As the last Deputy reminded the House, it is some 21 years since the first scheme for the national development of electricity was brought before the Parliament of this country, and it is fair to say with regard to the reception that that particular development got at the time, the then infants —mainly those belonging to the commercial classes—were frightened in their sleep by threats of the bogey of the Shannon. It seems rather satisfactory to think that these infants, who will now have reached the age of 21 years, can look back on the horrors that were likely to come from the introduction of that scheme to see how much nonsense was talked then. The Minister ought, at least, to be in a better position than those who were dealing with the matter 21 years ago to remember the fact that it was greeted with so much derision, phrased in such a way as to make it almost a horror. That particular matter has proved the success it has, and the Minister will not have to face the particular type of unfair—I would not go too far in saying dishonest—criticism put upon that venture when it first made its appearance.
I have here an article that appeared some years afterwards in which are gathered some of the phrases used about it. I shall merely quote the headlines. This is a fair sample of the phrases used: "Socialism,""Bolshevism,""Communism,""confiscation,""plunder,""robbery,""the first fruits of Leninism,""the cream of Moscow doctrines." That had to be fought, and fought in the teeth of an Opposition that was not then present in the Dáil, but was quite vocal outside. Even at the risk of rubbing further salt into an already gaping wound, I just want to quote from one statement the Taoiseach made in 1926, when he said that his criticism of the Shannon scheme was based upon the fact that it was no time for grandiose schemes when the country was being bled white by emigration. In these days, when 250,000 have cleared from our shores in five years, other people might say it is no time for grandiose schemes. I do not. But I think I am entitled to say this, that the Minister cannot point to very much done in the time that a baby would have grown to an adult stage. What has been done to add to that particular development? The Liffey was started too late to be of any use during the war emergency; the Erne has just been started, and, as far as turf is concerned, we have had a certain amount of experimentation and we have not had very much information from the Minister as to the results of the experiment, so far.
If I have any complaint to make against the Minister in this matter, it is this: In this House, in the year 1925, even although certain people criticised what was on foot, this compliment was at least paid at the end of very vigorous debates, by the then Leader of the Opposition Party in this House, that of all the schemes that had been brought forward in this country up to that date there was none about which more detailed information, technical, financial, economic, and ordinary, had been given to the public, and if they had not learned what the project meant or had not assimilated the information given, it was neither the fault of those who produced the various documents nor of those who spoke upon them. My mind does go back to the very voluminous matters that were put before the public at that time and to the amazing strain it was to have to answer the virulent propaganda that was carried on against the scheme at that time. We now come to this development and we find three pages of a document and one appendix, and we are asked on that to accept this scheme. I am wondering would the Minister attempt to go before the public with that three-page document as a prospectus on which he would rely to borrow £3,750,000. I doubt certainly if, on the information contained in that document, he would get any part of the £3,750,000. In connection with a development which all people in this country would desire, and about which their only complaint is now with regard to information, I do not think it is exactly treating the country fairly to have that presented to them with what the Minister said this evening. However, from it we have to take out what we can and we have to see what is ahead of us.
The Minister is in the happy position that he is addressing people in the main who are anxious to help him and who would like to see successful what he proposes, but who are entitled to say that before their judgment is won to this particular matter they should have information; they should have information which would lead them to an acceptance of this idea even although, wishfully, they might like it; they should have information upon which a proper judgment can be formed upon the matter so that those who have to form a judgment on this matter can inform public opinion and propagate the whole scheme when it goes before the public outside.
We are dealing in this matter with turf. Nobody is going to contradict me, I think, when I say that in dealing with turf we are dealing with a very low-grade material. I remember being struck years ago as a student when a person lecturing in chemistry, talking of this particular material, passed the remark, which I thought was facetious at the time, but which I now believe to be chemically sound, that milk was a more combustible material than turf. I understand that is so, but we have to make the best use we can of it, apparently. I am sorry I could not be present when the Minister was speaking to-day, but I understand he made some reference to Russian methods of development. I do not know if I am referring to the same thing, but I understand that in certain parts of Russia they do make peat into a sort of viscous mass which they pump out and, owing to the particular climate with which they are blessed, they are able to dry it. Has that scheme been tried here? What is the drying season? Does anybody suggest that turf in this country, which already naturally contains far too high a percentage of water, is going to be improved by being made still further waterlogged, and what is the opportunity that those who will embark upon that particular process will find for the drying of what they pump out of the bog?
