The Minister must consider himself the champion of certain seedy interests. He need not imagine that he or his friends can intimidate me from saying what I believe to be true about this whole scabrous transaction. I shall continue to deal with it in public as long as I have the voice to protest against such dealings and nothing the Minister or his associates can say will deter me for a single hour. No threat, no combination of powerful moneyed interests, to operate a form of blackmail of public men lest we should refer to their depredations, will stop me from talking as long as my voice can be used to hold up the gentlemen responsible for that kind of business in the public life of this country. They need not imagine that, by getting the Minister to take their side or making him their champion, any combination of wealth or threats will silence criticism of what has gone on. That is the first ground on which I ask the House to reject this Bill.
The second ground on which I ask the House to reject this Bill is this. What we are in effect doing, if we pass this Bill, is giving to a private company, which has virtually no assets— the permanent way of the railway company and its existing railway stock are more of a liability than an asset — the very substantial asset of a transport monopoly in this country. I want to ask this House why we should give to the shareholders of Córas Iompair Éireann a monopoly in transport in this country, any more than we would give to Clery's a monopoly of the distributive trade in O'Connell Street or the City of Dublin. The only argument for any justification of this is that the railway company has gone bankrupt and that if we do not aid it, it will close down altogether.
Why should we give to this company a monopoly of the transport of Ireland? What particular virtue resides in the shareholders of the Great Southern Railways and the Dublin United Transport Company that they should become the repository of that? And if, for some incomprehensible reason, we do decide to present them with all these assets of considerable value, why do we go on doing so, and furthermore, capitalise the asset we give them, saying we will step in to guarantee the dividend on it and guarantee the principal? I am sure Deputy Loughman would be very grateful if we would confer a monopoly on him in his particular business in Clonmel, and I would be very grateful to Dáil Éireann if it would confer a monopoly on me of the distributive trade in Ballaghaderreen — never mind the whole country —and then say also that it will guarantee the payment of a regular dividend on the shares. Whether the fellow works early or late or goes to bed and stays in bed all the time, we are to say: "Never worry; on the 31st December every year you will get the dividend you expected to get, because the State will pay it, if you do not choose to operate your enterprise in such a way as to produce it itself." Surely that is daft?
We could perfectly honourably, perfectly equitably and perfectly legally, have gone to the Great Southern Railways, when this transport legislation was in contemplation, and said that we were going to take over the whole railway, assets, liabilities and everything else, and appoint an arbitrator, not to deprive the shareholders of the Great Southern Railways of anything they have had but to give them full value for everything we took over from them. We could perfectly easily have created and issued stock, just as we do when taking over land from the landlord and, instead of giving them land bonds, we could give them railway bonds. We could have gone to the Dublin United Transport Company and said that, as at a given date, we were taking over the whole company and that arbitrators would determine the full value of the property. There would be no question of compensation or of penalisation, but we would say: "We want you to get the full value of what we are taking over." We could have given them transport bonds in the same way.
Then we could have set up a body like the Electricity Supply Board and handed over the whole transport of the country to them. We could have given the board instructions to coordinate transport, to make known their road requirements to the Government, so that the Government could take requisite measures to provide adequate roads for the type of transport that may be required in this country for 25 or 30 years to come. We could have instructed them, either to levy freights on the merchandise and passengers carried, large enough to provide an annual contribution to the Exchequer, or we could have told them to levy freights at a level which would just defray the expenses of the transport board. Or we could have gone further and, if we deemed it expedient, in order to assist agriculture by exports or something of that kind, we might have said to that transport company: "Exempt all feeding stuffs and live stock from any charge for freight at all and the Government will give you a lump sum annually, to defray whatever expenses you may have been put to in carrying these things." That would amount to an indirect subsidy to the agricultural industry. All these alternatives would have been open to us, had we established a corporation primarily designed to serve the community, an independent transport board on the lines of the Electricity Supply Board.
