There are one or two minor items, Sir, in connection with the Oireachtas Vote, to which I should like to call attention. One is in regard to the Post Office facilities available to the members of this House. Of course, I know that the Post Office in the Oireachtas here can never be expected to be an economic unit in the ordinary sense, such as an ordinary sub-post office in the country might be expected to be. It must be remembered, however, that it is a great convenience for Deputies or Senators who, having no other office in the city normally, use this House here for ordinary office work. As things are at present, the post office in this House does not open till 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and that is on the days in which the Dáil is sitting. Now, as a matter of fact, most Deputies must do their business in the forenoon, since the Dáil meets at 3 o'clock, and it would be a very great convenience for Deputies to be able to transact their business, by the purchase of stamps, and so on, in the forenoon here in the House on the days that the Dáil is sitting. I do not think it would entail any very great expense, and it certainly would be a very great convenience to the Deputies in transacting their business here in the House. I would ask the Parliamentary Secretary to see whether or not—unless the expense would be prohibitive—the Postmaster-General could not arrange to have attendance here by a postmaster, on the days the House is sitting, from the morning on, instead of from 3 to 10.30 p.m., as it is at present.
The second point to which I should like to refer is in connection with the telephones. On the whole, we must admit that that service does not give any reason for complaint, and I am sure we are all glad to be able to pay a tribute to the young ladies in charge of the switchboard. Occasionally, however, it happens to Deputies that, when they want to use the telephone, all the lines are engaged. I fully appreciate that that can easily happen where you have a widely fluctuating demand for facilities, but I suggest that there could be some arrangement to provide against that happening in this House, even during a period of peak demand.
There is another matter to which I should like to draw attention. It is not a matter of great urgency, but it is one which, I think, is worthy of consideration. Owing to the restricted space in this House, it became necessary to build the diningroom on top of the boilerhouse. Now, during the winter months, the conditions resulting from that arrangement are not a matter of very serious importance, but during the summer months the atmosphere in the diningroom becomes, not infrequently, intolerable. Now, for Deputies who have been occupied in this Chamber—which, undoubtedly, is not the airiest place in the world—to go from here into the diningroom in order to get their lunch or dinner, is not a very pleasant experience when they find that the temperature of the diningroom is five or six degrees hotter than that of this Chamber, and it is frequently quite impossible to take a meal at all in the diningroom. One prefers to go without food at all rather than endure the misery of sitting there.
I am aware that this matter has engaged the attention of the Parliamentary Secretary and he has tried to make improvements of one kind or another. I now want to suggest to him that it would be a legitimate expense to provide in the dining-room air conditioning. In America air conditioning is now pretty general in every restaurant and even on every railway train. On most ships that one travels on the dining-room is air conditioned. Our dining-room here is peculiarly adaptable to air conditioning because it is completely cut off from the rest of the house by swing doors. I am informed by air conditioning engineers that where you have that position it is comparatively easy to control the temperature of one room even though the rest of the building is not dealt with. I would be grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary would enquire into the cost of air conditioning the dining-room and, if it were not excessive and money became available, put the matter in hand.
