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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 7 Nov 1962

Vol. 197 No. 4

Private Members' Business. - Transport Bill, 1962—Second Stage (Resumed.)

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

When I concluded last night, I was mentioning the matter of public moneys being used for roads where railways had been taken up. In my innocence, I thought only of Donegal and I mentioned it to the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, who happened to be in the Chair at the time, that when they took up the Donegal railway, they were telling everybody how much they were losing by it. Now we find the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Local Government, had to budget for £75,000 a year for five years out of the Road Fund and out of the Exchequer for County Donegal alone.

I made it my business to find out to the nearest available date—and I have it in my file—how we had gone with other places where there were railways taken up. The Minister here now has accepted responsibility for taking up these railways. He said it here last night that he was responsible for the policy. We asked him to repeat it, and he did. I am sure we all spoke slowly enough to have it put down on the records and there were a good many witnesses present because I have known Fianna Fáil Ministers to jump out of their word very often within less than 24 hours. This is very interesting. The Minister destroyed the railways in Counties Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Longford, Kerry, Mayo, Monaghan and Sligo.

He intends to come along to do West Cork. West Cork will make its impact as will Waterford. These figures are illuminating. On the one hand, we have CIE telling us— I dare not say the man's name; the Minister forbade us to mention his name.

Whisper it.

Call him Mr. X.

It is quite irregular to refer to people who have no opportunity of replying.

I am not referring to him. I am not attacking anybody. The Minister admitted last night that he was responsible. He must have somebody to carry this out for him. The agents at Kingsbridge carried out the destruction of the railways and this House voted £250,000 in 1959/60; I am breaking up the figures; I am not giving the figures in the same way as CIE have given them. The breakdown was: Cavan, £45,000; Donegal, £75,000; Leitrim, £40,000; Monaghan, £45,000; and Sligo, £45,000. That gives a total of £250,000 for 1959/60. For 1960/61, the figures were: Cavan, £45,000; Donegal, £75,000; Leitrim, £40,000; and Longford, £12,500. The Minister, I believe, represented Longford at the time and he had to go to Cavan out of it or somewhere else. The other figures were: Kerry, £12,500; Mayo, £12,500; Monaghan, £45,000; and Sligo, £45,000. The total was £287,500 for 1960/61 and in 1961/62, it was £287,500 again. The total of these 1960/61 and in 1961/62, it was £287,500 again. The total of these three figures is £825,000. Therefore, let not the agents at Kingsbridge produce those figures and say: "What good boys we are and what money we are saving."

I should like to put in a little addendum to that and say that instead of putting all these monsters and all this traffic on to the roads, making it necessary for the Minister for Local Government to send all this money down to the local authority, this money would have been better spent on improving the by-roads and the boreens up to farmers' houses. Yesterday I had cleared the air for a little while when the Minister admitted here in the House before a good many Deputies that he was the responsible man.

I said it in July, 1961. I gave a very clear description of the extent to which I supervised the operation of the 1958 Act, the general supervision of the Act.

I asked the Minister yesterday by Parliamentary Question; I asked him last night during the debate on this Bill; and I brought him in on the Adjournment last night, to give a breakdown of the figures on Page 5 of the CIE Report. Am I allowed to mention the name of CIE here? I want to read it again:

Road services were substituted for the railway on the West Cork Section as from 1st April, 1961. Operating results during the year showed that the financial betterment from this substitution and from the substitution of road services for the West Clare and Waterford/Tramore railway lines last year was approximately £90,000. The substitute services have worked efficiently and have met with general approval from the traders in the area.

That is dishonest.

Completely.

Completely dishonest. No American bucket-shop run by a get-rich-quickly-Warrington would have produced that kind of financial report. I asked the Minister yesterday to give me the latest available figures for the number of passengers carried and the intake in money on the Tramore bus service, this alternative bus service on which he prides himself. I asked him to separate the figures for Tramore from West Clare and West Cork, that is, to give us the separate figures for Tramore, for West Clare and for West Cork. That is a reasonable request. There is the £825,000 that has been spent on roads and the Cork figures are not in them at all. I hope the House will take notice of this because we were the guinea pigs and the sufferers from the ruthlessness of the Minister's agents.

It was not a case of how much money it was losing. We are not definitely concerned with losses, unless they are irreparable losses or extraordinary losses. We are more concerned with providing a service for the people. I complimented the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs here today. The Minister for Transport and Power would shut down the telephone services if they were losing money, or shut down the Post Office, if it were losing money, or if the ESB were losing money the lights should be turned off on us. This is a most ridiculous policy. I put down a Parliamentary Question to the Minister for Transport and Power and it was disallowed. The question asked was it the policy of CIE to tear up the railways and I was told the Minister had no functions in the matter. Last night, he told us that he directed it.

