Eir

History

The company was formed in 1984 as Bord Telecom Éireann, under the Posts and Telecommunications Act 1983.

Telecom Éireann was privatised; the process began in 1995, and by July 1999 the government had disposed of virtually all of its shareholding. This was very controversial and subject to much debate. Eircom plc was then floated on the Irish, London and New York Stock Exchanges on 8 July 1999, and small/first-time investors were encouraged by the Irish Government to buy shares. The share price was set at €3.90, later reaching a high of €4.80, a 23% increase. Those initial investors who held onto their shares, until July 2000, received a 4% bonus-share allocation.

The Eircom flotation is considered to have been an example of a stock market bubble — after the initial hype of the flotation died down, the stock price fell rapidly. Many of the 500,000 small investors were angered by the significant financial loss they incurred, blaming the government for not sufficiently warning them of the risks inherent in stock-market investment.

Although EU laws required the opening of the Irish telecommunications market, Ireland had a derogation from competition until 2003. Eircom was designated by ComReg as the organisation with ownership of the National Directory Database (NDD) and a Universal White Pages (UWP) directory; the unit within Eircom responsible for providing these was the National Directory Information Unit (NDIU).

In December 2019 this agreement expired and ComReg extended the management of the NDD to all current providers, Eir did not declined to propose extending the agreement. A Dutch company PortingXS became the subsequent manager of the NDD as it was the only provider that flagged an interest.