Who knew a simple fada would be so pricy? The front page of the IrishIndependent also tells us that texting in Irish costs up to three times as much as English, because sending a fada uses up extra data.

Mobile phone users claim say it can be cheaper to send a photo than a fada and that they are being exploited for using the native tongue.

Vodafone has confirmed that users would be charged for three text messages if they included a single ‘sineadh fada’ in a text of 160 characters.

Mobile phone operators blame the costs on technical reasons ”” texts are charged according to the data used, rather than the number of letters or characters.