I understood from the three-page document that we were going in for machine-won turf. I understood it was cutting instruments we are depending upon and, as far as I am advised, I understand that we do suffer in this country from a difficulty which is not found to the same extent, if at all, in other countries, and that is, that in the areas from which we must get the turf here there are very frequently to be found enormous chunks of bog timber which, of course, means either a diversion of the cutting machine, if the timber is discovered in time or, alternatively, the wrecking of the machine. From some document I read recently, I see it hinted that the engineers in charge of the Clonsast scheme have discovered some way of guiding the machines around such obstructions. It would be useful if this House could have the information whether that is so or not. If there is anything secret about it, anything in the way of a patented process, we should not hear the whole thing, but we should, at least, be given a glimmering of what sort of control, or otherwise, there is in the bogs to keep the blades from hitting the timber which, I understand, is very frequently to be found in those areas.
Leaving out this question of further development, we have got some increase of production so far, and here I do confess that I am in a difficulty. In preparation for this debate, I asked the Minister to tell me what were the figures for turf produced in this country. I was referred to the Trade Journal of the year 1944, and then I was given certain figures for the years 1941, 1942, 1943 and 1944. When I compared the figures in the Trade Journal with the figures given to me in the question the other day, I found that the Minister had made a wonderful statistical change to his own advantage. He had put up the production by roughly 750,000 tons each year. In reply to a question of mine to-day, seeking to find out how the discrepancy arose, I am told the figures in the Trade Journal only related to farmers' turf, whereas what is here relates to turf won by people other than the ordinary farmer; I think it is put to me that it is by those who are engaged in machine production or by private producers other than the ordinary farmer. If that be the case, if I am to take the new figures given for the years 1941 to 1945, inclusive, as representing the new production, it means that with all the energy, all the drive and all the cost to the people, what we have got over the last four years is production over and above the farmers' turf of about 750,000 tons each year. That is about one-sixth of an increase, and I take it that I am correctly understanding the Minister's reply to me to-day relating to the figures he previously gave me. What we have then is, under the conditions, I may say, from which we have all suffered in the last four or five years, the greatest success has been the production of about something between 650,000 and 700,000 tons of turf extra in the year. We know the type that that has been, and we know the cost. I want to find out how far the quality is going to be improved in the future and whether there is to be a reduction, and, if so, what in the price asked from the ordinary purchaser of this turf that we are going to be asked to take.
The White Paper speaks of 1,000,000 tons as likely to be the production at the end of ten years. Again, I want to inquire is that 1,000,000 tons over the highest production we have reached during the war, or is it just 1,000,000 tons from the various bogs which are spoken of, irrespective of what was previously produced? In any event, we are to have 1,000,000 tons produced. Part of that is to be turned into electricity and part of it is to be left to the people of this country for domestic use. Of the 1,000,000 tons which it is hoped to get at the end of the ten years' development period something in the neighbourhood of 300,000 tons are to be turned into electricity and the remaining 700,000 tons are for the populace to use as fuel.
With regard to electricity, the matter of cost, of course, becomes an important point, because people will not so readily turn to electricity if the price goes up and calculations which are based on the advance in the use of electricity at the prices ruling now are apt to be frustrated if the prices are very severely increased against the consumer. The purchaser of electricity pays in the end a price which is made up of two main sums. There is the generation price and the price which has to be added to that, including all the cost of distribution. I did ask for further figures on that point to try to find out how the matter ran as between hydro-production in the country and any other type of production, and the figures given to me show that the Ardnacrusha production keeps very closely to what the experts in the old days estimated as being likely. During the war years they have varied from .36 of a penny at the highest to .27, and I notice that in a recent lecture it was stated it was about .3, of which .24 was interest and capital charges. Leaving out interest and capital charges, the generation cost at Ardnacrusha is .06 of a penny. The figures for the Pigeon House production were also given to me.