Deputy Norton made reference to Mr. Reynolds. I want to be associated with him in saying that nothing I say here is to be interpreted as an attack on Mr. Reynolds. On the contrary, if Deputies will refer to the speech I made on the Second Reading Stage of Transport Bill (No. 1), they will find that I suggested to the Minister then that, probably, Mr. Reynolds should be one of the first three members of the transport board, were it set up. I am not qualified to judge the merit of his work. Certain it is, I think, that most people will agree that he threw himself with energy and zeal into the job he undertook, and that he undertook the job which he now has at a time when it did not look too attractive a proposition to anybody. But I want to demur to this proposition, which was one made at one stage by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in this House, that consequent on his taking over and on the new arrangement, whereby he had a coercive voice on the board of the railway company, superior management resulted in the accumulation of funds which permitted the payment of 3 per cent. dividend on the ordinary stock. That is just hooey. The process by which 3 per cent. was collected for the ordinary stockholders was by raising the freight charges steeply. There was no longer any opposition, as there was no petrol for the lorries. We had to pay the freight charges or leave our goods at the railhead. When petrol becomes available again and when individual citizens and firms are in a position to operate their own lorries and motor cars, a different situation will obtain. In the absence of private cars and lorries, freight rates have risen in some cases, I believe, by 100 per cent. In other cases, they have risen by a percentage so dramatic as to induce the Secretary of the Department of Finance, a member of the board of the sugar company, to protest publicly — and that despite the fact that the Minister for Industry and Commerce deemed it his duty to get up here and say that that member of the board of the sugar company did not understand what he was talking about. That is an old saw. We have heard that "crack" not infrequently across the floor of this House. But if the citizens of this State had to choose between the perspicacity of that member of the sugar board and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who would have any doubt as to where their preference would lie? It was as a result of increases in freight charges, typified by that incident, that 3 per cent. was raised for the ordinary stockholders of the railway company, who included the speculators — the boys who got the wink, wherever they got it.
That brings me to the last reason why I ask the House to reject this Bill. Most well brought-up men and women in this House received at some stage of their adolescence this precept from their parents: never go bail for a man in the bank. If somebody comes and asks you to bail him in the bank, make up how much you can afford to lose and give him a present of that but never go bail in the bank. What does Section 18 of this Bill mean? Are we not all going bail in the bank? But, with commendable prudence, we are going bail in the bank not with our own money but with our neighbour's money. Do not Deputies remember Charles Lamb's essay on the two classes of men — the men who borrow and the men who lend? He describes the man who lends as a dreary, mean, gloomy creature who is always sidling up to you and saying: "Are you going to pay anything on the debt you owe me?" Then, he describes the man who borrows as a hearty, genial, optimistic chap whom it is a pleasure to meet, who is always glad to see you, who claps you on the back and tells you not to worry, that his ship will be coming in any time now and that if you care to lend him another five pounds he will put it on the bill. He is never gloomy or worried but always hale and hearty. He is always prepared, if pressed, to send the letter that a famous debtor sent when he received a communication from one of his legion of creditors to the effect that that creditor wanted to be paid forthwith. The debtor took up his pen and wrote in reply: "Dear Sir — I have received your impertinent communication. Please take notice that if I receive any more of those insolent demands, I will not even put you in the lottery of creditors which I conduct each one of whom is eligible for an instalment." That is what the railway company is in a position to say to us. In five or ten years, petrol will be available and private cars and lorries will be on the roads. This company proceeds to increase its freight rates. Protests are heard from all sides. Eventually, the commercial community, in their own defence, are driven to using their own lorries rather than pay the freight charges demanded by the railway company. Private individuals buy their own cars. Neighbours combine to drive up to Dublin rather than go in the train because railway fares will be so high. Then, a representative of the railway company comes to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and says: "You can do one of two things: either persuade the Minister for Finance to take such steps as will render it uneconomic for the private lorry owner and car owner to use their vehicles in competition with us or go to the Minister for Finance and tell him that your transport scheme has broken down, that the railway company cannot earn the interest on its debenture stock and that the Minister for Finance must introduce a Supplementary Estimate in Dáil Eireann to repay the Central Fund for the cash disbursed to make up the dividends on the debenture stock which the railway company is unable to pay." Observe the alternatives open to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He can go to the Minister for Finance and say: "Put an extra tax on the tyres, petrol and horsepower of the private motor car and lorry. That will mean more revenue for you and permit of your reducing taxation in another direction." That is a pleasant thing to do in Dáil Eireann. Or the Minister for Industry and Commerce can say to the Minister for Finance: "Get up in Dáil Eireann and make an apologia pro vita mea, tell them that I was a damn fool, that all my gaudy promises about Transport Bill No. 2 were not worth the paper and ink with which they were written, that the railway company cannot pay and ask the Dáil to find the money to make up the debenture interest. Faeed with these two alternatives, what do Deputies think the House will do? Does not every Deputy know that, by hook or by crook, the Minister will create a situation in which the Transport Company will have such an advantage over the private lorry and private car that they will be virtually driven off the road except in so far as the wealthy citizen can operate a Rolls Royce or a Daimler. That is what this provision means.