You will admit, Sir, that this is very confusing for Deputies and for the whole country. I intend tabling a question to ask the Minister to break up these figures for me. I hope I will not have to put it down because if the Minister wants to be courteous, even at this late hour, we will give him the opportunity. I gave him plenty of notice. He had since last week to get in touch with his agents at Kingsbridge to find out what these figures are and on what was this £90,000 based.

The record of the Minister in not answering Parliamentary Questions is notorious. If a Deputy asks a question about Bord na Móna, the ESB or Aer Lingus, the Minister appears to have no function. I hope, as a result of this debate and this Bill, that the air will be cleared. Now the Minister has told us he is responsible for policy and, being the man responsible for policy, he therefore has a function. If he says: "Go and tear up the lines", they will, and if he tells them to stop, they must stop.

I have a few remarks to make about how inaccurate the Minister is. He is constantly going to chambers of commerce and disseminating inaccurate information about industry and about other Departments. But we will stick to transport here. On an Adjournment Debate, the former Deputy Palmer and I came in here and raised the question of railway lines which were torn up in Kerry and sold to Czechoslovakians. A licence was given for their export and Irish firms were not allowed to compete or got no opportunity to compete. The Minister for Transport and Power answered me and I am quoting him——

The Deputy mentioned this yesterday.

The Deputy did not mention this yesterday because he had not got it yesterday. It shows how bad the Minister's memory is. At column 1065 of the Dáil Debates for 13th December, 1960—it was an unlucky day—the Minister said:

The general export control is applied in order that firms cannot get export licences for material which they describe as re-usable which in fact is really scrap. In this case the material is regarded rightly by the Minister for Industry and Commerce as re-usable. It is composed of rails of over nine feet in length, bridgework and wheels— material which is manufactured of steel and not cast iron. It is scrap only in so far as Irish Steel Limited are concerned. They are the only firm that could make use of the material. In no other way could it be described as scrap because it is re-usable.

The Tramore railway lines were not shipped to Czechoslovakia. They were put up for public auction and there were plenty of local people to buy them. That is the kind of stuff we are getting from the Minister—usually inaccurate, sometimes half inaccurate, which means it is inaccurate in any case.

I have one good word to say about this business. It means nothing to my constituency but in my constituency we have great printing houses and great craftsmen. The Minister was criticised on this publication last night but I compliment his agents on it. It is good that Government publications like this should be well produced by fine craftsmen. It is important that the Government should give a good example in employing fine craftsmen. This is very informative as far as bulk figures and some other things are concerned but again I say to the Minister that it is dishonest and it covers up. The Minister and his agents know they were wrong to tear up this line between Waterford and Tramore. The Minister and his agents know they were mean and vindictive in the manner in which they went about it. The Minister and his agents know that it is not right and it is not true for them to say that they have provided an adequate service because the service they have provided charges 2/8d. to bring a passenger from Waterford to Tramore and back while the line they tore up was able to carry the passenger for 1/9d.

It is dishonest to say that it is serving the people as well as the old service. The old service was a great convenience and a great amenity for the mothers of families, and particularly the mothers of large families, in bringing their children to Tramore. They would need to be in the millionaire class to travel at the Minister's prices. Last night, he stated that the service he has put on brings passengers in closer proximity to the beach. He should go down there and have a look at it. I was born and reared there and it does not.

Surely, the Deputy must concede, there has been an increase in the cost of all rail services in the past two or three years? From Killarney up here, we are paying more than we did two years ago.

The Deputy had better ask the Minister about it. He has priced the railways out of existence. It is so bad now that working people in Dublin have a contract made with taxis to take them into work and the taximen are able to compete with the bus service.

There was no necessity at all to take up this railway line. It was not losing the amount of money given by the Minister in a figure to this House and to the local authorities in Waterford and Tramore. We were not allowed discuss the matter with the authorities at Kingsbridge. This was a little railway line, with only two stations and no intermediate stations. At one end 30,000 people lived and at the other was the finest beach in Ireland. Nearly half a million people travelled on it during the year it was torn up. The Minister had no concern for them but he would spend £800,000 to subsidise the people walking into an airport. I am not criticising the £800,000 spent on Shannon Airport, but I am showing how great the Minister's courage is in some directions and how he dies with fright when he is told the Waterford-Tramore line has lost £3,000.

The Minister told us cockily last night that we had supported the Bill. We did support it because we got an undertaking from the present Taoiseach who was then Minister for Industry and Commerce. I will always remember what he said. He said it was no use going into every fiddle-faddle connected with that Bill. We would not have to go into every small detail because there would be full consultation with interested parties in the case of any line being closed. We were sold a golden brick.

