Committee on Finance. - Electricity Supply (Amendment) Bill, 1949—Second Stage. – Dáil Éireann (13th Dáil) – Wednesday, 9 Mar 1949

Committee on Finance. - Electricity Supply (Amendment) Bill, 1949—Second Stage.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Morrissey)

I move that the Bill be now read a Second Time. Deputies will observe from the Bill and the explanatory memorandum circulated with it that it deals with various miscellaneous provisions, most of which have little relation to one another but which it has been found necessary to enact for various reasons.

Section 2 of the Bill authorises the board to make regulations for various purposes. It is intended when these regulations are made that they shall be submitted to the Minister for Industry and Commerce who, if he approves them with or without amendment, shall confirm them by Order. The regulations, therefore, will have no force or effect until so confirmed by Order.

Under Sections 33 and 34 of the Electricity Supply Act of 1927, the Board has wide powers to make regulations in regard to various matters. Through a defect, the Act makes no specific provision for the publication of the regulations so made. Having this in mind, the board has been advised that it is very doubtful if regulations made by it under the sections are enforceable. Apart from these considerations, it has long been considered undesirable that the board should have power, without reference to any other authority, to make regulations enforceable inter alia against itself. Section 2 will remove these defects, while at the same time providing a satisfactory and convenient method of providing such regulations as may be necessary, including regulations for the protection of public safety.

At this point I might add that the board has also found that the provisions of Sections 33 and 34 of the Act of 1927 are defective in certain legal and other respects and the enactment of Section 2 will enable these defects to be removed.

Section 3 relates to another important purpose, namely, the establishment of an arbitration tribunal for the members of the staff of the board, other than manual workers.

This tribunal will be established on exactly the same lines as those which relate to the corresponding tribunal for manual workers which was set up under the Electricity Supply Board (Superannuation) Act, 1942, which latter tribunal is confined to matters affecting the manual workers employed by the board. The composition and features of the new tribunal will be apparent from the relevant provisions in the Bill, but I may add that it is proposed, as in the case of the Manual Workers' Tribunal, that it shall consist of a chairman and two ordinary members, one to be appointed by the Electricity Supply Board and the other by the general employees concerned. The chairman will be appointed by the Minister for Industry and Commerce preferably on the joint nomination of the two ordinary members, but where agreement on this matter cannot be reached between these members the chairman will be appointed by the Minister.

It would, I think, be superfluous for me to enter into a justification of the establishment of this tribunal. Deputies on both sides of the House will, I am sure, support any legislative proposal which, on the one hand, is likely to enhance the security of an important public utility such as electricity supply and, on the other hand, may tend to promote better relations between employer and employee by providing a ready and smooth means of settling disputes between them. The Manual Workers' Tribunal established in the year 1943 has proved to be very successful and there is no logical reason why the general employees of the board should not have at their disposal a similar means of adjusting disputes as those which the manual workers already possess. As a matter of fact, the general employees of the board have asked for this tribunal to be set up. It may be argued by some people that the machinery of the Labour Court would be appropriate in place of a specialised tribunal; but I think in the case of a vital public utility undertaking possessing, as it does, a virtual monopoly in its own sphere, such as the Electricity Supply Board, it is preferable that any differences which may arise between the employees and the board, which often involve technical problems with which both sides would be familiar but which another body could not be expected to be cognisant of should be submitted to and decided by a tribunal of the kind envisaged in the Bill.

Sections 4 to 8 also relate, directly or indirectly, to the new tribunal and are in line with the corresponding provisions of the Electricity Supply Board (Superannuation) Act of 1942 for the Manual Workers' Tribunal.

Section 9 is in the nature of a drafting amendment to Section 15 (2) of the Superannuation Act of 1942, which section relates to the payment by the board of allowances supplementary to any pension which may be payable under the appropriate superannuation scheme to certain persons transferred to the services of the board from the service of other electricity undertakings, not being local authority undertakings, who had no rights to pension at the time of their transfer to the board. A number of these persons have long service in the electricity supply industry and it was found that adequate provision, having regard to the length of their service, could not conveniently be made in the appropriate superannuation scheme. While the board has power to grant supplementary allowances in such cases it cannot legally declare, in advance of the date of retirement, the amount of such allowance it intends to grant. I think it will be agreed generally that it is reasonable and equitable that the board should be placed in a position to make this supplementary provision and to advise the employees in advance of the extent to which it intends to exercise this power.

Section 10 deals with the superannuation of certain persons formerly employed by local bodies. Provision was made in the Electricity Supply Act, 1927, that on the acquisition by the Electricity Supply Board of an undertaking formerly owned and administered by a local authority the pension rights of any employees who possessed such rights at the time of the transfer should be preserved to them in respect of their service with the former undertaker. In other words, they were to suffer no loss of pensionable service by reason of their transfer.

In the year 1929 the Electricity Supply Board acquired certain electricity undertakings owned by local authorities, notably those of Rathmines. Pembroke and Dún Laoghaire and on acquisition the electricity staffs of those authorities became employees of the board. These employees had no pension rights at the time of transfer. Subsequently, the urban districts of Rathmines and Pembroke were merged in the Dublin County Borough and that of Dún Laoghaire with other local authorities in the newly-formed Borough of Dún Laoghaire. Following this rearrangement the employees of the various bodies constituting these new authorities who possessed no pension rights up to then acquired them under the statutory provisions covering the mergers, both in respect of their service with the dissolved authorities and such later service as they might have with the newly-created boroughs. These benefits did not, however, extend to those of the former employees of the dissolved bodies who had, prior to the mergers, been transferred to and entered the service of the Electricity Supply Board.

At a much later stage the responsibility for public lighting in the Rathmines, Pembroke and Dún Laoghaire areas, which had been assumed by the Electricity Supply Board on its acquisition of the relevant electricity undertakings was, by arrangement, re-transferred to the two boroughs concerned and, in consequence, a certain number of the former employees of the Rathmines, Pembroke and Dún Laoghaire Urban Councils who had been engaged upon maintenance of public lighting were re-transferred to the service of the bodies which had succeeded the urban councils, namely, the Boroughs of Dublin and Dún Laoghaire. By the provisions of the Local Authorities (Electrical Employees) Act, 1937, the employees so re-transferred were given the benefit of (i) past service with the local authorities; and (ii) service whilst with the board; and (iii) later and future service with the relevant boroughs, the aggregate service under the three heads counting for pension purposes on ultimate retirement.

Those of the transferred employees who had no option but to remain in the service of the board made representations pointing out that their former colleagues who at no time had left the service of the local authorities concerned, and, more particularly, those who had been transferred with them to the service of the board and later re-transferred to the two boroughs, had acquired pension rights for their entire aggregate service whilst they who were still in the service of the board had obtained no such corresponding rights. Following these representations, which were supported by the board and by the Arbitration Tribunal established under the Electricity Supply Board (Superannuation) Act, 1942, it has been decided that it would be only fair and equitable to give to the transferred employees remaining in the service of the board the same pension rights as have been acquired by their former colleagues. The number of persons concerned is 32 and the cost which will be borne by the board will be relatively small.

Section 11 relates to the superannuation of certain persons who were employed at the Pigeon House generating station when it was closed down following its acquisition by the board and is framed to meet the case of a few former employees of the Dublin Corporation who were compensated by means of lump sum gratuities on the termination of their employment by the board following the acquisition by the board of the Pigeon House generating station. Other such employees who had longer service at the relevant time were compensated by way of pension in respect of their service up to the closing of the station. At a subsequent stage the board found it necessary to reopen and maintain continuously in commission the Pigeon House station, the former employees being re-employed.

Those who had been compensated by way of pension were, on re-employment, paid at the appropriate rate for the work on which they were reemployed, the pension being abated during their employment. Provision was also made that on final retirement the pension to which these employees would be entitled would be calculated by reference to their full service both with the former undertaker and the board, the pension which they had been awarded on their earlier retirement being then terminated.

It was pointed out in the case of the persons in the pensionable category that the break which had occurred in their service during the short period in which the Pigeon House station was closed by the board operated to deprive them of the pension rights on ultimate retirement in respect of service after the reopening which they would otherwise have possessed under the Dublin Corporation pension scheme. Provision was, accordingly, made in the Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Act, 1942, to enable, on final retirement, the pension already awarded at the time of the closing of this station to be terminated and a fresh pension substituted, the latter being based upon the aggregate service (a) up to the closing of the station, and (b) from the date of re-employment to the date of final retirement.

The position of those persons employed at the station who had been compensated by means of gratuities has only recently been brought to notice, and it is felt that these persons should not, through no fault of their own, be prejudiced by losing pension rights in respect of their service from the time of re-employment by the board. In their case, however, since these persons were awarded lump sum gratuities in respect of their service up to the closing of the station and since these gratuities are not capable of being recovered from them it is proposed that the pension rights to be restored to them by the Bill should be those in respect of their service from the reopening of the station.