Mind you, when the Minister comes to that, it is not going to be done in an overt, open way. It will probably be done by giving Córas Iompair Eireann concessions which will constitute an additional burden on ordinary users of the road, and which will place the railway company in a very much more advantageous position. The cost of the concession will be levied on the ordinary taxpayers of whom the ordinary car owner and lorry owner constitute a very large part. That will all come about as a result of Deputies in this House forgetting the precept given them by their parents: "Never bail a man in the bank." You are bailing a man in the bank to-day, and he will come back in five years and demand either that you should take up his bill or that you should create in him an artificial ability to raise the money requisite to pay the commitments into which he has entered. Now we are letting ourselves in for all that when an infinitely preferable method is there available to us — to constitute a transport board, as ultimately we shall have to do. That is as certain as we are in this House. Sooner or later a transport board will have to be set up. Because we cannot face that now we are creating all these complications and difficulties for ourselves. For what? I admit that it is sometimes a mistake to model oneself too closely on one's neighbours, but I think it is a useful thing to look abroad, to judge by the mistakes of others and to learn from their successes. In the City of Greater London we had a situation closely analogous to that which arose here — a vast number of rival traction companies all operating for profit, and the superior rights of the travelling public were asserted, with the limited right of these individual companies to earn a profit. The London Passenger Transport Board was set up with certain very limited rights to pay dividends but with the primary duty of serving the public in London. Why could we not do that here?
Bear this in mind: You are constituting a company. Its real tangible asset is its monopoly, but it has got miles and miles of railway line. I may be right, or I may be wrong, but I believe the future of transport in this country lies on the roads. I believe that any far-seeing transport man must plan to put the whole transport of the country on the roads in 25 or 30 years' time. How can any company undertake that task effectively — because to do it effectively two things must be done. Firstly, years before transport goes over to the roads, a proper system of roads must be provided; and secondly, somebody must take the decision of abandoning the existing railways. Now, if you propose to abandon the existing permanent way, it would be very hard to get the shareholders to agree to that proposal, but yet, taking the longer view, the view of the community and of the State, that might be, and probably is, the right thing to do, gradually. I do not mean that any sane man would contemplate doing it the day after tomorrow, but that he should make up his mind that over the next 20 or 25 years they will be abandoned, and that all the traffic of the country will be carried over the roads. Can Córas Iompair Éireann or a transport board best take that decision? Surely a transport board which was not primarily concerned with the redemption of debentures, the accumulation of profits or the payment of dividends, whose sole concern was to provide for the country the most efficient system of transport that our resources would permit, could better undertake that job than Córas Iompair Éireann.
Suppose that the Electricity Supply Board were at present being run by a profit-making corporation, and suppose Deputies knew well that in certain areas it was in the interests of the community that the Electricity Supply Board should take a risk by going into a town where there was not such a demand at present for electricity that would justify the expenditure on the poles and wires required to go into that town. Has not each one of us in the case of our own town gone to the Electricity Supply Board and made the case that if this were a purely business proposition, one could not in conscience go and recommend the Electricity Supply Board to connect up the town but that, bearing in mind the social benefit that such extension as you were suggesting would confer, you felt entitled as a responsible man to urge the board to take the risk of some years' loss, partly in anticipation of getting an economic demand in the long run but mainly on the consideration that as a semi-public body they had a certain duty to the community and that even though this extension never paid dividends, it was a legitimate charge on the whole of the electricity system of the State? How can you make that case to Córas Iompair Eireann unless you are prepared to go the next step and say to them: "If this involves you in such a loss that 3 per cent. will not be available for the debenture stock, Dáil Eireann will provide it"? Can you conceive the Minister telling us that the transport legislation which he had put through this House has failed in its purpose and that the railway company cannot produce the dividend? The railway company will produce dividends every year of its existence. It will produce them but who will pay them? The people who use the transport system. And who are the people who are going to use the transport system?
The vast bulk of the use to which our transport system is going to be put is bringing in the raw materials of industry and carrying to the ports of embarkation the surplus agricultural produce which we consign to the markets of the world. We have taxed these raw materials with customs duties. We have restricted imports. We have placed on the farmers who are trying to produce the only exports which will ultimately pay for the essential imports which we must have after the war, many imposts. Is this House, with its eyes wide open, going to place on their backs a new additional impost, not designed to assist the Exchequer, not designed to finance some desirable new social service to alleviate the conditions of the poor, not designed to make life easier for some other sections of the community, but designed to give his pound of flesh to the gentleman who bought the poor man's shares at £9 each, shares which to-day are value for £55? This Transport Bill is going to be a cause of infinite trouble to our country. We have a clear and reasonable alternative if we choose to adopt it. We still can adopt it to-day. I have no doubt the Leader of the Opposition will provide the House with the opportunity of going on record as to whether it wants this Bill or not. If he does not do so, then perhaps the Leader of the Labour Party will; but if both should fail at least one voice will be raised for a Division in this House, and I do not doubt that I shall get the requisite half-dozen to stand up.