I move:—
That a Select Committee consisting of seven Deputies, to be nominated by the Committee of Selection and with power to send for persons, papers and documents, be appointed to investigate and report to the Dáil on (1) the position of the petrol supply, and (2) the basis of the present distribution of petrol; and to make recommendations:
That the quorum of the Committee be four.
This motion has been so very long on the Order Paper that I think I could almost say that it has grown long, white whiskers. I think, subject to correction, that it was some time last February that the motion was put down. It was at that time within the knowledge of all of us that the conditions arising from the restrictions imposed on the distribution of petrol were giving rise to a vast amount of dissatisfaction and possibly a great amount of misunderstanding. The whole transport system of the country, other than public transport, was, in my opinion, a matter of national importance, and I think I am entitled to express a slight degree of dissatisfaction that the machinery of this House should operate in such a way that a motion of this kind, dealing with a matter of such importance, should remain on the Order Paper from month to month over a period of ten months, and that no opportunity would be made available to have the matters in question discussed and dispensed with.
The delay of nine or ten months, however, alters in no manner whatever the necessity for having a full discussion on this motion. The terms of the motion are that the Dáil appoint a committee from amongst its members to inquire into the present petrol situation and to make recommendations with regard to its distribution.
One would imagine that there would be nothing controversial in such a motion. A wise man is always anxious to hear and accept advice. If any individual is wiser by far than the rest of us there is no harm in his listening to the advice; there is no obligation on him to take the advice. All the motion asks is that a committee would be appointed to be made conversant with the petrol situation and, as a result of that knowledge, to make recommendations.
The Minister may say that the position has bettered itself since last February; that the people have adapted themselves to restricted petrol. The degree to which the situation has bettered itself is the extent to which the black market in petrol has grown. Leaving out public organisations, such as the Army, the Electricity Supply Board and huge public services, I think I am stating nothing but the bare truth when I say that the black market in petrol at the present moment, so far as the private owner is concerned, is far more extensive than the legitimate market in petrol. There are two black markets. One black market is based on forged coupons. Earlier you had another black market that was based on stored petrol. Then you had the forged coupons. But the biggest and most widespread black market at the moment is based on the sale of coupons officially issued by the Department of Supplies. Any man who has a lorry had merely to say "turf" and, once he said "turf", coupons were issued. The Minister shakes his head. It is the only head that shook, and the reason is that the men sitting behind the Minister know far more about country conditions than the Minister. I do not blame him for that. If we were living our lives up here, busy in a Government office, going home every day after work, we would know very little about conditions in the country.
I can get the Minister ample evidence that there is not a village in this country, particularly in the big turf-cutting areas, where any man who wants coupons cannot buy anything up to 100 coupons per month at a price. His own public officials can inform him of that. I am aware of the fact that many officers of this State have written up protesting against the fact that they can only carry out their duty provided they deal with the racketeers to get sufficient petrol. There is an immense black market. If the Minister is unaware of that fact, that is the strongest argument that could be advanced for the motion. Most Deputies know I am speaking the truth. The Minister shakes his head. I accept it that he does not know that is going on. I want a Committee of the Dáil to help the Minister to know what is going on and to stop it. I believe it is one of the most damnable growths that have grown up in this country: that out of a national emergency, out of necessary restrictions on such an important article as petrol, criminals should be making a fat living, and that through the machine operating as it does at present we are attracting more and more people to become criminals.
I do not pretend to know exactly under what conditions coupons are given to people who are going to transport turf. But I do know in regard to very many of the coupons that are given for the transport of turf that people find it more profitable to cash the coupons. Is the Minister aware that every single coupon that is issued is the equivalent of a postal order for 5/-? In some areas the price is considerably higher. But imagine the poor man who gets 40 or 100 of these in good faith in order to do a certain job of work and who discovers that these 40 or 100 bits of paper are equivalent to 100 postal orders for 5/-. Human nature would not be what it is if what is happening did not happen. I invite the Minister in the privacy of his own room, or in the privacy of his own Party room, to ask his own Deputies on their honour whether I am speaking the truth or not. I am speaking with knowledge, with first-hand knowledge. I am speaking of what I have witnessed myself. I am reinforced in my opinion by a vast volume of correspondence and an amount of that has reached Government Departments. Everything and anything that can be done to stop that evil growth should be done. If more information can be brought to the Minister, if more light can be thrown on the subject by a group of well-intentioned Deputies coming along to the Minister and giving him information from the pooled minds of the lot, is there any objection to that, is there any challenge to the Government, is there anything hurtful to the Minister? The motion asks for that. The intention behind the motion is sincere.