Section 12 modifies Section 45 of the Electricity (Supply) Act, 1927, which section relates to the compulsory acquisition of land, etc., by the board. It has been found that the procedure laid down by the provisions of the Act of 1927 referred to is cumbersome and in some cases involves undue delay. To remedy these defects, the opportunity was taken when the Electricity (Supply) (Amendment) Act, 1945, was being prepared to modify the provisions of that Act relating to the acquisition of land, etc., under that Act, but these provisions apply only to the acquisition of land to be acquired in connection with hydroelectric schemes. It is now proposed to avail of this Bill to extend the modification to the board's development schemes generally. It may be explained that it happened in a number of cases recently for the interested parties to prolong proceedings for the acquisition of land under the 1927 Act for periods up to three years before the board found it possible to gain possession. It will be appreciated that such lengthy proceedings may sometimes be resorted to in the hope of gaining a higher price from the board which, in the ultimate event, usually has to bear the extra cost involved by such delay. The board are anxious that the more expeditious procedure in the 1945 Act should apply generally in all cases including acquisitions in connection with the rural electrification scheme. While the board will give the longest possible period of notice to the persons concerned it is necessary for the minimum periods referred to in the Bill to stand if it is not to be hampered or delayed in proceeding with necessary work.

Under Section 45 of the 1927 Act the board has, by special order, to declare its intention to acquire property and before making the order should (a) deposit plans and maps at a suitable place, (b) publish notice of its intention so as to reach people affected, and (c) if necessary, hold a public inquiry.

All these formalities have to be complied with and completed before the board's order becomes effective, and where objections are raised several months must elapse before the order becomes effective. In one instance two years had elapsed and the order had not become effective. Under the Bill the board serves notice on the people affected and enters after 30 days on land and after 90 days on occupied premises.

Section 13 of the Bill amends Section 53 of the Act of 1927 which latter section relates to wayleaves across land. It will be clear on examination of the section that the amendment is of a minor drafting character. It may be explained, however, that in practice the board has found it difficult to describe in writing or by maps or plans the nature of each line or fixture concerned. In fact, the board has been advised that as Section 53, sub-section (3) stands a very full and complete description must accompany the notice to the occupier of any land or building affected if the section is to be complied with.

This is so difficult to attain in many cases that it was found necessary to send a representative to the site to explain in detail the nature of the work following the serving of the notice. In the majority of cases, none the less, such a detailed description of the work is not required by the owner or occupier although the statute requires that it must be provided in every case.

In the normal development of the transmission and distribution system, this requirement would not impede the board to an extent that would call for an amendment of the Act. Now that the development of the supply in the rural areas is being undertaken the number of wayleave notices to be issued weekly has been, and will be enormously increased and it is considered that these complete descriptions of the work to be performed should be provided only where they are requested by the owners or occupiers. As the individual areas to be developed are small in extent and as the staff responsible for the development will be close at hand, in all cases, the owners and occupiers of lands and premises affected will be in a position to obtain the fullest information regarding what the board propose to do with the minimum of trouble or delay on either side.

Section 14 of the Bill, it will be observed, amends sub-section (1) of Section 2 of the Superannuation Act of 1942. Amongst other things, that Act authorised the payment of pensions to whole-time members of the board under certain conditions. Under the provisions of the sub-section of the Act referred to, a member of the board, in order to qualify for a pension, must have at least ten years whole-time service as a member and that service must include at least one term of office of five years as a whole-time member of the board. In the case of one existing member of the board who has served as a whole-time member since the 11th February, 1935, the various warrants under which he was appointed by the Government have been for a period of four years; 77 days; one year; three years; three years; one year and the warrant at present in operation is also for one year only.

Consequently, having regard to the terms of sub-section (1) referred to, this member of the board or any other member who might be similarly circumstanced would fail to qualify for a pension under the Act as it stands for the reason that he has not completed one term of office of five years as a whole-time member and this position would continue until he had the opportunity of completing at least one term of office of five years under one warrant. It is considered that this limitation is inequitable and Section 14 of the Bill amends the provisions of the Act of 1942 so as to provide that a pension will be awarded, (a) after not less than ten years' continuous whole-time membership or, (b) after two or more periods (whether continuous or discontinuous) of whole-time membership of the board which amount in the aggregate to not less than ten years and include at least one term of office of five years as a whole-time member of the board.

This amendment, it will be appreciated, will enable any whole-time member of the board to qualify for a pension provided he has at least ten years' continuous whole-time membership and without having had one term of office of five years. A member who has not had ten years' continuous service must have at least one term of office of five years' duration in an aggregate service of at least ten years.

Section 15 of the Bill amends Section 8 of the Superannuation Act of 1942 which latter section relates to certain financial provisions in relation to superannuation schemes. Under the section of the 1942 Act referred to, the trustees of the superannuation fund set up under that Act may lend superannuation moneys to the board and the board may accept such loans, the rate of interest on which must be approved by the Minister for Finance. The amendment provided for in this section of the Bill merely provides that the consent of the Minister for Finance to the interest rates will no longer be required but, in lieu of that consent, provision is being made that the rate of interest shall not exceed 4 per cent. per annum.

The superannuation funds and the contributions thereto and the benefits payable are calculated upon an actuarial basis and for this purpose it is essential that the actuary and management of the funds should be placed in such a position to know that when they lend moneys to the board as an investment a definite interest rate will be paid. The funds in this case have, by agreement, been based upon an interest rate of 4 per cent. and this section of the Bill will enable that rate to be paid on future loans.

Section 16 amends Section 11 of the Superannuation Act, 1942, which relates to the reference of disputes to the Manual Workers' Tribunal. Under the definition of the expression "manual worker" as set out in the manual workers' superannuation scheme made under the 1942 Act, workers whose employment is of a casual character are excluded and there is, therefore, no means by which disputes in which they are involved can be brought before this tribunal. The effect of Section 16 of the Bill will be to enable the Manual Workers' Tribunal to deal with disputes in which such casual workers are involved.

Section 17 increases the amount of the advances for general development which may be made to the board by £16,000,000. Capital expenditure by the Electricity Supply Board is financed by means of repayable advances made to the board by the Minister for Finance from the Central Fund. The limit up to which such advances may be made is fixed by the Electricity (Supply) Acts and that limit has been increased from time to time according as the undertaking developed.

The board has submitted under date of 21st January, 1948, an estimate of the capital requirement for its projected programme during the period to 31st March, 1952, including capital expenditure to which the board is already committed. This programme envisages expenditure totalling £29,500,000 and, allowing for the provisions for advances in the Act of 1945, is made up as follows:—

Generation	£18,783,000
Transmission and Distribution	12,440,000
General	2,762,000
Shannon Fisheries	15,000
Rural Development	8,000,000
	£42,000,000
Deducting there from the amounts of £7,500,000 and £5,000,000 provided in the 1945 Act under Sections 38 and 41, respectively	12,500,000
Total	£29,500,000

Having regard to the magnitude of the amount involved and in view of the uncertainty as to the trend of prices and supplies of materials within the next few years it is considered that there would be no useful result in attempting at this stage to estimate with even approximate exactitude the capital expenditure which the board may find it necessary to incur in the period in question or the advances which the board may require. It is, however, abundantly clear that the board's development programme within the next few years will entail very substantial commitments if the demand for electricity is to be adequately provided for and it is, therefore, proposed, as an interim measure until the situation becomes clearer, that the existing statutory limit of the advances which may be made for general development be increased by £16,000,000.

Section 18 of the Bill repeals the enactments set out in the Schedule to the Bill to the extent shown therein, viz., Sections 33 and 34 of the Act of 1927, to which reference has already been made. Sub-section (1) of Section 3 of the Superannuation Act, 1942, is also repealed. This sub-section of the 1942 Act relates to a case in which a whole-time member of the board is entitled to a pension in respect of other and previous service either with a public department or under a local authority, and has the following effect:

(a) If a Civil Service or local authority pension equals or exceeds the amount of any pension calculated under the Superannuation Act of 1942 the latter pension does not become payable, and

(2) If a Civil Service or local authority pension happens to be less than the amount of any pension calculated under the Superannuation Act of 1942 only the difference between the two rates of pension may be paid.

This provision of the 1942 Act affects one member of the present board who is entitled to receive a pension from a local authority in respect of his service with that authority before he was appointed to be a member of the Electricity Supply Board. If the member in question had been allowed to complete 40 years' service with the local authority his pension, under the Local Government Act, 1925, would have been very much higher than that which he was granted when he left the local authority to take up the appointment with the Electricity Supply Board in 1934.

