However, we are faced with the position that over the four years there has been an addition and not a reduction in the total staffs of CIE. I should like the Minister's explanation for his reply in which he gave certain figures relating to January and October which, for reasons he probably knows very well, did not give a true picture of the staff position, whereas these other figures in his annual report did show there was an increase in the years concerned.
Not only is there this increase but there is, I understand, a difference between CIE and certain clerical unions about the intake of a number of their members. When that is settled, it will presumably add to the total number employed in CIE. Hand in hand with that fact, there is a proposal which was reported in the newspapers recently that approximately 140 men in the CIE workshops at Inchicore and Broadstone will be disemployed because of a decision to reduce the maintenance services on the buses and lorries. If this is true, I should like to have an explanation for it. Is this another cut which arises from the mistaken belief of the Board of CIE that it must break even by 1964? I say "mistaken belief" because we have been assured by the Minister now that there is no fixed date line—they can ignore it. He has ignored it and we are going to ignore it. Is it a fact that this lay-off is being made by the Board in the mistaken belief that they must cut down expenses and show some sort of saving between now and the end of this financial year?
Alternatively, I should like to find out from the Minister if this is not a retrograde step on the part of the company. Up to now I understand these vehicles have been serviced at a minimum of once every four years. I understand that servicing will now only be carried out intermittently, whenever the bus breaks down. Does this mean we shall have a reduction in the safety standards of CIE and does this reduction in safety standards stem from the belief that they must make this particular economy? Surely it is most undesirable that there should be this economy in safety standards where the public are concerned?
I do not know whether it is as a result of that decision or not but the other night a friend of mine had this unfortunate experience. As I told the House, it takes 55 minutes to do the 11 or 12 miles to Enniskerry. This night, it took 2½ hours for the reason that this bus broke down on the road and the lights went out, a highly dangerous thing to happen in the dark. This happened when most of these passengers were on their way home. This is one isolated incident but will it be repeated? Surely it is very important that we should have the highest standard of maintenance, not only from the point of view of safety but also from the point of view of sound economics. As regards those of us who have motor cars, we are told that maintenance and after care are very important. In order to save a few pounds in the next year, are we to jeopardise the type of service we get from the buses and lorries we already have? To what extent will this reduce the margin of safety for the personnel in and the people driving these lorries and buses? It seems to me a sort of panic decision by the Board, and a completely undesirable one. I wonder whether it is one which has the approval of the Minister.
The Minister has attempted to justify his increase in the total intake of staff by suggesting that this breaking-up of the country into areas, with managers in charge of them, is desirable and very valuable from the point of view of the country and will lead to greater efficiency, more business for the company and an improvement in the general control of CIE. As usual, the Minister wants to have things both ways. On the one hand, he says we are a country with a colossal agricultural hinterland, on which very few are living; apart from Galway, Dublin, Cork and, possibly, Limerick, there are very few large urban areas. I have always been given to understand that, to create successful area management, one needs a very highly industrialised society with large population groups, because otherwise people tended to operate in the vacuum the Minister talked about, and there is very little to work on. This area management business has certainly increased the overheads very considerably because these people are being paid relatively high salaries; they must have office equipment and staff. Most interesting of all, they all must have motor cars.
One of the tests I should like the Minister to try out on CIE is to tell these people, as he told us, and as he told the general public, that the CIE service is perfectly adequate throughout the whole of rural Ireland; if one wants to go about one's business, whether it be as shopkeeper, tradesman, businessman, industrialist, or farmer, the Minister adopts the attitude that CIE is running an extremely efficient service to cater for all business. What is to stop the Minister making this point to his employees in CIE? Could they not use CIE when travelling from place to place? If it is sufficiently efficient for the rest of the community, why is it not efficient enough for the employees of CIE? Why must they have the added great expense of motor cars? Surely there is a glaring inconsistency in this.
The Minister attempts, as I say, to have things both ways. He has dismissed at one end and he has continued to recruit at the other. The result is the creation in the public mind of a general impression that the whole concern is out of control. It is a desperately important one as far as the public are concerned. It is a very costly one as far as the public are concerned. Because of that, it is particularly important that it be in the hands and under the control of someone who knows what is going on.
