calls”.
Cllr Molloy said he feared the council was “losing the personal touch” and he didn’t want to see this happening.
Cllr Fitzgerald agreed it was difficult to get access to council staff through the telephone system at County Hall.
He questioned why callers were asked to choose between hearing the telephone system’s automated message through Gaelic or English.
“By the time you make a choice, you are inclined to give up,” he complained.
Fianna Fáil Cllr Siobhán Ambrose disagreed with Cllr Fitzgerald’s comments about the language choice given to callers. She argued it was important that callers phoning through to County Hall had the option of doing it through our national language.
But Cllr Fitzgerald believed it was an unnecessary choice in a generally English speaking country. He argued that people didn’t “need a list of obstacles put in front of them” when phoning the county council.
Clonmel Borough District’s Director of Services Sinead Carr said she generally got a good response when she called County Hall and she pointed out that callers always got to speak to a staff member when their call got through.