It is considered that although the case is an exceptional one, if the Act of 1942 is not amended in the manner proposed this member of the Electricity Supply Board will, on retirement, be prejudiced by reason of his transfer from a local authority to the Electricity Supply Board and it is therefore proposed to remove the sub-section of Section 3 of the 1942 Act which precluded the payment of pensions in respect of service with the board in the particular circumstances of this case. It is most unlikely that a case will occur in the future where an individual on joining the board as a whole-time member would have an existing right to a pension in excess of the maximum which he would become entitled to in respect of his service with the board. In any event should such a case occur again the probability is that the individual concerned would prove to be entitled to the same consideration which it is now proposed to extend in the present case.

Section 19 deals only with the short title etc. of the Bill and requires no explanation.

Mr. Lemass

As the Minister said, this Bill contains various unrelated provisions affecting the Electricity Supply Board but I think the Dáil should recognise that some of the changes which it proposes are not quite so innocent as the tone of the Minister's speech might suggest. I know that a very large part of this Bill had been prepared before I ceased to be Minister for Industry and Commerce and my personal assent to the enactment of legislation along the lines indicated here had been conveyed either to the Electricity Supply Board or to certain staff organisations there. In view, however, of the lapse of time which has taken place since then and of the opportunity of viewing these questions from the different angle of this side of the House I am not going to be bound completely by former assent to these provisions in my comments on them.

Do not draw me on the subject of white elephants. We have a whole cage of them here.

A Deputy

What about a blue hand?

Mr. Lemass

There may have been defects in the Electricity Supply Act of 1927, and we have a better idea now how such legislation should be framed than was possible in 1927. In 1927 there was a very strong Dáil opposition to the very idea of State enterprise in a matter of this kind and the Minister in charge of the Bill went a considerable distance to meet that opposition and that explains many of the provisions of the 1927 Act which we to-day would regard as being somewhat archaic. Let us have, however, a frank statement of what we are doing. The White Paper says that if this section is passed then the orders made by the board will be submitted to the Minister and if he approves of them with or without amendment shall confirm them by order. That is not quite what the Bill says. The Bill says that the Electricity Supply Board shall draft its regulations and shall submit them to the Minister who may either confirm them or return them to the board for the making of such amendments as he thinks proper or refuse to confirm the regulations, but the board shall make the regulations as required by the Minister. That is a very considerable invasion of the powers of the Electricity Supply Board and a very considerable extension of the control which the Minister for Industry and Commerce now exercises over the administration of the Electricity Supply Board. I think that having regard to that change, which is a fundamental change in view of the provisions of the Act of 1927 and to the fact that the Electricity Supply Board has carried on for 20 years under that Act, we should have a fuller justification than the Minister has attempted to give us. I am astonished, however, to read that the necessity for the change as described in the White Paper is this:—

"Through a defect the Act makes no specific provision for the publication of regulations so made."

That is, under Sections 33 and 34 of the 1927 Act. Having in mind the fact that the 1927 Act maks no provision for the publication of regulations:—

"The board has been advised that it is very doubtful if regulations made by it under the sections are enforceable."

Emphasis appears to be on publication of the regulations and one would have thought that any difficulty the board had under the 1927 Act, any impediment in its powers which it was advised existed because of the absence of a provision in the Act for the publication of regulations, could have been met by a simple alteration in the Act providing for the publication of regulations, but there is no such provision in this Bill. If there was no specific provision for publication in that Act, surely one might have expected to find it in this Bill. Will the regulations made by the board and approved of by the Minister's Order be just as weak as regulations made under the 1927 Act because this Bill, no more than the 1927 Act, makes no specific provision for the publication of regulations?

I think also that we should have been told with a little more detail precisely the legal and other defects which have been found to exist in Sections 33 and 34 of the Act of 1927. I have no personal recollection of the board having conveyed to me what these defects were. Perhaps they did, but if they did certainly I would like to be reminded of them. The board has been working under the 1927 Act for 22 years and very few Deputies would agree that they have not had very ample powers and did not find themselves able to use those powers rather drastically in a manner which frequently brought about acrimonious debates here in the past.

Let us now turn, however, to a far more important matter, the proposal to establish an arbitration tribunal for the clerical staffs of the board. May I say that the introduction of this proposal by the Minister for Industry and Commerce with the support of the members of the Labour Party and other Deputies opposite brings back recollections to me? It is only a matter of seven years —less if anything—since I brought in here the Electricity Supply Board Superannuation Act of 1942 which established an arbitration tribunal for the board's manual workers, which inaugurated a pensions scheme for these workers and which imposed on their right to strike limitations which I thought appropriate to associate with the inauguration of the pensions scheme for manual workers. Now we have, shall we say, this admission by those who so vigorously opposed the enactment of that measure that I may not have been so far wrong as they thought then.

Mr. Morrissey

A handsome admission.

Mr. Lemass

An admission is one thing, a handsome admission must be acknowledged. Let us, however, look at this thing more closely. In the year 1947, an organisation representative of the clerical staffs of the Electricity Supply Board requested that the appropriate provisions of the 1942 Act relating to manual workers should be re-enacted on their behalf. It was for me a matter of some personal gratification that any body of workers, through their representative organisation, should come and ask for the enactment in their interests of similar provisions, having regard to the opposition which was offered to the original enactment. I do not think it is a secret that the Electricity Supply Board were not very enthusiastic about the idea. I had discussions with the Electricity Supply Board and, while their opposition to the proposal was, I think, weakened before I left office, I had by then decided that the request of the clerical staffs should be implemented and that this legislation should be enacted. That was in 1947. The Bill was in course of drafting when the change of Government took place. It was introduced in the Dáil on the 4th August, 1948, but the Dáil did not see it for months and months after that.

That is the point I want to get. Why now? This Bill is being introduced in rather unusual circumstances and I think the Dáil should take note of the fact that a strike notice has been served on the board. There never has been a strike in the Electricity Supply Board service. The clerical staffs of the Electricity Supply Board occasionally may have had grievances concerning their conditions and expressed their grievances to the board. I know nothing about the contacts between spokesmen of the clerical staffs and the board. I do know, however, that in 1947 the clerical staffs requested the enactment of this legislation, that is to say, legislation which establishes for them an arbitration tribunal before which they will have the right to go with their grievances and whose verdict upon those grievances will be binding on the board. Perhaps they decided in favour of the establishment of this arbitration tribunal for them on general principles. Perhaps they did it because there was foreseen in 1947 a development of conditions under which the staffs would have grievances that the board would not be prepared to rectify.

If the Bill had been enacted, then the arbitration tribunal would have been sitting and would have been available all through 1948 to hear and decide on any grievances of the clerical staffs. The Bill was introduced in August, 1948. If it had been taken then, if it had been brought to the Dáil and passed here when the Dáil reassembled in November, then the arbitration tribunal would be in existence now and the staff would have that means of securing an examination and, possibly, a rectification of their grievances. But the Bill was left in abeyance from August until last Saturday and is now produced with a request that it be taken to-day. The Dáil cannot ignore the fact that last week these clerical staffs of the Electricity Supply Board to whom these sections relate gave notice to the Electricity Supply Board that they are going on strike on April 1st. But the terms of the public announcement which accompanied that notice are still more illuminating and I propose to read them. This is the statement which was issued by the Joint Trades Union Negotiating Committee:

"The board after considerable pressure extending from October, 1948——"

I ask Deputies to note the date. It was certainly subsequent to the introduction of the Bill in the Dáil.

"——agreed to meet the trade union on January 26th. As a result of that meeting a fact-finding committee was set up and reported its findings. Although there have been nine meetings of the board since that date, the board has not dealt realistically with the matter. It has not agreed to the suggestion of the conference to discuss the dispute, although the Joint Trade Union Negotiating Committee had been informed by the trade unions affiliated to the committee that the great majority of their members were in favour of a strike. The board will be informed to-morrow that it will receive strike notice to operate on April 1st, unless in the meantime a settlement satisfactory to the members concerned has been reached."

We have got to consider the abrupt decision of the Minister to produce this Bill and submit it to the Dáil in relation to that notice and to ask ourselves whether he intends the Bill to have a significance in relation to the situation existing in the Electricity Supply Board, or has it merely come along now in routine order without an appreciation of the fact that the Dáil is bound, and the clerical staffs of the Electricity Supply Board are bound, to give it a special significance when it is debated here under these circumstances.

Mr. Morrissey

The Second Reading of the Bill at this stage has no relation whatever to that. It has nothing to do with it.