A most abominable state of affairs has arisen in this country around petrol. Leave other things out of it for the moment. To a very great extent that has been the result of the rigidity of the Department of Supplies in dealing with the public. Nobody could complain last January or February. Petrol had run out, or practically run out. Some services, some things had to be kept moving on whatever petrol was there, or the little that it was hoped to bring in. Nobody could complain at the start of the difficult situation about a rule of thumb being drafted in a Government office and applied impartially right down to the country. Last February, as I say, there could be no complaints about that. But surely within the nine months that have passed since some examination could have been given to the application of the rule of thumb in all cases? A rough-and-ready thing—four gallons for a private person with a car of less than 12-horse power and all private owners equal—was all right in the beginning. Is that a satisfactory position to stand over ten months after the arrangement was made? Every Deputy knows that there is a difference between private car and private car; between a man living seven miles away from his farm and a man whose dwelling is on his farm. There is a difference between the businessman who is living seven miles away from his business and the man who is living over his business.
To an extent there is a difference in the use of one man's private car and another's but there was no concession. The rigid rule was there. Nobody in the Department was allowed to have any powers of discrimination as between one and another. That is the position with private persons. Take members of my own profession. It did not matter whether a doctor had a position in a mental hospital where all his patients were on one side of a corridor or another, where he never had to get a wet foot from one end of the year to the other to visit all his patients or whether he was a man with a vast dispensary district such as exist, say, in the west of Ireland, in Connemara. There were 12 gallons per month for the man who never had to cover 100 yards in his car to visit patients and 12 gallons per month for the man who would have to cover 100 miles or 50 miles at the least, every day, to visit patients. There were 12 gallons per month for the lady doctor who is married and who left practice 20 years ago, merely because at one time she was a doctor, if she is the owner of a car. There were 12 gallons a month for the busiest man in the whole of Ireland. Is there any defence for that being the situation ten months after a rough scheme is adopted? The same allowance for a man who, say, has to cover patients within an area of 30 square miles a day as for a man who retired from practice years ago and who does not use his car. Was any consideration ever given to it? As a rule in rural Ireland you may take it that the dispensary district and the parish are approximately the same thing and the work has got to go on. In the ordinary parish you will have two priests at least and one clergyman and one doctor. The clergymen just get a bare minimum of petrol to do their work, to visit the sick of their own religion. There are three of them to one doctor. He has to attend to all religions. He has to attend the juveniles, the infants as well as the adults. He has to attend the minor case as well as the serious case that is in danger of death and he has to attend all cases repeatedly. There is the same allowance for him that is reasonable for any one of the three clergymen.
There may be an answer to everything I say. Is there any objection to giving that answer to and through a committee? Any body of people would agree that the present allowance is reasonable for the person who uses a private car merely for pleasure, who has not to travel any distance to his work, who has not any farm miles away, who has not to attend fairs; but nobody would agree that it is reasonable to rank on an equal basis a person who may have two or three shops five or six miles apart, where there is one ownership responsible for the supervision and visiting of those shops or a man who has two or three farms at a distance from his residence; or the school teacher—and there are many of them—who lives at a considerable distance from the school where he or she is teaching. There should be, by this time, some differentiation between the basic rate for a purely pleasure private car and for a private car used for other business. There should be differentiation between clergyman and clergyman, between the clergyman who has a whole time post in a university and the clergyman who is responsible for visiting the sick over a vast area. If the allowance for one is reasonable, the allowance for the other is entirely inadequate. As between doctor and clergyman the allowance is also entirely inadequate and as between doctor and doctor.
What is the objection to a committee of the Dáil sitting down to the various difficulties that confront the Minister? The Minister may say he has his advisers. I respect the Civil Service just as much as the Minister does. They are upright people. They do their work conscientiously. Under difficulties, they are agreeable and courteous to everybody. But I regard the life of the average civil servant as being something equivalent to a cloister life, certainly with regard to rural conditions. The average higher civil servant may have originally come from the country 25 years ago but to hear his views on rural conditions nowadays would make you think you were living in 1903 or, at the latest, 1912. They are completely out of touch with rural conditions as they are to-day. The Minister is a city man. He sees the country on his political tours. That does not teach him a whole lot about the country. There is he, an unfortunate city man, surrounded by a number of upright, conscientious people whose knowledge of the country is, at the most recent, 25 years old.