In the years 1937, 1936 and 1935 they were .9, .87 and .93. During the war they went up to one penny and over a penny; in 1943, 1.126d; in 1944, roughly one penny; and in 1945, 1½d. The Liffey, which is, of course, only in part use and therefore the figures have to be taken with caution, shows in the first year a generation cost of 1.120 of a penny and in the year 1945, ¾d.
I want to find out what is the estimated generation cost of electricity produced from turf and to that end I asked for information as to the price at which fuel had been produced from Clonsast. I framed my question to enable the Minister when giving the figures to relate them to, say, the fuel cost at Clonsast itself. Previously, in a debate in 1940, we were told that Clonsast would not be really an economic scheme unless more than one harvest was taken from it in the year, unless 120,000 tons of turf came from it, and unless it could be got at a price of 10/6 per ton. I asked for figures with regard to Clonsast and I am told that the board has always sold from Clonsast bog ex-works, which coincides with the site of the power station. Prices were given to me. They start with 14/6 in 1939-40, they go up to 23/-, the next year they are 27/6, the next year, 37/2; and, in 1944-45, they are 40/-. That has to be compared with the optimistic figure spoken of here in 1940 of 10/6 per ton delivered at the site. Bearing in mind the fact that the quantity got from the bog would have a relationship with the price, I did ask how far we had got to the 120,000 tons spoken of in 1940 and which made its appearance again in the White Paper. I find that the greatest quantity ever produced in Clonsast was in 1944-45, when 48,000 tons were produced.
Somebody will have to make a calculation and I suggest it is for the Minister to do it and to tell us what the generation cost is going to be at Clonsast. I want him to tell us after that what extra costs will have to be added. Will he tell us the fuel cost at Clonsast and will he add on to that whatever other charges there will be around the station arising out of money put into the station, or whatever line is run out from it?
In order that we may get some idea of the price of electricity in the rural areas, will he tell us what are the extra distribution costs that are likely to be involved in spreading electricity through the rural areas in this country? Only then will we be able to discover whether there will be any real demand for the electricity which it is proposed to produce at Clonsast and the area of the Brosna under the scheme set out in this White Paper.
Deputy Hughes said that all the indications are that the price of electricity will increase. I do not think that anybody is optimistic enough to believe that the price is going to go down. It is likely to increase. I do not know whether the new project means that the town dweller is to pay some part of the cost of bringing electricity to the rural areas. I do not know whether that is to be off-loaded on to the taxpayer or put on the electricity charges for the towns and cities and industry. In any event, there will be an increased charge, but by how much we do not know.
What, of course, is hopeful about this whole matter is that there is an amazing field still left for development. The last report of the English Electricity Commissioners which I have been able to get is for the year ending 31st March, 1939. There has been development since then. But, in the year ending 31st March, 1939, I find that they had sold to consumers twenty thousand million units, or an average of 441 units per head of the population. Our average at the moment is 100 units per head of the population. When we started we got electricity distributed in this country almost immediately which put us ahead of the development of electricity in the Six County area.
The last accounts which I have been able to get are for the year ending 31st December, 1944, for the main Electricity Board, and for the year ended 31st March, 1945, for the Belfast station. It is not easy to make a calculation as between the two stations, because Belfast sells in bulk to the Northern Board. However, it would appear as if the amount sold in Northern Ireland is not less than 400,000,000 units. They would also, therefore, have reached the English average consumption of 400 units per head of the population—taking the population as about 1,000,000.
There is a certain amount of electricity produced from waste and a very small amount produced from oil, but in the main the Northern Ireland development is a fuel development, a coal development. Yet in Belfast the average price at which they sold their production over all was less than a penny per unit. If we exclude the bulk supply, it was a little over a penny, 1.169 pence. Northern Ireland, bringing electricity to certain rural areas at a price less than a penny per unit, was able to sell, all over the area, at 1.38 pence, while our sale price, according to the last paper which was read on this subject, is somewhere about 1.44. We to-day, with the advantage of 300,000,000 units generated at Ardnacrusha at extremely low generating cost, find in the end that the cost to the consumer, averaged, is higher than what it is either in Belfast City or all over the whole Northern Ireland system. What the explanation of that is I do not know. I presume it is that we are being charged very heavily for coal at the Pigeon House, that we are getting very bad stuff, which increases enormously the cost of what is generated at the Pigeon House and that cost, added on even to the low cost at Ardnacrusha, gives a high generating cost, with the result that the price goes up beyond the figure in Northern Ireland.