Mr. Lemass

That makes the matter worse. It seems to me that there has been an extraordinary mis-timing of the whole business. If the Minister was aware of the fact that this situation was brewing up in the Electricity Supply Board, then it would have been reasonable for him to have come to the Dáil with the Bill last November or last December and ask the Dáil to pass it quickly. If it had been passed, if the arbitration tribunal had been set up, the arbitration tribunal for which these clerical staffs had themselves requested the enactment of the necessary legislation, then there would have been adequate means by which their grievances could have been considered and they would not now be in the position of issuing a strike notice because the board refused over a period in which they held nine meetings to deal, as they described it, realistically with the situation. They would not be depending on the consent of the board if this Bill had been passed a few months ago. They could have operated the machinery to be established and gone to the arbitration tribunal. It is, in my view, particularly having regard to the nature of the case made against the establishment of a similar tribunal for manual workers in 1942, a very welcome development that the clerical staffs of the Electricity Supply Board have asked for the establishment of a similar tribunal on their behalf. I think the Minister should not have delayed its establishment, and he certainly is to be held to blame if, by reason of that delay a situation now exists for the first time in the Electricity Supply Board where strike notices have been served on the board.

However, that does not quite end the matter because one of the provisions of the 1942 Act had the effect of imposing upon any worker who joined the pension scheme set up under that Act certain penalities if he went on strike. I justified that provision in 1942, and I justified it in relation to manual workers. I pointed out that it was the practice of the Electricity Supply Board to pay their manual workers—electricians, carpenters, painters and so forth—the rate of wages paid by other employers to workers of the same class—the rate of wages prescribed in national agreements made with the trade unions of these workers —and to give them, in addition, all the other conditions of employment prescribed in these national agreements. I said that if over and above everything which workers of the same class could get in wages and in the benefit of good conditions from other employers, they were to get the added security of pensions in the Electricity Supply Board service, then the community was entitled to ask from them a little security in return—an assurance that their grievances, whenever they had grievances, would be submitted to the arbitration of an impartial tribunal and should not be decided by strike action. That was in relation to the manual workers.

I do not know whether the scales of salary of the clerical staffs of the Electricity Supply Board compare favourably or otherwise with the salaries of clerical workers in the Government service or in private employment, but clearly there is not the same basis of comparison between their rates of remuneration and the rates of remuneration for similar types of workers in other employment as there is between the board's manual workers and similar classes of manual workers elsewhere. We are now proposing, however, to enact this Bill in a situation where strike notices have been given to operate on the 1st April. The effect of its enactment will be, assuming the strike takes place and that the strike continues to a date after this Bill becomes law, that the clerical workers will be denied the right to pension in respect of any period of service with the board prior to the break after the passing of this Act. I could not object to that, provided that the clerical workers concerned had the advantage of an arbitration tribunal in which they had faith, and to which they could bring their grievances.

If this Bill had been submitted to the Dáil in circumstances in which there was no strike, and in circumstances in which the likelihood of a strike before the date of its enactment were remote, I would not object. I would say that the enactment of these provisions should be facilitated, particularly in view of the fact that the staff themselves asked for them. I would say it was desirable that, in view of the establishment of an arbitration tribunal to deal with their grievances, we could impose on them, in consideration of the additional security, the obligation not to strike. It is really not an obligation. The Act of 1942 does not prevent a worker in the Electricity Supply Board going on strike. It imposes penalties and discourages him from doing so. In this particular case, we are at the present time legislating to ensure that the clerical workers who have not got the right to arbitration and for whom the tribunal has not yet been established will, if they go on strike and under the terms of this measure, be affected in their pensions because they have done so.

I think, therefore, it is clearly desirable that some provisions should be inserted in Section 7 of the Bill to make it clear that the penalties imposed by it will not apply in the case of any strike in progress at the time the Bill become law or, alternatively, that the Minister should exert himself to secure the avoidance of a strike on the assurance which he can give, with the authority of every Deputy in this Dáil, I am sure, that we will expedite the enactment of the measure so as to ensure a clear way for the rapid establishment of the arbitration tribunal which it is proposed to set up. But if the idea of the Minister in bringing the Bill forward at this time, and of making its provisions known at this time, is to deter the trade union negotiating committee from proceeding with the strike notice by reason of these penalties, then we have a purely farcical situation, because simultaneously with its introduction on the same day a motion has been submitted to the Dáil the object of which is to restore the pensions to the national teachers who went on strike more than a year ago.

Mr. Morrissey

Is there any limit to the Deputy's capacity for mischief? He is deliberately trying to force the position with regard to the strike.

Mr. Lemass

Mr. Lemass

Did I hear the word "sabotage?" What is the allegation against me—that I am encouraging the staffs of the Electricity Supply Board to go on strike? I know nothing whatever about the merits of their case. I do not know what the case is. All that I know is that they think they have grievances and that they have been trying to get their grievances considered by the Electricity Supply Board, and the suggestion is that because the board would not deal with them they have given strike notice. I think the staffs of the Electricity Supply Board should be agreeable to follow the course that they were prepared to consider in 1947 and have these grievances determined by an arbitration tribunal. The only reason why that could not be done was because the Minister did not produce the Bill until to-day, although it was introduced last August and drafted 12 months ago. Why has he introduced it to-day? He tells us he did not even have cognisance of the fact that there is a strike notice in existence. Does anybody believe that and, if it is true, does it not make the situation even worse?

I am quite certain that the members of the committee representative of the Electricity Supply Board clerical staffs, if it is the same committee that I met in the past, are a group of very intelligent, level-headed people who will embark on no course that they cannot see the end of, and they are just as appreciative of the importance to them of the enactment of this measure now as they were two years ago. I hope that Deputy Larkin who, I observe, is present, has taken the precaution of reading the debates on the 1942 Act.

Mr. Larkin

No, but I had the headache of dealing with the situation outside.

Mr. Lemass

I am glad that Deputy Larkin will support these provisions. May I go back for a moment to the White Paper? The situation in the Electricity Supply Board, and particularly the effect of the enactment of these provisions upon the pensions of the board's staff, is governed in the White Paper by this rather clarifying sentence: "Sections 4 to 8 of the Bill also relate directly or indirectly to the new tribunal and are in line with the corresponding provisions of the Electricity Supply Board Act of 1942 for a manual workers' tribunal." That, I am sure, brings home to Deputies opposite exactly what they are being asked to legislate for at this time.

I will go on to other matters to which the Bill refers and which have no relationship to what I have discussed already. So far as the proposal to enable the board to inform members of their staff now that, where they are not entitled to a full pension under the existing scheme, the board will at the time supplement these pensions to a specific amount, is concerned, I am in complete agreement. I thought the board had that power under the 1942 Act. I think it was only when the board came up against individual cases, although they had come to their decision and although they knew the amount by which they were going to supplement the pensions, they found they could not legally bind themselves to do so when the time came. That amendment of the 1942 Act is very necessary and desirable.

With regard to this matter of workers transferred from non-pensionable employment in the electricity undertakings of local authorities to the board and transferred back again, I agree that it is necessary that we should clarify that situation. I am not sure that the Minister has finished his troubles by the enactment of these provisions. I had many changes of mind regarding these workers. I saw certain difficulties in the board recognising as pensionable service with local authorities service which was not pensionable at the time, but I felt, whatever the logic of the case, that common-sense suggested that anomalous treatment of workers employed side by side by the same employer was a cause of discontent that should be removed.

I cannot really say, but there may be on the board's staff now some workers who were transferred to the board from electricity undertakings in private ownership. It will be difficult to say why they should not get pensions in respect of their service with those former privately-owned electricity undertakings when pensions are being given in respect of service with publicly-owned electricity undertakings, which service was not pensionable at the time. I recognise that if you go to cover the case of workers who came into the board's service from other privately-owned electricity undertakings it will be hard to distinguish between these workers and workers who came into the board's service from other types of service. However, if we are going to get rid of this anomaly, I will support the proposal.

I am not sure that it is necessary, in the case of the Pigeon House workers who were disemployed for a time, to have regard to the lump sum payment which some of them received. Deputies are no doubt familiar with the situation. When the Shannon scheme was started it was intended that electricity would be sold by wholesale to municipal and private electricity undertakings. It was found when the supply was available that these undertakings would not take Shannon current. They thought they could either then or in the future produce current from their own generators at a cheaper rate and so the original Shannon scheme was altered to provide for the compulsory acquisition by the board of all these municipal and private undertakings and the sale of Shannon current direct to consumers.

At that time there was a miscalculation as to the demand for current. It was assumed that the supply from the Shannon would be adequate to meet all demands and the Pigeon House was closed down and the staffs employed there were dismissed. It was then found that the demand was greater than was anticipated, or perhaps there was a dry season affecting the Shannon output, and the Pigeon House was brought back into service and these workers were re-employed. The workers who were pensioned on disemployment at that time—in 1928, 1929 or whatever time it was—are, of course, no worse off. They will get pensions based on their pre-stoppage and post-stoppage service, but the workers with short service got, instead of a pension, a lump sum payment that was very little more than sufficient to maintain them for the period in which they were idle before they were brought back into the Electricity Supply Board service. It was not a capital sum which they could invest to buy a pension later on in life, and it was a bit harsh on these persons who had that short period of service before the stoppage. A grant of full pension to these workers would not cost very much and it is very harsh to count against them the fact that they received that gratuity during that period of unemployment 20 years ago.