There was one question, a very vital one, which the Minister did not answer. Looking at it from the point of view of the public, the ordinary person travelling from place to place in the city, in the town, or in rural Ireland, why is it that there has been no substantial change in the timetable over the past six years? Why is it that there has not been a speeding up, an increase in schedules, a shortening of the time between services, or the provision as was suggested, of an express service and a slow service so that people could pick whichever they wanted? Why has there been no substantial change in the timetables? Surely that is a most important consideration from the public's point of view.
The Minister says people are content. I should like to read for him just one communication about the Dublin services. It is a specific case and it may serve to show the Minister, who probably does not use the service very much, that it is not as satisfactory as he thinks it is. This lady uses the No. 11 bus service— Clonskeagh, Ranelagh, Leeson Street. It is quite unable to cope with the morning passenger traffic: "If I leave my home at 8.41 a.m., I have to stand at the bus stop and admire anything from five to seven buses passing me, all full, and therefore unable to stop. This means I am frequently late for work." This lady adds: "In the evening, I always walk home as I find this quicker, but I feel you will appreciate that one does not feel like doing this in the morning." I am sure every Deputy here could produce facts similar to those I have quoted from his own knowledge and from the knowledge of many of his constituents in the various parts of the country.
It was about complaints of this kind, in addition to the increase in fares, that we wished to see the general manager. We were not permitted to do so. It is very worrying and very disturbing to be told that the Minister, and those associated with the concern, appear to think that they are running a satisfactory concern. Whether you take it on the tiny incident of one person trying to get to work in the morning or the extreme of losing £1.7 millions, I do not think there is anywhere in the whole ambit of this institution in which one could say that this is a properly run service giving adequate facilities to the travelling public.
One of the very few occasions on which Telefís Éireann has been either amusing or interesting—the Minister will correct me, no doubt, if I am wrong—was last night when we had a programme about CIE. One of the people who appeared on the programme was interested in railways. He was asked about a railway carriage which was built 100 years ago and which was in use apparently on the Dublin-Sligo route in 1861. The interviewer asked how long the journey took. He smiled at the thought of the old thing chugging its way from Dublin up to Sligo and had visions obviously of a very long journey. The man who was being interviewed said: "It took about four hours.""What does it take now?" he was asked. He said: "Three hours and 55 minutes." A speeding up of five minutes in 100 years! I should like confirmation of that. I find it very difficult to believe that.
Does it take three hours and 55 minutes to get from Dublin to Sligo now and did it take just four hours to get to Sligo 100 years ago? Maybe there is a certain amount of exaggeration in it. The figures were as I have given them. If it is true, then surely it is a scathing indictment of the appalling stagnation in thinking in relation to transport and rail services over the years. It is this attitude which allows the Minister to give the impression that, so long as there is a service, he is not really interested in how the service operates, whether it is a fast or a slow service, a costly or a cheap service, or whether the people are warm or cold when they travel.
He is under a grave misapprehension also in his comments about the substitution of services. His attitude apparently is that if you have a railway and find there are very few people travelling on it, all you need do is to provide a couple of buses and a lorry or two and that solves your problem. But of course, as Deputy O'Connor of Kerry, his colleague, pointed out, that is one of the most important fallacies. He said that he had no alternative but to provide a lorry for his own business. That again is just like the lady who walks home from work and makes her protest against the inefficiency of CIE. Businessmen make exactly the same protest by providing themselves with lorries.
The Minister thinks that because he produces two lorries, or six lorries and three buses, or whatever it may be, that is the end of the business needs in the area. It is not so at all, of course. All the business men in the area take exactly the same attitude as Deputy O'Connor and all provide themselves with lorries. Many of the people who could or would not travel by bus provide themselves with motor cars, and many of them, as we have heard from Deputy S. Dunne, club together and provide themselves with taxis. Some get bicycles; some get motor scooters. The whole problem is not the simple single issue the Minister says. It is very much more complex, and that is simply looking at it from the point of view of the business man.
