Our workmen damaged the phone line

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Crea

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Does anyone know the requirements for eircom regarding burying phone lines?
We have workmen in to do our garden and when they were leveling part of the front of the garden they hit a phone cable and we have no phone connection in our house. They dug no more than 2.5 feet deep and 4 feet in from the edge of the road and less than 0.5ft below the level of the road. To me this cable wasn't burried very well especially given it was so near the edge of the road. Also, there was no marker on or in the ground to indicate a cable was there.
Anyhow, Eircom are saying that we are liable for the cost of the repair of the cable but my arguement is that if the cable was burried properly in the first place we wouldn't be having this issue. The person in the faults complaints office was unhelpful to the point of me putting a hit out on her.
Can anyone give me some advice?
 
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Unfortunately, I'd say 2.5 feet was more than adequate depth to bury a phone cable. No markings are required above these cables, you are responsible for checking the locations of any utilities before carrying out this sort of work.
 
Leo, Thanks for that.

I had a look at the cable yesterday and while some sections were cased in a plastic tube and others were enclosed like a tv cable, another section had the wires only enclosed in clear light plastic. I would have expected that any cable underground would have had to have some sort of protection.
Digging in the garden later we came across the same cable which was only about a foot under the surface. This I think is very shallow as you could hit it while digging to plant a tree.
I probably wouldn't be so peed off if the person on the "help line" wasn't so unhelpful.
 
Yeah, 1 foot under a garden area is pretty shallow alright, and agreed, most help lines are anything but!
 
There is absolutely zero chance of eircom repairing this cable for "free" unless perhaps it affects more customers than just you.
 
I'll just have to offer it up. The thought that this money will go into the employees pockets in the shape of their privatisation buy off just gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
The reason for the cost is that third parties do their repairs. They are brutal.
 
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