I would ask the Minister to call off the hounds he has going around the country writing estimates of the weight of all the iron bridges in it. We have a fine iron bridge across the Suir at Waterford. I believe it is marked down for scrap, too, and I suppose it will go to some Czechoslovakian mill. I should like to tell the Minister that one of his agents was down there smashing up fine locomotives, but I suppose that gives the Minister the opportunity of buying a whole lot of new ones. He went up to look at the iron bridge and he said to one of his colleagues: "We will have to have boats to take this down." Did he mean they were going to take it down and erect it in another place or did he mean they were going to take it down altogether? Is it not obvious that all this has been surveyed? Is it not obvious that these men are good at producing the type of balance sheet given to us here? They are thinking of the fine balance sheet they can bring in by tearing up the West Cork line or the line from Youghal to Cork. The Minister will roll down to some dinner and announce that he is glad to say the deficit on CTE has been reduced.

The Deputy is making a mistake there. If he looks at the accounts, he will find the sale of scrap was not included in the statement when the deficit was announced.

Machiavelli advised his prince that making a good impact would help him to be a just prince.

There is nothing Machiavellian about this at all. The deficit was declared before the sale of the scrap.

They are saving it all up. All this money will be brought in together.

If the Deputy looks at the accounts, he will find the scrap is accounted for later.

Surely the Minister does not think he can convince me that C.I.E. would not think of doing a thing like that?

I could not take anything the Deputy says seriously, if he speaks on the accounts in that way.

The Minister will have to take me seriously. Any citizen of the State is entitled to ask the Minister a question when the Minister says he is responsible. I do not want information about the day to day activities of the company but I want to know the figures for the year.

It is a matter for me to decide.

The figures for the year are there but three systems have been bulked together. The Minister's agents were able to say that, as a result of the substitution of road services for the Waterford-Tramore line, the West Cork line and the West Clare line, there was an improvement of £90,000. If they were able to show that, they must have had the figures from each of these places separately. I am not asking the Minister to have an inquisition into the accounts of CIE. I am asking him to give us figures this report shows are available.

It would be no harm if they did have an inquisition.

I am glad we have some opportunity of pinning down the Minister. He has been like a clever fox for a long time. He had every dodge. We had him for only a day's hunting and then he got away. He either went to ground by saying he was not responsible or he dodged out of it altogether; but we had him yesterday and last night and we have him again today. As they say in my constituency "Beidh lá eile ag an bPaorach". We will fight again another day. Whether or not our Parliamentary Questions are ruled out of order, we will have another opportunity on a motion by the Labour Party and on the Minister's Estimate.

On one occasion I asked the Minister a Parliamentary Question and, of course, he would not give the answer. It was in connection with the figures for the Tramore line. Then he told me it was in the neighbourhood of £400,000 when I had to bring him back on the Adjournment. Would it not have been easier to say that earlier? Or, was the figure so bad that he was ashamed of it? That sort of thing gives me and the ordinary man in the street the idea that the Minister has something to hide when he consistently runs away from this matter. I intend to make an issue of this.

I ask the Minister when, and if, he is replying to-night, to give me a breakdown of these figures. If he does not do so, I shall ask a Parliamentary Question. If the question is not allowed, I shall take other steps. If the question is allowed and the Minister refuses the information, I shall bring the matter to the Committee on Procedure and Privileges. It is a very serious thing, if this Parliament votes public money to any Minister in any Government and that Minister comes before the House and solemnly says he has no responsibility.

We are asking for an overall figure, not any niggling insignificant figure, a figure we know he has. There is evidence that he has it and he refuses to give it, as I said last night, either through discourtesy or pigheadedness or vindictiveness of the kind which motivated him when he made the decision to tear up the Tramore railway line and then ordered at 2 o'clock on Saturday that it be torn up on Monday morning whether it was wet or fine. It poured rain but men were employed to tear up the track on Monday morning because he was not taking any chances that any representations would be made to his leader or anybody else. He had made up his mind to destroy the railway and destroy it he did.

For my sins, after some 30 odd years here, I have been handed a constituency now stretching from the Kerry boundary to Mallow, from Mallow to Waterford and down to Youghal. In those areas, we have the Banteer-Newmarket-Kanturk line; the Mallow-Fermoy line, running to Waterford and the Cork-Youghal line. In the three cases, the heavy hand was brought down.

I asked three Questions here last week and the answer I got from the Minister was that a certain gentleman was infallible, that the best experts in the world were dealing with the figures and we would have to accept them whether we liked it or not. We wrote to CIE seeking information regarding passenger traffic on these lines and the reply we got was to the effect that having fully considered the request contained in the resolution, the Board regretted it could not make available the information sought. It was suggested that the best way of dealing with the matter would be for representatives of the various bodies on whose behalf we wrote to appoint a deputation to meet CIE when the economic aspect of the operation of the three branch lines could be discussed.