It is an amazing situation that, with only 1,000,000 population, they can reach a consumption very close to what we have with our 3,000,000 population, even although we had the advantage of a good flying start over them. The consumption in England is 441 units per head and in Northern Ireland it would not be so much, but would be close on 400, so it is easy to see that, our consumption being 100 units per head, there is a big field for development. Whether that development takes place or not depends entirely on whether the price will be an attractive one.
The second use for the turf on which we are to spend £3,750,000 is as fuel. Apparently, we are to substitute it for coal. I gathered from the Minister's statement, as it has been reported to me, that he despairs of getting coal from England, though why he should be so despairing I do not know. I will have something to say on that in a moment. If we take the Minister's view, that we are not going to get any real increase in the present coal supplies, what is the situation with which our people are faced? Under this scheme, we are to produce 1,000,000 tons of turf annually; 300,000 tons of that is to go into electricity and be sold at some price which may be attractive or not to those who want to use electricity or who may be forced to use it; while 700,000 tons remain over for domestic use. The figures as to our coal imports are varied from year to year, but taking a low average we could put it at 2,500,000 tons in the year. Supposing 500,000 tons of that went for steam-raising and other purposes, and we think only in terms of 2,000,000 tons of coal for domestic purposes, what we are offered instead is 700,000 tons of turf. I understand it was accepted to-day that it takes two tons of turf to produce the same heat as one ton of coal. Therefore we will have, at the end of ten years, about 350,000 tons of coal to replace 2,000,000 tons. We are going to be 1,650,000 tons short. What is the proposal for the substitute material, during the ten years, or even after the ten years, when we have got to that high point of having 1,000,000 tons produced at some price which we must take as being likely to be attractive? What is going to happen after that? Are we to accept it that present prices will rule?
The Minister recently told me, in answer to another question, that the price of turf, as fixed by Order, to Dublin consumers was 64/- a ton and that in the year 1945 there was a loss on every ton sold by Fuel Importers, which had to be recouped by Government subsidy, and that loss was 39/9 —call it 40/-. This means that the ton of turf cost 64/- plus 40/-, that is, 104/-. If we take it that two tons of that stuff—the sort of stuff we have been getting in the city for the past five years—have the calorific value of one ton of coal, then we are faced with the payment of 208/- as the equivalent of that old ton of coal we used to get. Further, the calculation has been made that of the wet, mangled, refusey sort of stuff this city has been served with over the past five years, you will require three tons before you get the value of one ton of coal. If that is so, then we are faced with having to pay, for 1,650,000 tons, something over £15 a ton. That is what we have come to, £15 a ton, to substitute the coal that used to come in—and that £15 a ton will have to be spent over 1,650,000 tons of this fuel. I have been told, in fact, that the calculation which has been based upon the equation of three tons of the type of stuff we have been getting for the last five years to one ton of coal is too favourable to turf.
The difficulty that is always present with regard to turf is that there is only a relatively short season in which turf can be cut and dried to any extent. One knows that, when coal was taken out of an English or Welsh mine and thrown about in trucks and thrown on to railway trucks and brought to a siding and thrown into a ship and taken out of a ship and thrown on to a quayside here and trucked from that to some coal merchant's yard and thrown out there and eventually put in some condition or another into bags, there was not such waste, even after all those handlings, as there is in the necessary handlings that turf has to get in the shorter passage from the bogs to our homes. There is an enormous amount of waste to the ton of turf that is cut on the bog.
The great hope that is held out to us is, of course, that the turf we will get in the future will be machine turf in some way better cut and better shaped and so compressed that there will be less moisture content in it than we had before. Those who make that calculation forget, however, that the householder who buys the fuel must store it somewhere and the ordinary coal-hole in most of the houses here in Dublin is not suited for the lodgment of the turf when it comes. It is the rule rather than the exception for the householders to store coal outside. No matter what moisture is extracted from turf on the bog, by any process, if it is subjected to two or three weeks' wet weather when it lies in a yard, the moisture content goes back very nearly to what it was when the turf was in the bog. I do not think it is unfair to say that it will require, for the purposes of comparison with our old-time fuelling in this country, to take a proportion of three tons of even machine-won turf against one ton of coal. When we get back to the figures that we started out with, we find that something over 1,500,000 tons of coal will have to be supplied by a substitute fuel, and this will cost the people, as far as Dublin is concerned, £15 per ton. Yet, we are going to put £3,750,000 into what is more or less of an experiment in the hope that, at the end of ten years, we will have arrived at the point when that is all we will have as substitute for the 1,500,000 tons of old-time fuelling coal.
