Before the adjournment, I had been dealing with what seemed to me the basic problem in the Bill, namely, the question of ownership and control. Bearing in mind that, if there is to be any reasonable prospect of efficiency in public transport here, it is dependent upon a monopoly both of railway and road services, and that from that point of view, both as an ethical and a moral principal as well as a good social practice, I urged the viewpoint that such monopoly should be under public ownership, should be under the continuous control, in so far as its principles are concerned, of the Legislature of the country, and that the benefits, if any, which would accrue to that monopoly should flow to the citizens of the country as a whole rather than to any group of private investors. In putting forward that viewpoint, I am not suggesting that public ownership or nationalisation should be accepted merely from the point of view of political principles but purely from the point of view that private enterprise in this particular field of activity has shown itself to be incapable of meeting the problems that have arisen; that in the field of transport, both rail and road, not only in this country but in many other countries, private enterprise and the unrestricted play of free competition have proved unsuitable to the continuance of the efficient operation of this public service. It is purely from the point of view of efficiency, and from the point of view that it is unsocial and, I think, immoral, to impose a monopoly on a vital service in the country and to allow that monopoly to be utilised to the benefit of a small, privileged group of citizens, that I have urged that a basis of public control through some form of nationalised transport, which seems to have met with a considerable degree of support in this House, should be considered.
The other important point to which I referred, and which perturbs me in relation to the Bill, is the whole financial structure. The Minister, at an earlier period, indicated that, so far as the Government was concerned, the whole basis on which they projected their system of reorganisation of transport as embodied in this Bill is, in the first instance, a matter of financial reorganisation. He subsequently went on to deal with other questions of traffic, managerial efficiency, and so on, but continually during the presentation of his case in support of the Bill he has emphasised the fact that the main hope in the future for the new transport company is the financial arrangements and the financial management that are to be given to it. But when we try to find out the actual extent in £ s. d. of the advantage that is to be given to the new company by virtue of this financial reorganisation and the new financial ability that is to be placed at the service of the company, so far the only single figure mentioned by the Minister is the sum of £110,000 per annum. Everything else is vague. He also indicates that there will be a certain relief given to the new company by way of release from taxation, but even that figure is not available. It is something general, something we must await in the future. The only definite figure we have is the figure of £110,000 per annum.
Against that small and insignificant figure we have on the other side, first of all, the proposals for the transfer of stock in the new company to the present holders of stocks and shares in the existing company, on a basis which seems to be open to criticism from every point of view. The Minister thinks that to take as a basis for such transfer the market value on any particular date, say on the basis indicated by the Labour Party in their proposals, over a period of ten years, or on a date immediately prior to the war, would be acting unfairly to the shareholders, especially the ordinary shareholders who, in 1933, had 90 per cent. of the nominal value of their shares slashed by legislative Act of this Assembly. The curious thing is that, while he has great concern for the shareholders to see that not the slightest act of injustice is done to them, in the Bill itself there is a complete lack of concern for the men who are the basis of the transport system, and they are not the shareholders.
So far as the shareholders as a body are concerned—leaving aside the individuals—over a period of the railway's operations they have been more than fully recouped what they originally invested, and, if there has been any dereliction on the part of the company in meeting its commitments in regard to dividends on ordinary shares, surely neither the Legislature nor the citizens of this country are to be held responsible.
They had not only control of the company, but they had, as the Minister has said, a monopoly up to a certain period in this country of the main artery of transport. Over the past 20 years this House, on different occasions, has had to give its attention to various measures brought before it to assist the railway company and, therefore, the proprietors of that company out of the difficulties that they allowed themselves to get into. The Minister said that they must not be treated unfairly, and that there should be no wholesale slashing of their interests in the present company. They are to be given a transfer of stock on a basis which quite clearly is hardly acceptable to anybody outside of those directly interested in this company, and those who are tied to support the Government in this House. Nobody can find a good word to say for the basis on which the Minister is proposing this transfer of stock. It is not that anybody wants to be inequitable in dealing with these men and women, but there have been many suggestions to take the value of the shares over a period or on a particular date. The latest suggestion on the matter was made in the House last night. It was that the matter would be left to a special commission or committee to make a decision which would be acceptable to all parties. The main point is not merely the question of how much intrinsic value is going to be given to those people by this transfer, but the more important one: what additional burden is to be placed on the new company because, for every £1,000,000 in capital that we allocate for the purchase of the interests of the present stockholders, the new company has got to provide, on the basis of the debenture stock, £30,000 in interest per year, and for any common stock, if the going is good, it may be at the rate of £30,000 or £60,000 per year up to a limit of 6 per cent. on the common stock.