I am not going to be led blindfolded, with no knowledge of the figures, into any discussion with the Board of CIE. We are entitled to get figures to make our case and I make no bones about that. We wrote previously for a breakdown of the figures, such as Deputy Lynch spoke about, and we got this for the year ended 31st March, 1961: Waterford-Mallow line: revenue, £131,099; expenses, £152,754; and loss, £21,655. For the Cobh Junction-Youghal line the figures were: revenue, £32,858; expenses, £57,371; and loss, £24,513; and for the Banteer-Newmarket line, the figures were: revenue, £1,349; expenses, £3,600; and loss, £2,251.

When I got the figure of £32,858 for revenue on the line from Cobh Junction to Youghal, I immediately looked round to discover where the money went or came from. I applied to the Irish Sugar Company for their figures on the tonnage of beet loaded in those five railway stations, Carrigtwohill, Midleton, Mogeely, Killeagh and Youghal, for the year 1960-61, the amount of fertilisers sent down and the amount of dried pulp consigned to those stations. The figure I got was £29,436.

On getting that figure, I thought it was worth going a little further into the matter and I went to Mr. Dwyer's factory in Midleton, Midleton Worsteds. They gave me a figure of £1,560 paid by them at Midleton station in that year. I went to Bennett's Maltings in Ballinacurra. They gave me a figure of £9,200 paid in that year. I got the urban council of Midleton to call on the other merchants in Midleton and the receipts have been carefully examined. The receipts from the merchants of Midleton amounted to £3,400. I then went to Youghal and found that, between the Youghal carpet factory and Dwyer's factories, something over £24,360 had been paid during the year to CIE for rail services. That gave us a total of £67,956 instead of £32,858 for total revenue given by CIE just over double.

I appeal to the Minister to try to get the idea of the infallibility of the CIE Board out of his head. I need only allude to a previous occasion when CIE got a brainwave that nobody wanted to go to Cobh to work, unless he came from Cork city. All the trains from Cork were run non-stop to Rushbrooke. The unfortunate Minister was put in the position, when I raised the matter here, of stating on the information obtained from these "infallible" people, that there was a first-class bus service from Cork to Cobh. There was not a CIE bus seen in Cobh in the past 25 years. I am prepared at any time to be reasonable but when I got an unreasonable answer like that, I had to call a public meeting to consider other methods of transport. They stopped the trains the following morning for the passengers. That is the kind of lunacy that has been going on.

I gave a figure here for 22 miles of railroad which cost £57,371 to maintain each year. Taking that figure from the revenue, for which I hold certified receipts from CIE, there was a net profit of £10,585, without counting passengers. Did these creatures ever go to school or ever learn arithmetic?

The Deputy is very innocent.

He certainly is.

Whoever is standing over this kind of thing, it is time it ended.

There is somebody telling an untruth.

The Deputy is talking nonsense.

I am going on figures for which I hold certified receipts.

And the Minister says——

I do not mind what any Minister says. We are all fair game in this House—the Minister and everyone else. I am putting this here plainly: What I am looking for is a sworn inquiry into this matter. Let it come out in the open where we can deal with it. I have referred to the figure of £10,585 profit, without counting passengers.

There is an enormous population in the city of Cork. The workingclass people in Cork city could go to Crosshaven and Youghal. Some years ago, as a result of the economy drive, the Crosshaven line was closed, with the result that the people wanting to travel to Crosshaven by bus cannot get buses to take them. Before the order went out to the stationmasters on the various lines to refuse to give any information to the elected representatives of the people who sought it, I succeeded in finding out that 2,348 passengers left Cork city for Youghal on one Sunday this Summer. That would be 70 busloads. How are these people to travel or are they to be left in Cork city without the pleasure of getting even one trip to the seaside in 12 months?

At the other end of my constituency, there is the Banteer-Newmarket-Kanturk line. The figures given for that line are: revenue, £1,349; and expenses, £3,600, a loss of £2,251. We asked the Kanturk Development Association to deal with that matter for the year 1960-61 and they brought us in receipts for money paid to CIE for rail services over that line. For the year 1960-61, the figure was £7,000 odd. The total revenue here returned is £1,300. It is time there was a sworn inquiry into where the supposed losses of millions of pounds come from or who is getting the money. This kind of thing has gone too far. It has gone beyond all bounds. How does the Minister expect that 70 buses will take these 2,300 passengers to Youghal and back? Is there to be any other traffic on the road? I know what the position is, but, unfortunately, the people concerned cannot assess what will happen. We know that as a result of the monopoly they enjoy, they have greater profit on road services than on rail services. Their idea is that if they can drive all this traffic on to the roads and let the ratepayers maintain the roads, they need not spend the £57,000 maintaining the line.