There is the explanation for the hopeless rigidity with which the scheme is presented. You may go to the Department and make the best case in the world and they will say: "We can quite see that. We agree with you, but there is the scheme and we cannot depart from it. We cannot make an exception here because we would have to make it over there." Other Government Departments are heart-broken trying to penetrate the solid rock behind which petrol coupons are issued in this country.
I cannot see anything distressing or disturbing in getting the assistance and advice of a committee drawn from this House. Let the Minister get a committee elsewhere if he likes, but in his own interests and in the interests of creating satisfaction where there is universal dissatisfaction, I would certainly advise him to depart from that rigid atmosphere that has existed since last February. As I said, last February, a rule to apply to all, according to classes, was reasonable, but each class could be advantageously divided into seven or eight sub-classes. In some cases it would mean subtraction, in other cases it would mean addition, but in all cases it would mean more satisfaction, in so far as the people concerned would understand that their particular class had been particularly looked into and the best that could be done had been done. Whatever is done, would the Minister accept this much—I am not talking about wealthy pleasure seekers—I am talking about businessmen and workers of one kind and another who travel on wheels— none of them engage in illegalities for pleasure; none of them throw away five shilling pieces for fun. The number of them that are forced to deal in the black market is staggering, and the amount of coupons that can be got through the black market is amazing.
I said at the beginning that the first black market was the accumulation of petrol stored by cute persons as against a shortage and its unloading. The next pillar supporting that black market was the forging of coupons, to the extent to which there is a trickling back of coupons which have been passed in; but the biggest illegal market is through the traffic in coupons which are being issued from month to month. If anybody, a hackney man, a lorry man or a professional man, gets supplementary coupons over and above the flat-rate private allowance—one man, let us say, for carrying turf; another for carrying passengers; and another for doing his business—what check is there that, in fact, those coupons are used in that particular way? I know that a case is made before the coupons are given, but, after they have been given, what is the check?
I may make a perfect case, if I am living down the country and have a lorry, as to why I should get petrol to drag turf, and I get the coupons. I find that each coupon is the equivalent of a five-shilling postal order and I find that it is better business to cash the 100 five-shilling postal orders per month and to work hard at my business or trade than to go on the road day after day with the lorry and, at the end of the month, not get as much clear profit. What check is there on me?
We have parish councils in every parish; we have all kinds of organisations built up around and behind the State, and we have a police force distributed throughout the whole country. Have any questions ever gone out to them as to the use made of the coupons that are being issued? I remember that, in the early days of the petrol difficulty in January last, you could not stop your car at a patient's house but the nose of a civic guard would be in your tank to see if you were using paraffin. I do not blame them for that. It was necessary to conserve paraffin supplies. They got special instructions and they were very vigilant about their work. They smelled the tank of every car and very quickly knew who was extending his petrol by the use of paraffin. Has all that vigilance ceased? Was ever a speedometer in this country looked at since last February? If a speedometer registered, say, 1,000 miles on 1st September and the owner of the car got four gallons of petrol and if the speedometer showed 4,000 miles on the 1st October, was the question asked: "Where did you get the petrol?" On the other hand, where a lorry was granted 100 or 150 gallons a month for the transport of turf, the same the next month and the same the third month, was there ever any check on that lorry to see how far, in fact, it was used in the transport of turf? If there were only 20 gallons used for the transport of turf, was any question ever asked as to what became of the other 80 coupons?
The Minister will agree with me that there is nothing more demoralising, nothing more sapping of people's decency, than for a neighbour on one side or the other to be making wealth by graft; and that, little by little, even the most upright man will come to say to himself: "If it is as easy as that, why should I not do it?" Then, on the other side of the fence, there are people who want to live their lives as self-respecting, law-abiding people and who find that they cannot go to ease the cry of the patient in distress, of the person in pain, that they cannot get there quickly enough, unless they deal with the racketeer who is to be found in every street.
