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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 30 Jan 1924

Vol. 6 No. 10

PUBLIC SAFETY (POWERS OF ARREST AND DETENTION) TEMPORARY BILL, 1923. - REPORT OF CANAL AND WATERWAYS COMMISSION.

I move

"That the Dáil is of opinion that the Executive Council should put into effect the recommendations of the Report of the Canals and Inland Waterways Commission, July, 1923."

In setting down this motion my primary intention was to get from the Ministry some declaration of policy in regard to a report that would be admitted to be of very considerable importance. There have been, I believe, something like seven or eight different Commissions during the past century in connection with the canals and inland waterways of Ireland. I think I am correct in saying that there is hardly one, if there be one single recommendation, made by one single Commission, during the whole of that time that has been put into operation. It would be a pity, I think, if in the Free State a Commission of this importance, dealing with a matter of this importance, were to have reserved for it the same fate as has been reserved for all earlier Commissions, dealing with the same question. I am sure that the Ministry will agree that, whether the report be or be not of such a nature as should be put into effect, in all its provisions, it is at least deserving and worthy of some Ministerial statement as to what is going to be done. I am not going into the details of the report. It is a very lengthy document. It has gone into a mass of material, some of it dealing with the history of canals and waterways in Ireland, and it has made a definite series of recommendations, all of which have been very carefully considered by the Commission. In general outline, the proposal of the Commission is that the canals and waterways of Ireland should be nationalised—should be undertaken by the State and run by the State. I need not labour the importance of these canals—and when I say canals I include the various waterways, whether rivers or otherwise, that make of the whole one single, complicated pattern of communication other than communication by rail—but they are vital, and could be made of very great service, indeed, to the economic life of this country. It has been stated by the Commission— and I have heard it stated in public for a long number of years—that if the canals and waterways were to be worked properly as one system under single control, that the costs of transport in Ireland could be very materially reduced. It follows that if the cost of transport in Ireland could be materially reduced, the cost of living in Ireland could be reduced too. Take only one part of the country—the great Midland plain. Take the towns of Mullingar, Athlone and Ballinasloe. I do not touch upon those for any reason except that they furnish an example of what can be said of a good many other towns. If the canal connecting these towns were put into proper repair and equipped as canals would be equipped in any other country in the world, the cost of commodities in these towns would be very materially reduced, especially those commodities that are drawn, under the conditions under which we live, from the imports received by this country from other countries. More than that, there are manufacturing products—I include in "manufacturing products," industry, not alone as the term is used in other countries, but as it is used here in respect of our chief industry, agriculture—and the freights on the export of those products to the ports of this country could also be materially reduced in respect of such commodities as can be sent by the waterways. There is a very excellent reason why the canal system of this country should be undertaken under one single direction—that single direction preferably being the direction of the State—and worked for the national advantage, more or less on the lines recommended by this report.

I realise very well—no Deputy can fail to realise—that the Government at the present moment have undertaken probably as many problems as they can hope satisfactorily to solve. I do not know what reply the Government will make to the proposition put up to it by the Canal Commission, but if the Government should reply, "We have in hands about as much as we can hope to undertake," I think they will have stated something very reasonable from their point of view. But if that answer should be returned, the problem of the Canals will still remain a problem deserving of immediate attention. I think myself—I have long been of the conviction, and I say it here now as prefatory to anything else I may follow with—that the right way in which the canals and waterways in this country should be worked would be under one single direction, and that that single direction should be the direction of the State. I am fortified in that conviction by the fact that practically every other country has done the same. In France and in other countries, as this Report sets out—I will not go into the details of it—all the canals are run under the direction of the State. In France it is insisted upon that the rates quotable by canals should be at least 15 per cent. lower than the rates quotable by rail, although the State runs both rail and canal. I repeat that I think the best method by which this problem can be answered would be by State control in this regard. But if the Government should say they are not prepared, at the present moment, to undertake this problem, that they have their hands full with the railway question, and will be for some time engaged and pre-engaged with that problem, then I say the Government should state that it is prepared—I want to make a practical suggestion as an alternative to what I consider the best scheme—to lend legislative sanction to disengaging the canals from the control of the railways. I take one particular canal—the Grand Canal. I am quoting from the evidence given by the Minister for Public Works in Ireland before the 1906 Canal Commission. He said:—

In 1846 authority was given for the sale of this Canal to the Midland Great Western Railway Company, and a section in that Act provided that all the works connected with it shall be maintained, upheld and preserved by the Company for the purpose of navigation in as full, ample, and perfect a manner as by the Act of 1818 is authorised and required; and the Lord Lieutenant and the Board of Control shall exercise the same powers over the Railway Company and Canal as over the Canal Companies and Canal.