I shall give the Minister an example of what will happen. In the year 1960-61 £9,200 was paid by Bennett's Maltings on rail transport from Ballinacurra-Midleton. As soon as the statement came out about the closing of the lines these people got in touch with Messrs. Guinness, with the result that that £9,200 worth of traffic will be drawn by Messrs. Guinness's lorries next year. Does anyone tell me that the Youghal carpet factory that paid over £11,000 to CIE for rail transport will not employ their own lorries? Will not the same thing happen in regard to Dwyer's two factories? I can give the Minister a guarantee that the day that line closes, CIE will not get one ton of beet. I guarantee that.

Nice of the Deputy.

Yes. We will end the monopoly in the only way it can be ended. There is this kind of thing of coming up with a brazen falsehood. Then, blindfolded, we are to come up and meet the CIE Board with no knowledge of the actual facts, to be told there that the revenue was so much, the cost was so much, and there are the losses, without our getting the figures to which we were entitled in order to prepare our case. We have something else to do, and I have something else to do, besides travelling around from merchant to merchant in each town and village in my constituency to get the figures I am entitled to get in relation to the accounts of any State-subsidised company in this country.

Deputies

Hear, hear.

As the elected representatives of the people, we are entitled to the figures.

The Deputy did not get them, though.

With the figures I have here in relation to two of the three lines in my constituency in Cork I am demanding a sworn inquiry now into the affairs of CIE with a view to finding out where the £30,000 odd which should appear here as revenue disappeared to. The Minister seems to have drawn a nice little rug around himself, saying: "Everything is grand; I have the infallible people down there and they gave me the figures". But they told the Minister on an earlier occasion that there was a first-class bus service from Cork to Cobh. I hunted the last CIE bus out of it 25 years ago.

That was a bad one.

But the Minister stood up and told us that brazen falsehood here.

Now, the Minister did not tell the brazen falsehood.

The Minister told us what he had been told.

And it was a falsehood.

He told us there was a first-class bus service from Cork to Cobh, an excellent bus service. He was told that evidently by CIE.

The Deputy should withdraw the remark that the Minister told a brazen falsehood.

Brazen or not, it is a falsehood.

The Minister told this House an untruth.

Very nice.

It was an incorrect statement anyway.

The Minister told this House an untruth when he stated there was an excellent bus service from Cork to Cobh at a time when there had not been a CIE bus seen in it for 25 years.

The Deputy has said that several times. He should get the bus to move on now.

Unfortunately, Sir, the Minister comes here now with information apparently from the same source again, and he gives it here in reply to questions, and relies on the fact that the matter cannot be raised on the Adjournment under certain rules of this House. I applied to have these three questions taken on the Adjournment. I was told I was out of order. This is the only way I have of voicing my opinion of what is happening and giving to the House and to the public the figures to show what is happening. Our man can come along and quote figures of £32,000. That shows Deputy T. Lynch the breakown he will get of the figure he has been demanding here all evening. There is one breakdown, £32,000. If he carried all the passengers for nothing for the years 1960 and 1961, instead of a loss of £24,000, there was a profit of £10,500 on freight alone, not taking account of any passengers at all.

I looked for the revenue from passenger traffic when I had collected those figures. I think I was entitled to get it. Apparently the same scarecrow that travelled around to every stationmaster in Cork and ordered him not to give information to the elected representatives of the people was availed of again in regard to these figures. It was evidently decided by somebody that no information should be given. We are entitled to information in relation to any State-subsidised company for which we have to vote the taxpayer's money in this House. We are voting taxpayers' money each year for CIE. I question now whether that money came in at all because, if all their accounts are kept in the same manner as this account was kept, then somebody is getting money and hiding it somewhere —taxpayers' money.

I do not want to delay the House but this is the only way in which we can get to the public knowledge and information of what is happening in relation to a State-subsidised company. We are refused information in this House. We have no other way of bringing the information out into the open. The Minister will be well advised to have a full sworn inquiry into the affairs of CIE.

I want to add my voice briefly to that of Deputy Corry in appealing to the Minister to take a second look at the proposed closures of railway lines listed in this booklet issued recently—The Future of CIE. In asking the Minister to do that, I want to appeal to him in, I hope, a more diplomatic way than my colleague.

Will the Deputy be understood?

I hope so.

I will tell the Deputy what trying to be diplomatic means.