The next paragraph of the White Paper deals with the proposal to extend the board's powers to acquire land compulsorily. I recognise fully that where an organisation of this kind is engaging in work which is necessary for the community as a whole, work which, like a waterpower station, must be done at a particular spot, it is desirable it should have powers of compulsory acquisition, as otherwise land and property at the spot where the work must be done will be inflated in price.

The board got these powers of compulsory acquisition under the Act of 1927. I simplified them considerably so far as hydro-power schemes are concerned in the Act of 1945. The proposal here is to carry on that simplification of the board's powers to include compulsory acquisitions of land for purposes other than water-power stations. I see no objection in principle to that where the land is being acquired for the establishment of generating plant; but I think it is desirable that the board should not have these extended powers of compulsory acquisition for the acquisition of offices, shops or showrooms and, particularly, in the case of properties to be used in connection with that part of their business which they carry on in competition with private traders. There was at one time a substantial agitation against the board going into business in which private traders are also engaged. That agitation has to some extent died down. But I think it is undesirable that we should give the board added powers of compulsory acquisition of property except in relation to such matters as the establishment of generating stations or other essential capital works of that kind. In my view it is undesirable that the power should cover shops and offices. That objection is made all the greater in view of the provisions of this Bill which increase the board's powers and make it possible for them to act in the compulsory acquisition of property with greater expedition than they could act heretofore.

Section 13 of the Bill deals with the question of wayleaves. There was at one time no subject upon which more heated debates occurred in the Dáil than upon the use by the board of its powers to establish wayleaves across land. Everybody knows that nothing irritates a farmer so much as the Electricity Supply Board coming in across his land for the purpose of erecting overhead networks and putting down poles where, it is always alleged, they are most inconvenient to the farmer, and generally proceeding without regard to his amenities or convenience. We know that the board's networks must travel in straight lines. We know that the distance between the poles is determined by the weight of the wires.

We know that the board cannot just move its poles or lines around here and there to avoid placing one of them in the middle of a private garden and the next in the middle of a farmer's yard. Nevertheless we have to recognise the fact that there is a good deal of irritation concerning the use of these powers by the board. That irritation is not going to be lessened by the proposals contained in Section 13 of this Bill, which releases the board even from the obligation of depositing a map showing the plan of its networks. Let me say that I am not going to oppose that section of the Bill. I realise that the original restrictions upon the board's powers in that regard related to the more leisurely days of the construction of the main network. Now that we are embarking on rural electrification the mileage of overhead network will be extended enormously. We want it to be extended quickly and anything that will enable the board to get going with the extension of rural electrification more rapidly than at present will be supported so far as I am concerned. I think this, however, gives me the right to make some reference to the progress of the scheme of rural electrification.

I do not know whether there was a legitimate excuse either last year or this on the grounds of scarcity of material or of skilled workers for the inability of the board to speed up its network construction to the rate originally planned. I think the Minister should be slow to accept these excuses from the board. I do not believe there is now any real insuperable difficulty in getting supplies of the necessary equipment. I do not believe that the excuse concerning scarcity of skilled workers is a valid one. Three years ago the board were certainly told they were to carry out their plan for the training of workers upon whatever basis would ensure that, as soon as materials were available, there would be no hold-up because of scarcity of skilled technicians. I think the Minister would be well advised to shake up the board in this matter and to make them realise that there is growing dissatisfaction with the rate of progress. It may be that they have difficulties which we do not know or understand; but I am quite certain that we shall not get the maximum amount of progress out of the board by making excuses for them. I speak with some experience in this matter.

In that connection, I would like to ask whether this comparatively new development of selecting areas under the rural electrification scheme upon the basis of the most profitable return to the board is impeding in any way the development of the scheme. I am not objecting to that procedure providing that it does not delay the execution of the scheme. I would like to emphasise that the financing of the rural electrification schemes was not based upon areas but upon the country as a whole. It was assumed that the supply could be brought to the doors of about 90 per cent. of rural dwellers and that about 70 per cent. of them would, in fact, take it when it became available or at some stage during the ten years' development of the whole scheme. Its finances were planned on the assumption that in the country as a whole, not in any particular area but over the whole of the Twenty-Six Counties, there would be 70 per cent. connection of rural dwellers. There is no real objection to the board picking one area instead of another for development in 1949 because it thereby gets a larger cash return provided that— and only provided that—the rate of progress of the scheme as a whole is not delayed by the process of selection. I would like the Minister's assurance ——

Mr. Morrissey

It is not in any way whatsoever being delayed due to that.

Mr. Lemass

I accept that assurance from the Minister. Section 14 of the Bill, which relates to the payment of a pension to an individual member of the board, is only just. I tried to remember the circumstances under which the condition was imposed that a member of the board, no matter how long he was a member, could not get a pension unless he had one period of appointment for five years. I think I am correct in saying that it arose out of a debate here in the Dáil on the Committee Stage of the Bill. Certain objections were made to the possibility of a person having infrequent periods of appointment to the board and nevertheless qualifying for a pension. It was to meet those objections that this provision was put in. But it was put in without appreciation of the fact that it could work out most unfairly—as, in fact, it did in one individual case. In that case a member who has had continual service for 15 or 16 years, but who never had one single five-year appointment, is not eligible for a pension at all.

With regard to the proposal concerning the financing of the superannuation fund I am anxious to get some information from the Minister. I fully agree that the actuary and management of the fund must know precisely what their investments will earn; if their investments consist entirely of loans to the board they must know precisely what rate of interest the board is going to pay. The present basis is that the rate of interest is fixed with the consent of the Minister for Finance. We are told here that it is 4 per cent. at the present time. Now, it seems to me that the Bill does not give any more definite assurance of the rate of interest than exists at the moment. It provides that in future a rate up to 4 per cent. may be paid upon its future loans. I am anxious to know whether it is intended that all loans made by the superannuation fund to the board will be paid for at the rate of 4 per cent. in the future; if at any time money becomes cheaper and the board is not prepared to accept loans from the fund at the rate of 4 per cent., can it reduce the rate of interest on loans already made?

Mr. Morrissey

There are a number of minor matters dealt with in this Bill but there are one or two outstanding points that call for notice. One is in connection with the proposed tribunal for the general employees of the board and the other is in regard to the limit of capital expenditure which may be provided. Deputy Lemass referred very fully to the question of the tribunal, but on the one point which seems to me important, he was skating on very thin ice. That is the question of interfering with the right to strike by the employee. It is not correct to say that we never had a strike in the Electricity Supply Board. We had one big strike when Deputy Lemass was Minister for Industry and Commerce. The strike was very widespread, and, in fact, it affected the whole supply to the City of Dublin. On the termination of the strike we had the usual experience of being informed by officials of the Department of Industry and Commerce at that time that of course we had no legal right to strike. We were warned that in future we should keep within the law. On that occasion it would have been far better if the Minister, instead of coming as he did and opening the conference with this reminder, had used the powers that he said he had. Those powers not only relate to the supply and distribution of electricity but also to the supply and distribution of gas, water and other essential services. Everybody knows they have been in existence for many years. Somebody comes along and reminds the trade union that they are very near the verge, but it is generally accepted that at the time those powers were passed we had a different framework and different relations to those we have to-day. What I dislike, not merely about the present Bill but also about the 1942 Act, is the way in which they tried to solve this problem. If we decide that employees in essential undertakings should not have the right to strike why do we not say so? Whereas in the 1942 Act we do not deny the employees the right to strike, we say that if they do they lose all the credit for the service which they had accumulated before that strike. Not only will they lose the service, not only will the amounts paid in on their behalf by the employers be forfeited but even the sums they themselves have paid into the fund. I think that is an objectionable way to deal with what in many ways is regarded as high principles between different sections of the people in the country. I believe that these employees have got the same right as any other workers to withdraw their labour just as an employer has the right to go out of production if he feels that he is not getting the proper return or is operating under unsuitable conditions. In so far as these particular employees are concerned we are taking this line in the 1942 Act. At that time I was not a member of the House. I had the more unpleasant duty of trying to speak on behalf of manual workers who had been looking for an increase in their superannuation scheme in respect of employment in the Electricity Supply Board. When that scheme came along we were told "there is the scheme in relation to the right to exercise what is the right of every other type of worker in the State, namely, the right of withdrawing your labour if you have got a genuine grievance."