But if the Minister were to provide adequate alternative transport arrangements on the road, very many more matters are involved. There is the question of standards of safety and comfort which are very important and were, generally speaking, nearly inseparable from rail travel. There were occasional accidents, but broadly it was a very safe and sure way of travelling. You usually arrived on time and schedules are well kept. In order to provide alternative transport arrangements, it is not merely a question of providing two lorries and three buses. First of all, one must provide a first-class highway. The Minister gave the impression that the local authorities were perfectly satisfied with the consideration they were given by CIE. The total of the special railway road grants from the Road Fund to local authorities over the past four years is £1,400,000 odd. That is what they used to call in Hollywood heart balm, or conscience money, given to satisfy county councillors and members of corporations and of other bodies. It could not possibly begin to pay for the creation of the essential motorways which are needed, if satisfactory and comparably safe and efficient transport services confined to the roads are to be provided.
If we take even the Bray road of about 11 or 12 miles, we find that it would cost the Minister or the Government approximately £1 million per mile to provide alternative roads for a safe railway transport service. That would be about £11 or £12 million for the Bray service. That is a conservative estimate. The Minister jeers at people here because they are unable, as he says, to make accurate assessments of the costs for running a particular part of a service during any particular time, but he clearly has not begun to understand the true implications of closing down the railway service.
The fact that the railways are already there is a tremendous capital investment. What the Minister and his colleagues clearly refused to do was to face the possibility of making rail transport more efficient. It was accepted right from the beginning, and I do not understand how or why, that there should be a rejection of the possibility of making rail transport more efficient by smaller rail car units, faster services, better time schedules, lower fares and so on. That appears to have been abandoned from a very early stage. It seems to me that even leaving aside any other consideration, the Minister has to face the reality of his own figures concerning the increase in transport on the roads. His figures were that one in every eight persons, or something like that, had a car and that the figure would be doubled in ten years time. That is probably true. You are going to have more and more people on the roads in every kind of vehicle they can lay their hands on. Again, one must consider the question of the density of traffic in the light of the peak period. Everybody knows that in the peak period, if you try to drive from here to Rathmines, to Balbriggan or to anywhere else in the city or outside it, you have to go at about two miles an hour, and to do that under very dangerous circumstances.
These are the two main facts that the Minister cannot gainsay: the first, that the accident rate and the death rate on the roads is increasing virtually every year—it does not matter a bit whether it occurs to a person at the peak period or in the other periods, the accidents are happening, and are happening more frequently because of the increased density of traffic on the roads—and the second, which is, of course, recognised by the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Local Government, is the necessity of imposing certain speed limits in relation to traffic. This means that virtually everybody on the road will be going along in certain circumstances at 30 miles an hour, and where there are these colossal oil tankers and great trailer lorries and so on, most of us who might have cars which could do 50 or 60 miles an hour or more will be travelling at the rate of the slowest vehicle on the road, and that will be the vehicle upon which there is a compulsory 30 miles an hour limit. That will be the rate at which the whole transport for business will travel around the countryside, when in fact if you had concentrated on the railways, you would have been able to move to the 80 miles an hour level which I understand British railways and many other railways are trying to approach now. There is no reason why we should not have reached the same level here if we had hastened slowly, and not taken a great jump before taking this very important decision.
I have said on a number of occasions that I wrote to the general manager of CIE for some information some time ago and he would not give it to me. I wonder if the Minister could give it. It concerns the usage of different kinds of engines by CIE. I was attempting to come to some conclusions on the efficiency of the different types of locomotives which they had brought into use over the years. However, I did not get the information. I have looked up the annual report. Deputy Corry was abused because he gave what were alleged to be inaccurate figures and Deputy Lynch was accused of much the same thing. One of our difficulties is that we cannot get accurate information and that with the information at our disposal, we may arrive at conclusions which are not correct. We try our best to get this information from the Minister and from the general manager but it is not forthcoming.
Perhaps the Minister could explain to us Page 30 of the CIE annual report for 1962. There are locomotives noted there for 1961-62, steam locomotives and tenders, diesel electric, diesel mechanical and diesel hydraulic engines and it also gives the various numbers. One of the matters I would like to know is why it is that in a significant table there are numbers and mileage regarding steam engines and tenders and diesel electric engines but no number is given for diesel mechanical and diesel hydraulic.