The plain fact of the matter is that the people in the constituency referred to by Deputy Corry —he is a member of the constituency; I am also a member—view with alarm the proposal of CIE. Whatever may be in the figures quoted by Deputy Corry, I was a member of the committee responsible for the collection of those figures. We think they are right; perhaps they may be wrong. We have seen the figures given by CIE. We think they are wrong; perhaps they may be right. No one is a liar, but, in justice to the people, and because there is confusion with regard to the figures, the fairest and simplest way to straighten the matter out is for CIE to give, as requested by us, a breakdown of the figures in relation to the three railways—Newmarket-Kanturk, Mallow-Waterford and Cobh-Youghal.

Even if we are not agreed that keeping open and maintaining these railway lines represents a loss of revenue to CIE, I think there is still good reason for insisting that the lines remain. There is a social side to this matter, a side which seems to be forgotten by many people. Even if those lines lost money, I am convinced that, for social reasons, they should be kept going. Do CIE ever think of the displacement, the discomfort and the unemployment that might result as a consequence of closing those lines? Is it not true that if and when they are closed, many families will be displaced? Some of them will become completely unemployed and we know the social aspect of that question.

Is it not true also, as Deputy Corry says, that if those lines are closed, particularly the one from Cork city to Youghal, many families will be deprived of even a day at the seaside during the summer months? Is it not true also that if the lines are closed, the traffic on the road being greater, the chances of fatal accidents and injuries on the road must correspondingly increase ?

I appeal in the sanest possible way to the Minister to take all these considerations into account and consult with the people and not to fight or haggle, saying: "We will not give you the figures but we will meet you on a deputation." I think Deputy Corry was quite right in saying that it is unfair to ask people to meet the Board of CIE without giving them the figures they require to make their case. I appeal to the Minister to be reasonable in this matter, to be more sane. Someone is going to lose face before the whole thing is over. I do not mind if it is ourselves, provided that a reasonable approach is made and the railways kept going, even if a loss is incurred by so doing.

I come from an area which has gone through all the pains and anguish attached to the closing of railways. I consider I can contribute something useful in the way of giving a general picture of what we are facing. It is easy to understand that Deputies coming from some areas threatened with the closing of lines will become heated. Statements were made across the floor of the House and an attack was even made on the Minister by Deputies on my side of the House. I think these statements were made without a realisation of the facts and figures. A case was made in relation to the Youghal line and a total figure was given. In connection with that figure, the fact was completely overlooked that the part of the line covered was only the part to Cork. In other words, the mileage of outlying lines was not taken into consideration.

The same applies to the material brought to the Youghal factories. It had to come from Dublin and many other centres. I distinctly remember that, in my own town of Killorglin, figures were put up and £120,000 was paid out for goods shipped from Killorglin to outlying places, such as Dublin and other centres, in connection with wool, fish, mussels and so on, but when it was pointed out that the line from Killorglin to Farranfore covered only 11 miles and that all those figures were related only to 11 of the 200 miles which the railway line covered, the amount of money earned by that part of the line was only £1,800.

We have to face facts and figures. Whilst I accept what Deputy Corry said, we have got to accept the railway figures as well. They must know their business. Surely nobody will seriously accuse them of trying to sabotage or destroy the position, because that is what it amounts to ? They are going eventually to put themselves out of business.

What was the cost of the upkeep and the maintenance of the 11 miles?

I cannot give the Deputy that at the moment but all the figures were given to us. They were losing £2 to £1 practically. I had all this put up before me at the time in our own town by the local people who collected all the data. They forgot that the material had to travel over many miles of line beyond Killorglin.

It started there.

It did, but you cannot give a figure of £120,000 as earned by the particular bit of line.

What about the goods?

Most of it is even now transported over the railway system.

Therefore, there is a net loss for the whole railway line?

That is the point I am coming to. I am trying tonight to bring the House to an awareness of the fact that CIE are definitely on the retreat to Kingsbridge. It is only a matter of time, at the rate they are going, until they will have arrived at Kingsbridge.

That is the answer.

Let me refer to the statistics of lorries registered. Last year, I think there were 2,000 more lorries than the year before. I am open to correction there but I think I am not far wrong. Two thousand lorries are the equivalent of 12,000 railway wagons. A ten ton lorry travelling over 50 miles outwards has a daily turn-about while a railway wagon carrying the same tonnage takes a week over the same distance.

Let us remember that all the members of this House voted and gave permission to Dr. Andrews to put the railways in order. The position is not now working out as the Deputies concerned hoped it would at that time. I think it is time that a general examination of the whole position were made.

Let me get back to the position in relation to the Cork and other lines. The people in those areas are probably the greatest offenders. I am a merchant and we carry the bulk of our stuff by road practically. Since the railway went, we are compelled to do this. The fact is that we find ourselves with more lorry power than we need for our business. We try to get extra business outside. We sell far beyond our sphere of influence of selling in order to make these lorries pay. The small shopkeepers could not care less whether there is a railway or not because they are serviced from Dublin by vans. The only people who could keep it going are the big concerns and the bigger merchants but even they are providing their own transport and are hitting the railways.