I wonder if the Department has considered any other scheme in this direction. One reads of developments all over the world during the war period. There were other countries in the same position as ourselves, countries that had no domestic sources of supply for fuelling, but the emergency drove them to try to find substitutes, and there have been substitutes discovered in other countries. There has been an amazing development in America. We are familiar here at home with the old-fashioned wind-charger. There are towns in America with populations of 20,000 and 25,000 inhabitants which are supplied alone by wind-chargers. Of course, they are a new type of wind-charger, a type that has been revolutionised and modernised beyond all old-time recognition by some Dutch inventor. Some of the cities in America depend entirely on getting a good supply from that type of wind-charger. Sometimes, in areas where there is too big a force of wind at times and a great lapse of wind at other times, they are able to have water-power development, using the power generated by the wind to pump water. I thought that, as well as moisture, one of the other things we had in this country was wind.
An engineer who came to this country a few days ago delivered a lecture to an engineering society, and spoke of the development of the Thermol pump. He was from Switzerland. He said to those engineers:
"Of more immediate interest to this country was the development of the heat pump which, by extracting heat from rivers or lakes, provides heat for large buildings without utilising fuel at a consumption of electricity only one-fifth of that required for direct heating."
I understand that Switzerland lived during the war because of the development of what they called the Thermol pump. The idea apparently was that of a British scientist about a century ago, but as he met with no response he dropped it. During the war the Swiss took it up, and found that you can generate heat from almost ice-cold water. Apparently, there is heat in water as long as the temperature is not below absolute zero. The heat can be pumped up out of the water in the same way as you can pump up water from low level to high. Most of the public buildings in Switzerland were heated during the war from water which flowed down from the Alps.
Apparently, no thought has been given to that type of development for public buildings alone in this country. I understand that there have been great strides made towards harnessing the tides, and if ever, of course, it becomes possible to harness tidal energy here this country is probably better situated than any other country when one considers the configuration of the mouth of the Shannon. There are any number of developments going, but we are concentrating on what I have called the lowest grade raw material for fuelling purposes. In the end, we throw ourselves at this problem simply by saying that we used to get coal, and that we cannot get coal any longer. Who says so? The Minister for Industry and Commerce told us during the war that the difficulty of our position was that we had no bargaining power. It is funny for the Minister for Industry and Commerce in this country to tell us that we have no bargaining power in relation to a thing like fuel. The Minister for Mines in England went to Scotland in the last fortnight and told an audience there that there were three countries —and this country was one of them— which supplied England with primary products, and that the one way they could pay us and give us a substitute for what we were sending them was coal. The Minister for Mines in England thinks that we have bargaining power because we have food to send to the people of England.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce here, who should be using that information, says that we have no bargaining power and no assets with which to trade with the British. Only the other day one of the converts to the new Fianna Fáil doctrine of our dependency on the British market, told us that, of course, it was quite clear that we depended on the British market, but that we should not say much about it and should not let them know.
I cannot understand why the Minister for Industry and Commerce should be so blind as to what is happening on the other side. He must know, in regard to the restrictions on food supplies in England, that there is almost a housewives' revolt, that the people are clamouring for deputations to go to the present Government in England to complain of these things. The one thing we are said to have in abundance is food, and the one thing that we want is fuel. An English Minister can say that one way in which they can ensure for themselves a supply of food from Eire is by sending coal to us, and the one thing that the Minister for Industry and Commerce is sure of is that whatever we can get from England it is not coal.
About the same time that the Minister for Mines was speaking in these terms in England, a statement appeared in the newspapers about the situation that had developed as between Sweden and England. Deputies will, I am sure, remember that I drew attention in this House to the financial arrangement which had been come to between Sweden and England whereby there was a credit grant of something in the neighbourhood of £50,000,000 to £100,000,000, but that when that was exhausted there was to be a question of either goods for goods or else gold for goods. That financial agreement was never completely carried out because the Swedes apparently found that it was not to their economic benefit, and they used a system of export and import licences to prevent anything going to England.
