Skibb kiosks to become mobile phone boxes at Ludgate Hub

BY BRIAN MOORE

WITH the removal of all but two public phones in West Cork, many local community groups are now concerned that the empty kiosks will become a target for vandalism and, thus, be an eyesore in West Cork’s rural towns and villages.

However, thanks to the Ludgate Hub in Skibbereen the town’s now empty phone boxes are to be repurposed within the state-of-the-art business facility.

‘We are going to clean them up and put them to use with in the Ludgate,’ the hubs community manager Gillean Guy told The Southern Star.

 We are going to use them as mobile phone boxes so that people can make calls in private.’

While this creative use of the now decommissioned phone boxes is welcomed, many communities are now wondering what is to become of their empty boxes.  

‘Now that the phones themselves have been removed from many of the boxes and kiosks around West Cork and with more scheduled to follow, we were worried that, unless these empty boxes are taken away, they will become a blight on the towns and villages,’ Francis Hunt of the Skibbereen Tidy Towns committee told the Southern Star. ‘If they are not removed, then the boxes and kiosks will just attract vandals, and they will be a magnet for stickers and posters. 

If they are no longer in use, they must be removed.’

Bantry and Glengarriff are to be the only two towns in West Cork where public pay phones will be available. 

A nationwide removal of pay phones by Eir Ireland is under way and is set to see only 14 public pay phones remaining in place in County Cork.