In our discussions it was a question of balance of forces as to whether or not the scheme would be accepted with that condition. Nobody tried to influence the workers; it was left to themselves. They pondered on the matter and decided to accept the scheme and they accepted that condition also. Ever since 1942 it has been a source of discontent. Luckily enough there have been no developments which were of such major importance as to give rise in the minds of the workers to the question whether they should weigh up the merits of withdrawing their labour or not.

Deputy Lemass said that there was a problem in regard to national teachers. We have the same problem in regard to the employees of the Corporation of Dublin, the Post Office and also those who stand over the principle and take the view which Deputy Lemass advanced early in the debate, that in return for certain conditions of employment these workers should be prepared to forgo their right to strike. When it comes to practical politics, in actual practice the workers frequently are right and we should restore those rights to them that they lost by taking strike action.

I, too, do not like this provision in regard to Section 7. I did not like it in 1942 and I am in the process at the moment of making up my mind what to do about it. I still believe that the worker has the right to strike. It may be argued that they are engaged in essential services. Many others are engaged in essential services and we have not yet taken away their right to strike. Apparently the advantage they have is that they work for private employers. But even if they do provide essential services, have we reached such a period of equitable dealing as between man and man that we can select three, four or five individuals so calm and so judicial in their approach to every problem that masses of workers can accept their verdict as being completely just and on that verdict agree to establish, not merely the newly made conditions but possibly a whole future outlook on life? Whatever we may do in this House because we are used to debating, the average worker has not yet developed that point of view. It is remarkable that although we say, both in the 1942 Act and in the present Bill, that all questions in dispute must be referred to this tribunal which is in existence for the manual workers and is to be set up for the general employees, if any employee of the Electricity Supply Board withdraws his labour willingly he forfeits his service prior to the withdrawal in respect of superannuation. If the other major legislation be passed, even if the Minister who passed the 1942 Act and who as a Deputy to-day in the course of the debate defended the basis on which we introduced this provision in the 1942 Act in the legislation which deals with the establishment of the Labour Court, did not take the view that that decision was binding and that right was withdrawn from any worker, why then the difference with regard to the employees of the Electricity Supply Board? When the change of Government came about I know myself that many of these employees, not only those who supported the present Parties making up the inter-Party Government but even the persons who supported the Fianna Fáil Party, hoped that as workers and as employees of the Electricity Supply Board it would now be possible to be relieved of this restriction which applies to them and which does not apply to so many other sections of the workers also engaged in essential services. I believe that general employees do desire this tribunal.

Deputy Lemass has information on the present dispute which is not up to date. The report he read out from the newspaper clipping is not the latest information. I understand that since then there has been further progress and negotiations have been opened again. It is not for me to comment on the court's decisions but I do believe that, just the same as every other body of workers, the general employees of the Electricity Supply Board do welcome machinery through which they can have their difficulties, grievances and complaints considered. I have experience of negotiations with the Electricity Supply Board. The remarkable thing is that we never have negotiated with the board. It is a rare and very precious occasion on which we see a member of the board as trade union officials. We have to negotiate with the senior officers and on most occasions they are in the same position as an official in the Civil Service, in the sense that they are bound by previous instructions and have got very little discretion left. One of the secrets of negotiation is the ability to meet and deal with the change in a situation that takes place in a conference. Very often a single word will settle a dispute. A man coming in with a prepared brief is at a tremendous disadvantage as we have found on many occasions.

I still feel it would be a big advance if we could on many occasions have direct contact between the employers of the men and women working in the Electricity Supply Board—the Board of Directors and the representatives of those men. If we cannot have that, the tribunal is in addition to such direct negotiations very satisfactory machinery. Over a long number of years we have been pressing individually and in our national organisations for a proper and adequate negotiating machinery. We have never taken a stand against negotiating machinery. We have always been anxious to get it.

The trade union will have to expend a great deal of thought and energy and a great deal of time, money and sacrifice have been expended towards obtaining the right of negotiating with employers in the Electricity Supply Board so that to suggest that the general employees in the Electricity Supply Board would welcome the extension of the machinery of the tribunal to them is merely to repeat something. Whether they object to the provision of an additional tax that is allowed in Section 7, I do not know. That is a matter for themselves to say.

I am speaking as one who objects to the limitation of the right to strike. I believe that, if an employer has got a right to close down his factory and withdraw from production at any time that suits him because he does not get his price and his conditions, a worker has got the same right and should not be denied it. I feel that in this particular case we are applying legislation which is only partly effective in the sense that one section of workers engaged in essential services are confined by this particular restriction. It is definitely a confined restriction in the sense that a man who has got eight, 15 or 20 years' service is going to be very careful before he endangers that service from the point of view of receiving a pension. Others say that that particular restriction applying to one particular group of workers was at complete variance with the whole principle of legislation that was passed with unanimous support of all Parties when it was piloted through this House by Deputy Lemass then acting as Minister. We all agreed that this Industrial Relations Act could only have any hope of being successfully worked and successfully received by the workers and the organisations if it was completely accepted from the beginning that it was constituted on a voluntary basis, that it was voluntarily accepted machinery of arbitration and that there were no restrictions or obstacles placed in our way of resorting to action as we saw fit. The history of the court has borne out the wisdom of that, and other members of this House and I feel that the principle employed there should be employed now by withdrawing this section from the amended Act and substituting a section to amend the principal section of the 1942 Act and to leave them with their pensions, their tribunals, their freedom of action and the possibility of using their own ability to deal with their problems the same as every other section of workers in this country.

There is one small matter on which I want to touch. A good deal of the present Bill deals with amended proposals with regard to superannuation proposals. Under Section 14 there is an amending clause to deal with the problem of the members of the board who have not been able to qualify under the provisions of the main Act. I do not think anyone will disagree with that.

Might I suggest to the Minister that he should also consider sympathetically the position of a number of employees? They may not be so exalted or important but they also have a claim for consideration of a somewhat different type. I refer to a certain number—it is very small in fact—of workers who were employed by the Dublin Corporation—and some of them had a period of service extending to six or seven years on a temporary basis— prior to the establishment of the Electricity Supply Board. Subsequently they claimed employment with the Electricity Supply Board and worked there ever since. They are members of the superannuation scheme but in respect of their claims under that scheme they are different from other employees of Dublin Corporation who were taken over with their pension rights intact under the 1927 Act. The reason why this small group of workers is not able to secure the same pension provisions as the other men is that on one single day in 1927 they were not in the employment of Dublin Corporation. I know that in legal matters there must be some limit of that kind, but in this case the day was the 29th March, 1927 and they had service before that date with Dublin Corporation and with the Electricity Supply Board after that date while on just that one particular day they were nobody's child. Their number is very small. The case has already gone before the tribunal for manual workers, but they are debarred by the present state of the law from dealing with them. If we are to pick up the loose ends and deal with the period of service and pensions of other workers and with the passing to and fro of employees in Rathmines and Pembroke in and out of the employment of Dublin Corporation, we should take the opportunity of trying to settle the problem of this small number of men. They should be given credit for their services with Dublin Corporation and regarded as men who, if they had remained with Dublin Corporation would have qualified for their pension and be given the same terms under the 1942 Act as those who did go forward as being in the employment of Dublin Corporation on this one particular day. It could quite easily be that of two men one was in the employment of Dublin Corporation for three months before the appointed day and on the appointed day and was taken over by the Electricity Supply Board with his pension rights safeguarded, while the other worked for Dublin Corporation for ten or 12 years, sometimes working practically the whole year and at other times working for a major portion of the year, but two weeks before the 29th March was laid off. Because he was laid off and was off on that one day he was denied the protection afforded under the original and principal Act to his fellow worker who had in fact probably six or seven years less service in Dublin Corporation but who was lucky enough to be in employment on that day. That is the type of legislation that does require amendment and the case is as strong as that put forward by the members of the board with regard to their period of service and pension claims. It is also in line as far as the principle is concerned with the section dealing with the men employed in the Pigeon House who were given a gratuity when their services were terminated. It is in line too with the approach to the problem of pensions for those men who had been in the employment of Pembroke and Rathmines Urban Councils who passed into the service of the Electricity Supply Board and after a time passed back to the employment of Dublin Corporation and qualified for a pension and then went back to the Electricity Supply Board again. I would ask the Minister to look into this question. The numbers of these men are small, their case is genuine and it does require consideration.

With regard to the question of the provision of capital for the board, Deputy Lemass and the Minister had an interchange of queries across the floor of the House as to whether the Minister was pushing the board or the board pushing the Minister. Whatever may be happening there is very little chance or very little hope that the board is pushing the Minister and I personally believe that the Minister is quite prepared to push, and is pushing, the board. But I have a feeling and I have had it for a long time that one of the difficulties and weaknesses in the constitution of the board is that it is too technical a board and that we would get much more progress, a wider grasp of affairs and, if you like, a more public approach to our problems if we had on that board 11 ordinary people who were not experts on hydro-electric development or the distribution of electric power or current.