An English paper recently revealed that it was known that the Swedish ports were packed high with goods awaiting delivery to England. The goods were ready for delivery but the Swedes said that the one thing that they required in Sweden, in return for these goods, was coal from England, and not prefabricated houses or any of the other things that she was anxious to give them. We, apparently, are so easy going in our outlook towards the other side—we have swung over from such complete detestation to such admiration—that we cannot even ask them to recognise our need when we are recognising theirs.
Two and a half million tons are very little in comparison with what England produces even now. When we have a member of the Government in England telling us that he recognises we are the source of many of their primary foodstuffs and that one of the ways of securing those is by giving us fuel, why we cannot make a conjunction with that man and get some of the materials necessary to our requirements, I do not understand. Apart altogether from the goods we are supplying at the moment, the British owe us an amazing amount of money. I have explained to the House on many occasions that we have not been able to cash many of those old credits of ours. That is bad enough. One could imagine a situation in which people here would be rather content to sit back and say they would rather see our neighbouring country get out of her difficulties by not pressing her to honour her obligations in the shape of those sterling assets and thus have a happier situation vis-a-vis that country later. That would wipe out the goods they owe us a matter of credit but why send them physical goods, goods they can barely do without at a time when fuel is a problem here and when we have a Minister coming in and saying: “There is no good in looking to England; we have to recognise that fuel is the one thing she will not give us.” Why? Has England been asked to give us supplies?
Has any representation been made to the Minister for Mines? Have any representations been made to the British Government through our High Commissioner and, if so, what is the reply? Are we content with the reply? If not, have we no way of replying to that reply? Or have we so changed around in our admiration of the English system that we are not going to press for goods against the credits we have over there but are going to continue to give extra goods while they give us what it pleases them to give? If we are in the serious situation we are told we are in in regard to fuel, then it is a situation which demands Ministerial interference. So long as Ministers do not interfere, it is the duty of representatives here to press for the reasons why they are so reluctant to formulate demands. If demands have been formulated and if the Minister lets us know what has been the reply, then we shall be able to get this fuel problem into its proper framework.
Taking the situation at its worst and accepting that England will not give us the goods we want but will share out only whatever she decides, we have a position in which we shall have to live in a more or less miserable condition so far as fuel is concerned for the next ten years. At the end of ten years, we get the position I have pictured which, I think, is not a parody. It is the picture that emerges from the three pages and appendix of the White Paper. We are short 1,500,000 tons of old-time English coal and we are to substitute that by some sort of fuel drawn from the bogs which is to cost us about £15 per ton. That is the situation with which the people are presented. That is why I am not as enthusiastic about this scheme as I might be if the questions I have asked were answered. The Minister tells us that he has tried his best and that he cannot get anything out of the English community. He tells us that, notwithstanding his representations, we have to accept the poor position in which England finds herself.
But she will not accept our poor position in regard to fuel. If he tells us the arguments he used and how persuasive he was, we may accept it that the best has been done, but he has left the House in complete darkness about all those matters. The House is asked to accept this Bill on the very meagre information supplied. The Minister would, undoubtedly, find a community here who would wish him well in any thing he is doing about turf, and who would like to see this scheme a success. But the country is not in a position to found a judgment as to whether it is likely to be a success or not. In that situation, I think that he is not going to get the enthusiasm he has channelled up for and which people are anxious to give him. If he does not give the information, he may dam up that enthusiasm and turn it into antagonism to the scheme.
Deputy Blowick complained regarding the quality of turf sent here. It was such that, if the people were free, they would never use turf again. That is what the native fuel has been brought to by the way the people of Dublin were served during the past five years. The Minister should recognise that, when dealing with some natural resource and trying to obtain the proper receptivity from the people, he ought, at least, to give them such information as will enable them to see whither they are going. At the moment, we are simply presented with this Bill and told to take it or leave it. I suppose we shall have to take it, rather than leave it. But the Minister should not leave the issue in that way. He should answer the questions I put to him.