There is a total of 26 of these and I should like to know what was their mileage during that period. The mileage for the other types of engines is given but there is no figure for the diesel mechanical and diesel hyraulic. Do they exist? Do they do any work? Are they, like the men, redundant? How long has the Minister had them? What work did he get out of them? How much did he pay for them? Where did he buy them? How long has he had them? All this information is missing from this report. Has it been left out deliberately? Are they trying to conceal something from the public? Did they make another mistake about this type of locomotive which they wish to conceal from the public? Was there a big capital outlay on them? What were their expected years of life? Did they meet that expectation? These are the questions which I asked the general manager some time ago but I could not get any information from him.
We have been met very often by this reticence, to use a mild word, on the part of the Board and the Minister, this refusal to give information. We know that a colossal amount of money was spent on a certain type of locomotive, which could not be used in the way it was intended by the makers because the purchasing commission made a great blunder in their purchase. Have they done the same thing here? I should like an answer from the Minister on that matter.
Taken with their unwillingness to be questioned about the true figures of employment in CIE, with other inaccurate information given to Deputy Lynch about the Tramore railway, and the difficulty Deputy Corry had in finding out about his particular problem in Cork, the difficulty I had myself in finding out the truth about the diesel engines which could only go one way, it is all evidence of an attempt by CIE to run the whole concern as a sort of secret service organisation. Who is concealing these facts and why are they doing it? Are they themselves involved and in what are they involved?
I suppose we were all very surprised to notice that, in spite of the fact that we have this Bill before the House, the Labour Party, Fine Gael, and an Independent Labour Deputy have motions before the House expressing our dissatisfaction at the decisions of CIE, the Board's attitude is to close down more branch lines, presumably because they are trying to hit the 1964 deadline. Is that the reason they decided to close down the railway to Ballaghaderreen? I hope the Minister will intervene in this matter. One of the matters which greatly concerns the development association in Ballaghaderreen is the prospect of an industry being established there. They are obviously worried that if the railway is not there, it will militate against their getting the industry. It is a German project which will employ 500 people and a decision to close down the railway at this time, jeopardises the possibility of an industry of this kind starting up in an area which greatly needs it. I hope the Minister will reconsider this matter and ask the Board of CIE, if he has any access to them and if they take any notice of him, to reconsider their decision in this regard.
The Minister would save himself a lot of trouble if he would adopt a more understanding or tolerant attitude to the job of Deputies and the various public representatives who draw his attention to what they consider are defects in CIE. The other Ministers, on the whole, accept the fact that all their geese are not swans and that there are occasions on which Deputies are right. The Minister seems to give the impression that the whole integrity is being questioned, if we ask him a question as to how CIE operate when we can get no reply from Dr. Andrews.
Would the Minister consider appointing a Transport Commission such as is recommended in the Beddy Report on Page 217? There it is stated:
We recommend that this should be undertaken by a Transport Consultative Council consisting of not more than seven persons of eminence in spheres of activity not connected directly with transport and selected for their outstanding personal abilities and wide general experience. We consider it important to preserve the independence of the Council and we are, therefore, of opinion that the members should not be representative of particular interests and should be unpaid.
The Council should be a purely consultative body. It should be available for consultation by public and private transport organisations, by representatives of agriculture, industry and trade, by trade unions, professional organisations and by any member of the public. It should have power to initiate discussions with those engaged in transport or with others on matters relating to transport and should have power to obtain such reasonable information regarding transport as it requires from public and private transport operators and other bodies in a position to supply relevant material.
I wonder would that suggestion made by the Beddy Report commend itself to the Minister? It is clearly one way out of the present very undesirable impasse which gives rise to a very considerable level of hostility in this House against the operations of CIE. Either that or we should have access to Dr. Andrews.
This concern is losing money and will continue to lose money. This House recognises that there will be a continuing loss in relation to CIE as operated in this way. The company cannot possibly meet its debts. It will not break even by 1964. All the unpleasantness, a lot of the inefficiency and a lot of the hostility that exists towards the management of CIE all seem to us to stem from the continued retention of these provisions.