A number of doctors have told me that they are doing things they would not have believed 12 months ago they would ever do, that they are working through touts so as to purchase for the last week or the last ten days of each month a supply of coupons, afraid that they will go to bed with the tank empty and that at 1 or 2 o'clock in the morning there will be a call from somebody in grave danger, to say the least of it, and that they will have to put their heads out of the window and say: "I have no way of getting there; the tank is empty." Most of those men are brought up in a very grand tradition, that, when the cry of distress reaches them, everything else must go by the board, every obstacle must be removed and even a minor law must be trampled upon in order to answer that call. Is the Minister aware—I am not speaking with knowledge of the city, as I do not know what happens in the city—that four doctors out of every six, giving a conservative figure, are forced to deal with the racketeers for at least ten days of every month?
Is there not at least something to be inquired into, something to be looked into? Is there not something on which it is worth taking the opinion of your own country Deputies, and would it be made any worse if, in asking the opinion of your country Deputies, you took the opinion of one or two country Deputies over here? If, as the result of inquiries, you agree that there is any truth in the assertions I am making, is it not an evil situation? Is it not one that should be grappled with? Is it not a situation in which it would certainly do the Minister no harm— whether it would do him any good or not is a matter of opinion—to get the opinion, to hear the advice and to read the recommendations of others with regard to this problem? I do think that, generally speaking, the position in rural Ireland is a lot worse than the Minister thinks it is. I believe that we would not have had the ten months' rigid inactivity if anybody had made it his business to wake up the Minister to the fact that things are serious. If anybody would collect from his own district information even as to how many deaths occurred since last February by reason of the delay of the doctor in reaching people—I have a fair idea over two counties—I am perfectly certain that if the facts and figures were published, all would be horrified, including the Minister.
There is respect in this country, and a deep kind of sympathy, with people in distress. It would not make any of us comfortable to think that through any casual red-tape rule anyone near or dear to us was allowed to die because of delays: because a doctor, an elderly man who is called out at night and is not able to ride a bicycle—the tank in his motor car is empty and he has to start to hoof it— reaches a patient much later than he should if he had hoped to achieve anything by his visit. The number of cases of that kind that have occurred is very big. I may be asked, are there not a number of organisations that would be glad to publish details of these cases. That is not the way the medical profession is built up. I myself would not go to anybody and say that if Doctor X had reached your relative an hour earlier, if it were not for the coupon restrictions, he would be alive to-day. Imagine that person's thoughts for the rest of her life. She may begin to ask herself, what did the doctor use his last pint of petrol on, the pint of petrol that would have enabled him to reach her relative earlier. The publication of that kind of thing would not do any good.
The Minister has ways and means of finding out, in confidence, whether I am exaggerating the situation or not. In face of all that, we have a situation in the biggest petrol-using concern in the country that would make one think that petrol flowed through the fields like the River Liffey. In connection with a motion such as this, I do not want to be unreasonable or harsh in my criticism of any public Department. I do not know enough to claim to be an authority on the questions that I raise, but as a representative of the man in the street, as a Deputy who can claim to do a far bigger mileage than, I think, any other member of the Dáil—a mileage of 70 to 80 miles a day over five days of the week —I cannot deal with this subject and refrain from saying this, that the free use of petrol by the Army—I will not call it waste—as against the restrictions imposed on various classes of people, is simply appalling. I do not mind about the petrol that is used for the training of soldiers in the use of the weapons of war. I do not mind if I am told that 10,000 gallons per week go into aeroplanes, that three times that quantity goes into armoured cars and three times as much again into tanks and other weapons that the men in the Army have to handle because it is necessary that they should become proficient in the use of those weapons before the day of trial comes. I have no complaint to make with regard to that kind of expenditure. But, what I do complain about is the non-essential running round of cars, staff cars and lorries up and down the roads.