It is not, therefore, a question of paying for something and of knowing that you are finished with it. Whatever is given to the present stockholders, as representing their interests in the new company, will be a burden that will have to be carried by the new company, by the staff of the new company and, possibly, in certain eventualities, by the taxpayers of the country as a whole. It is from that point of view that some of us, while we may disagree politically on what should be the form of ownership in the Bill, feel it should be possible to get agreement on this: that some means should be found equitably to decide what should be the basis of the allocation of stock in the new company to the present holders of stock in the existing company, something on which we could agree, and which would leave us a clear field to decide exactly whether or not we had overburdened this new company.
Even if all other measures embodied in the Bill were acceptable to everybody, we could at least decide that, having given the best system of organisation and the best system of control and ownership, we had at the same time not taken away any of those advantages from the new company by overburdening it in the financial sense.
The Minister last night, referring to certain figures, indicated that, in certain eventualities, the new company would require to more than double the net adjusted income over the years 1925 to 1938 if it were to meet its commitments under the heading of debenture interest, the redemption of debenture stock and the minimum payment of 1 per cent. on the common stock. At Question Time in the House to-day, he told us that he had been consulted by the company in relation to the addition of another £250,000 per year under this Bill to meet the proposed pension scheme for the employees. We have also got the fact, pointed out in the Report of the Railway Tribunal of 1939, that while the engineers had indicated to the Tribunal that the figure of, roughly, £1,200,000 per annum was required for the maintenance and renewal of ways and works and rolling stock, that in no year during the period from, say, 1931 to 1938 had that figure actually been made by the railway company. So that even if we allow for the fact that, with the new equipment, the reconditioning of road beds and rolling stock, as a result of the new capital put into the new company there might be a reduction in the actual amount required for maintenance and renewals over the period immediately following on the commencement of operations by the new company, we still have got to find, possibly, an additional sum, which has not yet been covered, and which must be added to the bill already presented against the new company before it starts operations at all.
From that angle the Minister was peculiarly vague. He said his only hope of the new company being a success consists in this: that it will attract back to the railways the traffic which it had lost. There is no indication at all on what basis that traffic is going to be attracted back by the new company. The Minister says there is going to be no interruption of private hauliers, private cars or of ordinary commercial vehicles. They will all be at liberty to carry private goods. But it is quite conceivable that there may be a new technical development in the case of private cars and private lorries after the war. No one can be positive about that. One thing, however, is clear, and that is that there will be a greater technical development in regard to the internal combustion engine installed in the private car or lorry than there will be in relation to the steam-engine on the railways. We all know that the whole tendency during the present war has been to utilise the internal combustion engine as against the steam-engine. In addition, we had the Minister for Local Government and Public Health in his speech last night indicating a complete system of new roads to cater specially for fast motor traffic: roads capable of carrying not only additional traffic in passengers and goods but carrying it at greater speed, with greater safety and with less inconvenience to those engaged in it.
Therefore, I say that if there are any advantages they will be on the side of those who will be either retaining traffic from the railways or taking it away from them. The railways can only meet that competition on certain lines: that is, if they are going to be able to offer lower charges for carrying freight and passengers. On that basis they must increase their traffic or carry the same amount of traffic as they had been carrying—leaving out the years of the emergency—at higher freight rates, or we will have a combination of both with a worsening of conditions so far as the men employed on the railways are concerned.
One thing which I regard as peculiar struck me when listening to the Minister's statement in support of the Bill, and it was this: that there is one vital factor that he has completely failed to refer to during the whole of the discussion. So far as the success of the Bill is concerned, he has indicated that it is largely dependent on what he regards as good financial management and the application of modern and efficient methods—I suppose reorganisation and rationalisation. It is clear and definite that the gentleman whom it is intended will be the new chairman is to be the main hope of the Minister in seeing that these particular improvements and benefits will accrue to the new company. Yet not once during the discussion has the Minister made a single reference to the fact that this same gentleman in March, 1943, indicated what he regarded as the two main disadvantages under which the present railway company operated. The first was that it had too big a staff and, secondly, that it was operating under onerous conditions imposed by the trade unions. I ask the Minister, does he agree with the future or intended chairman of the new company that there must be a reduction of staff on the railways if they are to be carried on in an efficient and capable manner and, secondly, must the conditions imposed by the trade unions on the railway company be eased to its benefit? One of these onerous conditions referred to by the present chairman of the Great Southern Railways Company in his speech was this: to insist that the railway company should pay overtime to railway workers when they had completed their normal eight-hour day. These are features that must occur to the mind of any ordinary person, and not so much the statements made by the Minister in this House as to what we are promised will flow from this Bill when it comes to be operated. The fact is that while the Minister may steer the Bill through the House and may be successful in having it passed into law, it is another individual, or group of individuals, entirely outside the range of this House and even outside the range of the Government, who will give effect to it when it becomes an Act, and who will have the duty of carrying out the policy of making the railway company efficient and economic, thus affording the basis on which the company will be able to pay the earnings on the various moneys invested in it.