The Minister has agreed with us that this has no validity in law; that it has no binding force; that it should never have been used in labour court negotiations; that it should not be applied to the workers when they look for increases in pay, shorter hours, a better working week; that it has no relevance when used by the officials of CIE. The Minister agrees with us that when we ask for a service to be extended in a rural area or when we ask for services to be extended in the cities, when we ask for a more frequent service at any particular time or when we ask for fares to be maintained at a particular level or reduced, it is completely irrelevant and wrong of the officials of CIE to blame this House for the provision that 1964 has been laid down as a date which must not be passed; that they cannot continue to lose money after March, 1964. This House has laid down that that is so: this is what we have heard from the officials of CIE, acting for Dr. Andrews, acting for the Minister for Transport and Power, on every possible occasion when any extention of service was asked for.
We have been met—members of the public, members of trade unions, local bodies, Deputies, whoever they may be—by this completely dishonest evasion because we have now been told by the Minister that there is no such compulsion at all. There is no binding compulsion on the company at all to break even by 1964. Their most important function is to provide an efficient service, a service giving a reasonable standard of comfort at a reasonable rate of fares.
They must not continue to blame this section for any curtailment in services which they impose or intend to impose on the public. They must not blame this section for any restrictions they impose on the workers' right to get a proper return for their work. It is for that reason that we have introduced this Bill. We hope it will get the support of the House. We do not think the Minister has made his case that the service is prosperous, that it is expanding at a healthy rate, that it has a good standard of public relations, that it has a satisfactory standard of labour relations and that the main factor intervening between the achievement of these objectives is the retention of this section.
Before I conclude I want to refer to the annual report of CIE. The Minister claimed that there has been considerable expansion over the years in the activities of CIE, particularly over recent years, under Dr. Andrews. I would refer the House to page 35 of the 1962 Report. You will find there a series of statistics of operation. You will find the tonnage of the principal classes of merchandise and minerals carried by goods train originating on the Board's system. The details in relation to 1961 and 1962 are given. There is a list of the articles carried— bacon, ham, groceries, grain, gypsum, porter, and so on. Altogether, 19 items are included.
There has been a drop in tonnage in 12 of the 19 items between 1961 and 1962 — and that, of course, includes the part the Minister played up as being the most satisfactory. In total engine miles there has been a drop. In goods and in total engine miles there has also been a drop. In passenger miles travelled, there has been a drop, though there has been an increase of .01 of 1d. in receipts per unit. Fares have gone up which, of course, explains the fact that receipts have gone up too, to a limited extent. Passenger transport, of course, also has gone down.
Take the operation of CIE on any of the tests put forward by those who believe in it. The profit of Dr. Andrews: it is not making a profit; it is making a loss of approximately £1,700,000. If you take any of the other criteria—the availability of a service to people living in the remoter areas—the whole picture of a restriction in the services is being provided. Then there is the increase in transport on the road and the failure to compensate local authorities for the great increase in expenditure, which they may not be paying now but which they certainly will continue to pay in the years ahead, because of the very heavy transport which will be travelling on these roads because of the transfer of traffic to the roads.
The £3,000 or £4,000 which they now spend to put a light surface on the road will not suffice in the years ahead. The roads will be pounded to pulp in a matter of months. The question arises of adequate alternative roads to reduce deaths on the roads, to reduce congestion on the roads. There is the question of the provision of services which are comfortable. The time schedule is virtually the same. There has been no improvement in the speed or frequency with which people get from one place to another but merely an increase in the cost of getting from one place to another and a very clear bias against the passenger. He is now faced with a monopoly in this passenger transport position and, because of that, no appreciable improvements have been made. As I say, the Dublin to Sligo journey takes much the same time now as it did 100 years ago.
No matter what test is applied, it is quite clear that the Minister has no case at all for refusing to concede this Bill. Allowing that we have to give the Minister his responsibility of defending those people for whom he is responsible, allowing that he is bound by that code in not accepting our Bill, I wonder would the Government consider allowing the Bill to go to a free vote of the House, allowing the Deputies who are in their Party and who support this suggestion that we should stop living a lie, that we should face the reality of continuing to subsidise CIE, to vote as they wish? Would they allow the whole question to be put to a free vote of the House because it can reasonably be said that nearly everybody, no matter from which side of the House he spoke, was either in favour of the Bill or, else was favourably disposed to us, with possibly one exception, Deputy Noel Lemass.