That is simply appalling. I was a commanding officer myself at one time and if there is a lorry and a driver there and you want something the handiest thing to do is to send the driver to fetch it. That is all right in normal times. It is the proper military way of doing things. This Army of ours has received very full consideration from the Dáil and the people, and, therefore, in these abnormal times I would urge that in return the Army should extend nearly as much consideration to the people. Army stores have to be pulled, dragged and carried, sometimes big and sometimes small supplies. But we must remember that goods trains, bus services and canal boats are still running. Can any member of the House ever remember seeing military stores being loaded or unloaded from a public transport conveyance in this country? I cannot remember a single occasion on which I have seen that occur. I never saw it happen at an Irish railway station. Members of the Dáil who have travelled in other countries will have seen big volumes of military stores being unloaded at wayside stations to be taken to the nearest military depot, and that at a time when petrol was to be got ad lib. I do not say that petrol is being wasted, but it is being used a lot too freely by the Army. I drive over a 30 mile stretch of road twice a day. I start the journey with a mental bet against myself as to the number of military vehicles that I will meet, under or over 12. This road does not lead to any big military centre. My experience has been that I lose every day, and that happens no matter at what hour of the day I travel. I go along that road at varying hours.
Some people will not like the remarks I am making, but, as a Deputy, I feel there is a public duty imposed on me to say where I think economies could be effected without doing any damage. I am speaking in a way that possibly will be hurtful to very many old friends, comrades and associates, but I am doing so because I believe that there could be a vast and immense saving of petrol by the Army without interfering with the efficiency of the machine. People getting on in years are being asked in the national interest to face the winter on a motor bicycle, people who have not done that for over 20 years. We are prepared to do it and not to whine about it since we are told it is necessary that people should do it so that reserves of petrol may be built up for military use when the day of trial comes. Members of the House and people outside are doing that. I ask, should there not be some return for that? Remember we are not doing that merely to keep staff cars careering around the roads, staff cars carrying men who are younger and hardier than we are and going to the same places that some of us have to go to. When people are being asked to make sacrifices in order that supplies of petrol may be conserved and find that it is being used in the way I have described, it is not unreasonable that there should be a good deal of grousing and grumbling.
Take again the transport of troops from outlying stations to Mass. They are taken there and back by lorry while poor, feeble old women, some of whom have to travel far longer distances, are obliged to walk. That kind of thing is not tactful. It is irritating to the people. The point that I want to put to the Minister on this motion is that extravagance of that kind at the present time is unjustifiable and should stop. When it is stopped let the Minister say "I cannot do better than the present issue of petrol." If the Minister stops the extravagant or the over-free use of petrol by the biggest petrol using body within the country, a body over which the Government have control, and then finds that he cannot do better than give a half a gallon or whatever the allowance may be to the other classes of people in the community, everyone will accept that without complaint and without controversy. At the present moment I feel it is essential in the public interest, that two things should be done. The first is to satisfy the public that, when the Government and the services under it are asking for very big sacrifices from the public, in return some little sacrifice should be made by the Government itself and by the services under it. None of us would say that a Minister should be asked to go without his car. That, I think, would be entirely unreasonable. All we ask is that there be economical use of vehicles of that kind, that there be economy and strict control in the Army, Electricity Supply Board, Post Office and any one of these big State concerns that are using petrol, and in many cases using it over freely. That is one thing that is necessary, no matter who is to go through the hoop, is that the disgraceful racketeering and black marketing must stop, that traffic either in petrol or petrol coupons should be made a very serious offence. I am not talking about the forgers. They are only secret groups of criminals.
They do not count for 1 per cent. of the petrol sold illegally every day. The only explanation of the other 99.9 per cent. of illegal petrol is the over-free issue of coupons in certain directions. I suggest that the co-operation of all well-intentioned bodies—parish councils, Local Security Force and Gárda —should be got in stamping out that disgraceful traffic. It is aggravating to a person who has business to do and gets enough petrol to do that business adequately for four days in the month to know that all around him oceans of petrol are being bought and sold illegally. It is exasperating, in that state of affairs, when people come up to you and offer you unlimited petrol for sale. The Minister may say, "Why do you not report when that happens?,, That is a very difficult thing to do. A neighbour or a friend comes up and says: "Are you stuck; I will tell you where you can get all the coupons you want." I know it is the right thing immediately to write a letter and give that friend's name. I shall be prepared to do that if I have others standing beside me. If a committee is established to inquire into all this kind of thing and to help the Minister and the Government to stamp it out, I will, at least, be prepared to play my part. What is going on at the moment is no good to the people. It is undermining government and the institutions that flow out of, or support, government. It is corrupting the moral fibre of the people up and down the country. In proportion to our population, there is more of that kind of minor graft in this country at present than novelists ever ascribed to the great City of Chicago.