This is a serious matter for the House. The railways do serve a very big public interest, particularly at peak times. Perhaps the areas concerned could come to the assistance of the railways by baronial guarantee. The loss of the railways is rather more a matter of prestige. People think they are being pushed into the backwoods. I heard in my own area at the time of closure that the people would miss the whistle of the train.

The railway is not now missed. No longer does it form a part of the people. They have a good service at their doorstep. People along the roadways can get into a bus to go anywhere they like, whereas they had to travel two and three miles to a railway station. That is the position. People are what they are. They seem to take to the new system.

We in this House should look at the position objectively and face up now to the issue of whether the railway serves a purpose at all in this country. Once we decide it is serving a big purpose, now is the time to save it and not in five years' time when there are further curtailments. The way things are going today, I can see the railway driven into Kingsbridge in ten years' time. That is a serious position. We can save the railways now if we get down to face the issue properly and rescind whatever instructions were given by full agreement of the House.

In my area the railway has passed— it is gone. I give this view objectively; I am not giving it from a heated point of view. I am looking at all the advantages and disadvantages. We are satisfied that the system as it is operating is doing a good job. It is doing a satisfactory job for the people in general. We had the largest crowd ever massed out of south and west Kerry for the All-Ireland Football Final and there was no question of congestion. They all got to Killarney, Tralee and Dublin. Even at such peak traffic periods, it is obvious that the ordinary transport is adequate for the people.

It is said that the big issue facing us here is whether CIE is of value and should be retained. If it is of value to the nation, we are now faced with the issue of saving it. Now is the time to see that it is not further curtailed because if it is not saved at this stage, I feel the final collapse will come rapidly.

The Deputy who has just spoken suggested we should try to examine the position as objectively as we can in order to try to find out the wisest likely policy for the country to pursue in future in relation to CIE. He himself gave a remarkably good example of that objective analysis. What he had to say in his very short contribution was most valuable. I should like to examine the position as nearly as I can to the same objective way as the Deputy.

We put this Bill forward simply because we are just a little over halfway now, I suppose, to that very important date in the calendar of CIE —1964— the date on which, according to the decision of this House, the company must break even. At this stage, as mentioned by the previous speaker, if things go on as they are going, then at a gradually progressive rate and at an increasing speed, CIE—on the railway side at any rate—will end up at Kingsbridge. Clearly, it is, if anything, now rather like one of those mythical animals they talk about which slowly at first, but at an increasing speed, eventually devour themselves. CIE on the rail side, is doing that. The position should be examined to see whether it is desirable that this shall happen.

Is the whole idea of rail services like the idea of tram services in the cities— a fossilised museum piece which can safely be dispensed with from the point of view of our country, from the point of view of the various factors involved in making this great change? Consider the demographic changes that are likely to take place in rural Ireland, the social changes that are likely to take place, and the various other changes. Consider the prospect of the people of Killorglin arriving to the All-Ireland Football Final in buses on one particular day when they might have gone along by train. Is it better that it should take place like this or should we try to retain the best there is in the rail services?

I think our greatest objections to the present approach to the examination of the public transport problems of the country are that their treatment has been based on an adherence to what we believe are really doctrinaire conservative ideas of the organisation of transport. We believe we can show that the application of the principle that the service must pay its way or else be abolished is a bad principle. It is having a damaging effect on the country as a whole. It is not even providing us with an efficient service. As far as we can see, it is not even at the present moment—examining the accounts of CIE—likely to meet the directive of the law in 1958 that it must pay its way by 1964. It has had a number of very serious repercussions from the point of view of the roads, the greatly increased congestion on the roads, and, following increased congestion on the roads, has had the effect of increasing the rate of accidents on the roads, deaths on the roads, injuries on the roads.

In addition, I think it can fairly be said that the labour relations in CIE are probably about as bad as they could be. Therefore, I should like to ask the Minister if he still feels that the retention of this imposition on the management of CIE is justified.

I would again support the Deputy's viewpoint that this imposition was placed on the Board of CIE, and I suppose incidentally on the Minister, by a decision of the House and can be removed only by a decision of the House. For that reason, I agree completely with all the censures made against the Chairman of CIE— I think he is all the things they said he was, arrogant and dictatorial, with an appalling sense of public relations. He is very foolish that he does not take pains with public relations and I think the Minister is also at fault in many respects in his curious attitude to this question of his responsibilities. At times, he is responsible; at other times, he is not responsible.