It is because of that set-up that I urge on the Minister to see that these sums which may be provided for the board should not be limited by what the board thinks it needs, but rather that the board, in the words of Deputy Lemass, should be pushed, harried and driven, because the problem referred to in this House is a real problem. We have not got sufficient power and we will find very great difficulties, if there is to be any development here, unless we have a much wider vision with regard to providing additional power for the country. One new development in industry, that of plastics, which I personally think may hold out great hope for the country, is one that we could not enter into on any large scale unless we had a tremendous development in our power resources.

I recall from reading the reports of the board that the known available and possible water power resources still unutilised seem to be very small. Even if there has been carried out, as we gathered from the reports, investigations extending over a very long period of years, the total available resources still seem to be exceptionally small. We could add to them by the production of power from either coal or turf. Our production of power from turf is still, if you like, on an experimental basis. I feel that there is one matter which might be considered. This whole question of drainage about which we have heard so much discussion in the House is one that could be considered in association with and in relation to the possibility of hydro-electric development. When we realise that our drainage problem is to get rid of a tremendous mass of water from the countryside and that water can constitute the means of producing power, I feel that some of our technical experts should be asked to sit down and consider the possibility of an arterial drainage scheme, not only from the point of view of draining land in order to restore it for agricultural purposes, but also draining land for the purpose of accumulating, storing and making available that water for hydro-electric purposes.

Major de Valera

What about the head?

Mr. Larkin

I am not a technical expert, but on one occasion I had the opportunity of speaking to a man who was an expert and I remember his showing me a map—he was a newcomer to this country and probably was not deeply informed—on which he approached this problem of drainage from the point of view of hydro-electric power. He had a viewpoint which I think merits examination as to the possibility of creating storage capacity for water which might be utilised either through the present Shannon scheme or, as he said, might be utilised for stations located in other parts of the country. That man had a definite technical capacity, and if he felt that this merited his attention and was even in his spare time engaged in examining the problem, surely we ought to try to deal with this particular problem of power supply and ask our technical experts to look into it.

That brings me back to the remark I made, that the board is a little too technical. I admit quite frankly that some of this man's ideas were submitted to the board and were not received too happily. It is not the first occasion on which a technical expert has been given a greater breadth of vision by the ordinary man in the street who does not know anything about techniques. As we have these two main and very big problems of drainage and power supply, I do not see any reason why we should not ask one or two experts to sit down and see if we cannot get a solution of the two problems and thereby increase our very meagre water resources at the present time. If we are going to provide adequate power and we cannot do it on the basis of our water resources, then we are going to have a very big problem from the point of view of the importation of either coal or oil or of finding ways and means of greater and more rapid development by the production of power from our peat resources.

Mr. C. Lehane

In approaching this Bill, I am inclined to regard it primarily as a measure introduced by the Minister to enable him to remove certain existing anomalies that arise in the case of employees of the Electricity Supply Board. So far as it is a measure intended to remove these anomalies, to ensure a greater measure of equity and fair play for the employees of the board, I would of course support it. But the debate has been availed of both by Deputy Lemass and Deputy Larkin to deal with the various sections in the Bill and it has become apparent to me that this is, if I may say so, a rather peculiar Bill. I think the Minister would probably have been better advised if he had dealt, for instance, with the matters to which Sections 12 and 17 have reference in a separate Bill. Section 12 is an enabling section, giving the board powers to acquire land and premises more expeditiously than is the case at present. Section 17 deals with increasing the amount of capital advances to the board.

So far as this Bill seeks to remove anomalies, I think it will have the support of all sections in the House. There is just one section—Section 7— about which it is possible to have a real divergence of opinion. Quite frankly, I do not like Section 7, and if I thought it was introduced as a big stick, as it were, in the situation that exists at the moment between the clerical workers of the Electricity Supply Board and the board, I would oppose that particular section. I must say quite honestly that I do not think it is introduced here with that intention, but I will await hearing from the Minister, when he is replying, a definite assurance to that effect.

Mr. Morrissey

Perhaps it would be better if I gave it to the Deputy right now. It has nothing whatever to do with it. That section, as far as I know, was drafted over 12 months ago.

Captain Cowan

It makes it all the more dangerous.

Mr. C. Lehane

I accept the Minister's assurance. However, it does not completely dispose of the position that is created. Deputy Lemass displayed great concern for the clerical workers against whom he felt this section might be operated in a discriminatory fashion, and to a very large extent he carried me with him, I have not had an opportunity of studying this as a section very carefully and I am subject to correction on it, but I incline to the view that, if the Bill were to become law before whatever date strike action were taken—if that unfortunate position results—a dangerous position would be created. I understand that the date of expiry of the strike notice is the 1st of April. As I envisage it, the Bill cannot become law before then and, if it does not become law before the 1st of April, I do not think the difficulties envisaged by Deputy Lemass will arise. That is on a very hurried reading of the section, but that certainly is the view I take of it and Deputy de Valera appears to agree with me. I have sufficient confidence in the common-sense of the Minister not to conceive that he would introduce a measure of this nature when negotiations were going on between the board and the employees, unless he was assured that its introduction had the goodwill, tacit or otherwise, of the employees whose representatives are at present negotiating with the board. So much for the provisions of this Bill in so far as they relate to questions of superannuation.

Deputy Larkin mentioned the case of former employees of the Dublin Corporation and certainly, if cases such as those he instanced exist, I would suggest that if the Minister is setting out to remove anomalies, he should not leave behind him glaring anomalies of that nature and that at a later stage provision should be made in this Bill for dealing with these specific cases.

Section 12 will meet with general approval. Many of us have had experience of the delays occasioned in, for instance, the Department of Local Government, where it was essential and necessary in the public interest to acquire sites for building. Anyone with experience of acquisition proceedings knows the appalling delays that can be created by people who wish to extort the last penny out of the public authority for their property. In so far as Section 12 would give the Electricity Supply Board power to acquire land or premises expeditiously, it should be generally welcomed. I think—and Deputy Lemass adverted to it also— that the use of the power to acquire premises should be made sparingly by the board. As a Deputy representing a Dublin City constituency and bearing in mind the number of former residential premises which could house people and which are at present in the occupation of the Electricity Supply Board in Dublin City, I believe that the Minister should advise the board, as far as he can, that Section 12 should not be utilised for the purpose of acquiring office premises for the board in Dublin. I have often felt— and I know there are many who think with me—that it is a terrible pity that so many of us who give lip service to the principle of decentralisation are not inclined to see a process of decentralisation put into effect when we come down to cases about it.

One reference in the White Paper, in paragraph 27, which I found difficult to understand, particularly referring it back to Section 12, is the difference which the Minister draws between general development and rural electrification. In so far as capital expenditure is concerned, the Minister's policy should be to rattle the board if necessary. The Minister's policy should be one of holding out to the Electricity Supply Board every possible encouragement, giving them a shove where necessary, to proceed with the schemes of rural electrification already outlined and to ensure that an adequate generation programme will be got under way at the earliest possible moment. The Minister, in reply either to Deputy Lemass or Deputy Larkin, stated that no shortage of capital need retard the board in their development programme. If that is so and if the capital advances necessary for the board's programme are £29,000,000, I think it is rather a pity that the Minister did not make provision for capital advances in excess of the sum of £16,000,000 provided for in the Bill. Those who look to the future development of this country, both agriculturally and industrially, are inclined to pin their faith, and rightly so, to the development of electric power.

I do not know if the Department or the officials of the Electricity Supply Board have ever considered the possibility of extending the scope of the board, or relating the board to some other body, commission or board, which would link the activities of the Electricity Supply Board with the activities of whatever drainage authority is set up and with the activities of those engaged in the development of our turf resources. I incline to the view that there has been too much insistence on hydro-electrification and that the examination of our resources for the generation of electric power on the bogs has never been fully considered or as seriously considered as it might have been. I know that various commissions have gone into these matters, but nothing practical has come from them. I should like if the Minister would consider that there is quite a lot to be said for the settingup of some authority that would link the activities of the Electricity Supply Board with a drainage authority and with an authority charged with the development of our turf resources.

Major de Valera

Is there not a turf development board?

Mr. C. Lehane

There is, but everything that we have heard said here this evening has been directed towards the consideration of the Electricity Supply Board as a body dealing with hydro-electric schemes and nothing else. If the Deputy had been here earlier he would realise that. Will the Minister say whether he proposes to set up a wages tribunal similar to that set up for manual workers under the 1942 Act? I should also like to have an undertaking from him that any limitation on the capital advances provided for in this measure will not retard the development work of the Electricity Supply Board or of its generation programme. It would be helpful if the Minister would tell us, once and for all, what are the causes which he assigns for the present delay in going ahead with rural electrification. If the cause of the delay is either a shortage of material or of skilled men, we should be told so. I should like to hear the Minister assure the House that there is one thing there is not a shortage of, and that is, enthusiasm on his part not to restrict the amount of capital advances to the board.