I ask if anyone who has ever travelled up and down this line would profess for one single instant that that Canal—an important waterway and an important connection of transport—is being maintained as it should be maintained. It is obvious that it is not being so maintained. It is further obvious that the Canals are being withheld from their proper use, lest they should prove too strong an opponent to the railways. In other words, that one form of transport has taken a hold of the rival form of transport, and has strangled it as a competitor that would imperil its own progress. Whether it be done by way of the recommendations of this Report or not—and I think it should preferably be done by way of these recommendations—I do urge that it is very important to this country that the Government should determine that the canals should be disengaged from that stranglehold by the railways, and that the Government should say that if any person or persons—failing their own undertaking of this control—are willing to undertake control and run the canals in competition with the railways, they (the Government) are willing to lend such a proposition their active assistance. I do not suggest that that assistance should be by way of new legislation. That is a point to which I would like to draw the attention of the Minister for Finance. I do not suggest by way of new legislation, but merely by insisting that the legislation that has been already enacted and which we, by Article 73 of the Constitution, have taken over as the legislation of the Free State shall be executed within the full meaning of its provisions.

In other words, if a railway company have taken over a canal and have undertaken to maintain it in the state of perfection in which they found it and are not doing so, the railway company shall be compelled, having failed to keep its contract, to part with its interests in these canals in order that the canals may be run as they should be run, and as they are run in other countries in competition with the railways; and they should not be run by railways that are very careful to see that they will never run them in competition with themselves. The Minister for Agriculture has here and outside the Dáil argued that one of the main questions before this country is the high cost of living. He has also touched upon the problem of high rates of transport and high freights. I believe that in the report made by the Canal Commission a very successful contribution has been made to solving the problem that the Minister for Agriculture has indicated. I do not want to press this Report too strongly upon the Ministry. The Ministry, I admit frankly, have got a reasonable case—even if they say that the Report would carry their entire conviction but yet that they are not able to put it into execution because of the many other matters that must engage their attention. Then I would urge in the alternative that they should declare publicly that they are willing to give any assistance that lies in their power in disengaging the canals from the control of the railway companies, and in the future to insist that the canals should be kept apart from the control of the railway companies, and to see also that in the future they should be run as an alternative competitive transport system to the railways. The best way to do that is to do it themselves. But if they cannot do it themselves they should give assistance so that it shall be done by others and done as speedily as possible.

I second the motion. Speaking on behalf of the agricultural industry, we feel that the present system by which canals are under the control, in part, of the railway companies has not given an opportunity for the competition in freights. Any thing that would tend to lower freights is to the advantage of the community, especially to the advantage of the agricultural community. In the instance that Deputy Figgis has mentioned about the canals he inadvertently named the Grand Canal when he should have said the Royal Canal. The Royal Canal is owned by the railway company, and anyone who knows the condition of affairs in that canal knows that it has been strangled, therefore the competition that would be given effect to in Mullingar, in Longford and other places has been taken away. I do not expect that the Government will nationalise the canals. As a matter of fact the farmers are opposed to nationalisation in any shape or form. But there could be inside the lines of the Report sufficient information by which we could have an alternative means of transport to the various points which these canals serve. For that reason I formally second the motion.

I think it is scarcely worthy of the consideration of Reports such as this that there should be such a small number present—that there should be only one Minister supported by two of his colleagues. If the Minister for Finance agrees, I would move the adjournment of the debate to enable the Minister responsible to come to the Dáil and to make a statement with regard to the matter moved by Deputy Figgis. That is the way out of the difficulty at the moment, because there is a difficulty in the absence of the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and in the fact that there is such a small number present. I think that before any further debate takes place on this matter that the responsible Minister should make a statement of Government policy.

I do not think that any Deputy can argue that in a case like this, where such a large sum of money is involved as would be involved here, that the Minister for Finance is not a responsible Minister.

Is the Minister for Finance prepared to make a statement as to the policy of the Government?

I am in a position to make a statement all right. I have no objection, of course, to adjourn it. The Minister for Industry and Commerce is engaged on important work to-day, and I am here to answer for the Government. But if the motion to adjourn is anything in the nature of a censure on the Ministry for Industry and Commerce, I would not agree to the adjournment.

There is nothing of the kind in my mind. But it has been usual where recommendations of a Commission were discussed in the Dáil that the responsible Minister would make a statement of Government policy arising out of that Commission. And I suggest the adjournment of the debate to allow him to make a statement of Government policy arising out of the Commission. I think that such a statement is due to the Dáil, and I suggest it would be more appropriate that such a statement should be made by the responsible Minister, and not by a Minister who has nothing to do with the matter under discussion.

"Responsible Minister" means the Minister who set up the Commission.

I have had a certain amount of consultation with the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and it is in view of that consultation that I would say what I propose to say if this discussion goes on. He would, perhaps, speak in a little more detail if he were here, but I do not think he would say very much more in substance than will be said by me if the matter is gone on with.

Does the Deputy make a proposal to adjourn the debate?

I do, and I hope the Minister for Finance will agree to it. In that way the position will be regularised, and we will have the responsible Minister dealing with his own department.

The proposal is to adjourn the debate until what date?

Until the next day for private business.

I second the adjournment of the debate on this matter.

Question: "That the debate be adjourned until the next day for private business," put and agreed to.
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