It is from that point of view that we must measure the means whereby it is proposed to secure these new earnings for this company, on the basis of what we regard as the inflated values given to the present shareholders in the existing companies. We feel, as has been indicated by other speakers, that too heavy a burden is being placed on the back of the new company. Not the slightest indication has been given by the Minister—beyond the reference to the small sum of £110,000—as to how it is hoped so to improve the operating conditions of the new company that it will attract back the traffic, which is the only condition on which it can be successful. Will it be able to do that, without forcing upon the people of the country charges for the carrying of freight and passengers which are outrageous in their weight on industry, agriculture and the private citizens or, alternatively, destroying the conditions of employment and the employment itself of many thousands of railway workers?
It is from that angle that I think there is a complete shroud of darkness around the Bill. The Minister himself is groping in the dark and hoping, by the introduction of "a miracle worker," that something may be done to give effect to the promises he made in this House. Unfortunately, the "miracle worker" is not a miracle worker. The miracle has been the existence of conditions during the past four years, under which, as Deputy Keyes has pointed out, any ordinary man with normal experience of transport could not help but be a success in running transport, where all he had to do was to find the vehicles and they would be packed immediately with goods and passengers, at any price that either the owners of the goods or the passengers were asked to pay. That is not any form of miracle working, but is a very unsure and shaky foundation on which to build the whole future of transport. When it is related, in addition, to a financial structure which commends itself to scarcely anybody but the members of the Government Bench, the outlook for this new company is one that might well cause the Minister to reconsider his attitude. He should see if some agreement could not be secured on this particular feature of the Bill, so as to relieve everybody's mind that it is not merely a question of coming back to the House later to ask for the enforcement of the guarantees embodied in the Bill but, more important still, that we do not leave the transport system of the country to run into another crisis in another few years, at a time when it may not be so easy to deal with it as it is at the moment, when we have a certain pause in our activities.
I have referred to statements made outside this House by the Chairman of the Great Southern Railways in regard to his opinion on the size of the railway staff and the conditions they work under. I am particularly concerned with the provisions of the Bill with regard to redundancy. The Minister has gone on record here and outside as saying that there will be, in his opinion, no redundancy as a result of this Bill, except in regard to administration and managerial staff. It is quite clear—and I am sure practically anybody can agree—that, if we regard redundancy as only flowing from the bare amalgamation of the two companies, possibly there will be very little redundancy. We are amalgamating a railway company and a local bus company and there will not be much conflict between the two. However, will the Minister be as certain in stating that there will be no redundancy because of alterations of working levels of either of the companies? There was protection given in former Acts, such as the 1924 Act, which laid down that a worker or employee required to take on additional services, more onerous or not analogous to the duties performed prior to the amalgamation, was entitled to consideration for compensation. It is said that that will still hold good under the present Bill. I have taken that as being correct and that, in regard to redundancy caused by the closing down of a railway line, the 1933 Act still holds good.
The 1933 Act, however, refers specifically to the closing down of a railway line following an Order by the Minister. I would like to know what happens in the case of a railway line, not closed down but which is starved to death. Over a period of years, traffic is taken away, services are curtailed and, one by one, it is shown that the staff engaged in that line is not required and may be done without; in other words, they become redundant, although they are not to blame. If we agree that the ordinary shareholder is entitled to an equitable basis, when his interest in the present company is transferred to the new company, can we deny to the railwayman with 15, 20 or 25 years' service the same equity and moral right to recognition of his claim by that company, which has been built up by himself and his fellow-workers over a period of years? His employment is taken away, not because, like the ordinary railway shareholders, he has been incompetent to run his own company but because we here, sitting in a legislative Chamber, appointed to care not merely for shareholders but also for workers, have decided by an act of law that certain new conditions would apply. As a result, this man is denied employment and thrown out of the service to which he has given many years of his life, for which he has been trained and adapted to certain technical forms of operation which, in many ways, make him unsuited to the pursuit of his livelihood outside the railway system.
The Minister, last night, was in a conciliatory mood, in speaking about this part of the Bill, and I think we should appreciate his attitude. The sections of the Bill dealing with redundancy require careful consideration and that should mean something more than extending the period to six months, to cover redundancy from amalgamations. At least, we are entitled to say that, if there is to be reorganisation of the railway system, the men who have borne this railway system on their backs over a period of years, not merely by the physical contribution of their labour to the running of the system, but also by a financial contribution as far back as 1927, are entitled to equal consideration with, or even more consideration than, the directors and shareholders.
I think it would be very helpful if the Minister would proceed on that basis, in considering amendments to the relevant sections, on the Committee Stage. That would bring a degree of comfort to many of those men who, whatever their political support may be for the Fianna Fáil Party, have great apprehension in regard to the view taken publicly by the man who is to be the first chairman of the new company, who has said that he considers there are too many men employed in the railway and that their conditions are too good for the company to maintain.