I agree also with what Deputies have said in regard to this question of trying to get information about CIE. I found myself in the position of putting Questions to the Minister and either having them ruled out by the Ceann Comhairle on grounds which were perfectly legitimate, I have no doubt, or of having them accepted by the Minister but being told by him that he had no responsibility. I have tried to get information on matters such as the mileage of trains in a particular year, the number of diesel and steam engines, the durability of these locomotives and so on—all perfectly legitimate information for any public representative trying to make up his mind about claims made for and against the present system of public transport.

I have written to Dr. Andrews and asked for information, and his reply to me has been that he would not give it. Rather like Deputy Corry in a way, it is comforting to know that the man is equally arrogant with us all, that he treats us all with the same measure of contempt. Instead of giving me the information I sought, he sent me a 16 to 20 page long-winded, wordy, platitudinous dissertation on his ideas about public transport. I am not a bit interested in his ideas because I know too well what they are. I also know too well what is happening in the operation of the transport services —that eventually they will be reduced to an irreducible minimum, operating so that Dr. Andrews can produce his annual report every year in glowing colours, giving us only very limited information, as most Deputies have pointed out.

I do not think the Deputy who has just spoken is right that we must not do anything that would make Dr. Andrews work himself out of a job. I do not think there is any fear of that. He has not stopped a large number of unfortunate workers working themselves out of jobs. There is a very high rate of redundancy in CIE. It is one of the things which has led to the very poor labour relations which exist in CIE. We believe then that this whole question of public transport is a particularly complicated and complex one. Transport services in any society are the threads which hold the whole fabric of that society together and when an effort is made to disrupt these threads, to curtail or restrict them in any way, it will make great changes in the very fabric, and that is a most important consideration. In our discussions of public transport in 1958, we did not take that point into consideration sufficiently seriously. If we are to alter public transport to whatever way will best suit the economy or needs generally, we must take into consideration all the other factors which are inextricably bound up with the apparently simple questions of buses and trains, of road freight, passenger traffic and so on.

The most important of these implications are the social implications, particularly in a society like ours which is predominantly rural, predominantly agricultural, which has this dreadful record of rural depopulation, this flight from the land, this very undesirable great growth of the concentration of population particularly on the eastern seaboard, in Dublin, and in the city areas generally—all particularly undesirable in a country which is anxious to try to develop its economy, based as it should be on agriculture. There has been a tendency by city Deputies —perhaps it is understandable— on the question of the management of CIE to concentrate too much on the cities and large towns and virtually to ignore the outskirts and the farther off parts of the country—places like Dingle, Donegal, Connemara or wherever it may be.

We hold the view that every man in our society has identical rights and he should be given as near as possible identical facilities, and that if a person, as part of his contribution towards the national economy, chooses to own a small farm out in Rossaveal, or up in Donegal, or down in Dingle, he has certain social responsibilities which, to a certain extent, he can honour only if he is enabled to do so by the existence of transport services—simple things like the education of his children.

There is a tendency in CIE to talk about the big man, the man who is driving around in varying sizes of motor cars and so on, personal transport of one kind or another, but it is terribly important to many small farmers that they be facilitated in such matters as sending their children to school or seeing that their wives can go to the local towns for domestic purposes, or social purposes, in seeing that young people living in rural Ireland can be given facilities for transport to the bright lights of the local towns. These are the most important considerations, if we are to encourage the people to remain in the rural parts of Ireland. It would be just too bad if we all came into the cities to live. The repercussions would be felt on the national economy and national prosperity as a whole. Everybody would suffer. The population surveys have shown this is a very serious defect in the development of our population changes over the past 30 years and I believe that the present deterioration in the transport services, brought about by this insistence on the provision in Section 7 of the Act that the transport company must be run purely on a profit and loss basis, without any humanitarian considerations whatever, is the result of that retrograde, irresponsible decision which has done very great damage already.

As the previous Deputy and other Deputies pointed out, it will do irretrievable damage, unless some serious consideration is given to it. Quite obviously, also, in the consideration of public transport, one must take the repercussions in regard to the provision of an alternative transport system and how that is to be done. That brings in the question of how much money we are prepared to spend on roads if they are to carry this alternative traffic. A tremendous amount of money must be spent on these roads, to enlarge existing ones and increase the mileage in order to see there is not complete bedlam as there is at the moment. In order to reduce that bedlam a considerable amount of money will have to be spent.

As far as I know, there has been no co-ordination between the Minister for Transport and Power, the Minister for Local Government and the local authorities in the provision of better roads to bear the increased traffic. It is the sheerest madness to go on as we are at the moment pouring a greater volume of traffic of all kinds on to our roads — more personal traffic, more public freight traffic. Our roads were never meant for such traffic at all.

Debate adjourned.
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