Mr. Briscoe

Section 12 of this Bill should get serious consideration from the House because of the position the House itself is in in relation to the Electricity Supply Board. Members of the House who are familiar with the history of the development of the State control of electricity know that this board has certain powers, and that, while the Minister has certain authority over it, in nine cases out of ten when questions are addressed to him in this House with regard to the activities of the board, the reply is "that is a matter for the board; the Minister has no function whatever in that particular activity". As Deputy Lemass pointed out, the original intention with regard to the Electricity Supply Board was that it should undertake the generation and sale of electricity, wholesale, to users such as local authorities and other big consumers. Originally, the powers given to the board were designed to meet that kind of a set-up. As time went on, the board found that its activities would not be a paying proposition unless it also became a retailer of electricity to the individual consumer. The board went even further. It went into the retail business—the supply of fittings—in competition with existing businesses and small contractors. The board was given powers and conditions which, I think, the members of this House would like to be able to discuss, just as they are in a position to discuss the administration of Departments of State.

The original capital for the Shannon scheme was £5,000,000. Those who prophesied at the time that, in its final completion, it would involve an expenditure of £40,000,000 or £50,000,000 were ridiculed. I remember that, when suggestions came from this side of the House between 1927 and 1932 that the scheme would finally result in an expenditure of that kind, those of us who made them were sneered at and jeered at. A number of Deputies at that time did not seem to appreciate what the logical consequences of the proposals in those days would be.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy should understand that all interruptions, except on points of order, are disorderly.

Mr. Briscoe

What is interesting is the absorption of the brain-power of the individual listening.

Mr. S. Collins

The "Great I Am".

Mr. Briscoe

No, but I want the Deputy to understand that we had an orderly debate until he came in here satisfied inwardly as well as outwardly. I was making the point that Departments of State responsible for an annual expenditure raised by taxation that is much smaller than that of the Electricity Supply Board undertaking, have to render an account of their services to this House. They are represented here by Ministers who are responsible to the House. Take the case of the Post Office. With all its works and pomps, its activities cannot be said to compare with those of the Electricity Supply Board. Yet we have the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs who is responsible to the Dáil for the act of every employee in the Post Office. The same applies to the Board of Works. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance is in charge of it. I submit that its total activities cannot compare with the activities of the Electricity Supply Board. If any citizen feels that he has a grievance against the activities of the Board of Works, or any other State Department, expression can be given to it in this House. That is not so in the case of the Electricity Supply Board. What I am suggesting to the Minister on Section 12 is that he should consider what his predecessor had announced to be his intention, namely, a reorganisation of the constitution of the Electricity Supply Board so that there would be better control over it both by the Minister and by the House.

As regards these very extravagant sums which are being made available for this development, once they are handed over to the board we cannot have any further discussion about the matter here. I remember that during the war years we had to restrict the use of electricity and ration it very severely. Members of the poorer sections of our community had to pay a charge on the valuations of their premises and they received very little electricity. In some cases it was calculated that the charge to the individual consumer reached from 1/- to 1/6d. per unit. When we asked questions here we were told that that was a matter entirely for the board and it was not the function of the Minister.

Under Section 12 and another part of the Bill—and I hope that Deputy Collins will give me the benefit of his legal knowledge on this point—the board will have the right not only to acquire whatever property and lands it desires for its use, but it will be given the right to get possession within a period of not more than 90 days. Relate that to the Constitution of the State in which there is a section which gives us a guarantee as to the protection of our private rights and property. I am not so sure that this section of the Bill is not somewhat unconstitutional.

As a representative of the City of Dublin I have asked question after question here in an effort to stop the Electricity Supply Board acquiring streets of houses that would be very suitable for acquisition by the Dublin Corporation for conversion into flats so as to accommodate hundreds of families. I suggested that the time had come when the Electricity Supply Board should decentralise and have their headquarters at Cork or near the Shannon scheme—have headquarters down there and not grab, like an octopus, residences all over the city, thus excluding our citizens from needed housing accommodation. We were told that that was the function of the board and we could not interfere.

I suggest very seriously to Deputies that we ought to consider amending Section 12 and restricting it in accordance with suggestions that have been made. I have no illusions, as Deputy Lehane may have, when he says he will be satisfied if the Minister gives him an undertaking that this clause will operate only in a certain limited way. As a solicitor he ought to know that once an Act is passed containing a sort of omnibus arrangement for the Electricity Supply Board, any time you go to court you will be told "that is the Act of Parliament". We should see to it that the limitations we want to have are embodied in this Bill, and I suggest that this is one section that should be amended.

Deputy Lemass indicated that the Minister will get this Bill as quickly as he wishes because of the particular situation that exists. Deputy Larkin gave us quite a long statement on the rights of workers, the rights of employers, the restrictions on the workers' rights, and so forth. One amazing thing he suggests is that the worker's right to strike should never be restricted because the producer has the right to stop manufacturing the commodity which gives employment to the worker. Here we have a case where there is not a producer for gain or profit; it is a State undertaking. Nobody can tell me that there is a possibility of the Minister for Industry and Commerce saying: "From Monday to Thursday next we will close down the generation of electricity." Is it not obvious that this is going to be continuous employment and that the section is in line with the Act of 1942, more or less at the request of the clerical workers themselves? Surely, if they are going to have this clause in and a superannuation scheme included, together with this body to decide disputes, we ought to have some penal clause to protect the nation, not the employer, from being held to ransom by a certain number of workers in this organisation?

I am speaking quite frankly and I know what can be argued in relation to this matter. As time goes on this organisation will become an important factor in the life of the nation. Cities and rural areas will be electrified and people will become accustomed to electricity. Every farmer's house, it is hoped, will be wired and he will have implements installed on the farm to make life easier for him. Are we going to go ahead with an expenditure of £40,000,000 or £50,000,000 and be at the disposal of this body in which, relatively speaking, in relation to the amount of capital invested, the employment is not so high? Of course the service is good, but it must be remembered that we are setting up a conciliation body, and are arranging for superannuation for the workers, and why should we put them in the position that they can say: "We are not satisfied that we are getting a fair deal and unless we get what we want the nation will be plunged into darkness and there will be a cessation of work"?

I think the attitude adopted by Deputy Larkin is bringing things a bit too far. It reminds me of the confusion that exists sometimes in the ranks of his colleagues. They confused the word "requisition" with "acquire". One can acquire under a compulsory acquirement, if you like, but there is always a right of ownership for the person from whom things are acquired and there is compensation relating to it. If you requisition you take a thing as you would under war conditions, when a person's property is of no account.

I would like Deputies to study the implications of Section 12. I am very doubtful as to whether, at this stage, I shall vote for this Bill with that section in it. I hope in Committee we may find some way of satisfying the points of view that I and others have expressed.

With regard to the amendment which changes the rate of interest which the Electricity Supply Board can pay without the sanction of the Minister, not to be in excess of 4 per cent. as distinct from the Minister's sanction, I would like to know how that will work out. Deputy Lemass sought information on that matter. So far as I understand it, the board will be allowed to take this money so long as they do not pay in excess of 4 per cent. But supposing they do not pay 4 per cent.—suppose they decide to pay 2 per cent.—what follows? Does it mean that the calculations for superannuation, the imposition on the worker, will be higher in order to provide the pension? I think that is a very dangerous thing, because it might mean that too heavy a sum would be levied against the worker. I hope the House follows what I mean. I would like to see somebody in between. If there is to be any question as to whether it should be 2½ per cent., 3 per cent. of 4 per cent. there should be sombody in between capable of measuring the effect either on the board or on the persons who will be the ultimate beneficiaries.

As I have already said, the picture has completely changed. The original expenditure envisaged was something in the nature of £5,000,000. Under the present scheme, if and when it is ever finished, the expenditure involved will be something over £50,000,000. The consumer is at the mercy of the board for every single unit of electricity used, whether industrial or domestic. I understand from the speeches made by the previous Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy Lemass, that the Electricity Supply Board has power to open shops for the sale of electrical equipment and accessories and that it also has power to establish factories for the manufacture of commodities in connection with the installation of electricity. I sincerely hope that some day this House will be brought to a realisation that we have reached a position where we should have a Minister for Electricity to whom we can address our questions, as we do now to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance when we want information on drainage.

Mr. Lemass

There would be sparks flying, then.

Mr. S. Collins

The air would be electrified.

Mr. Briscoe

We must inevitably reach a stage where we shall regret that we have not got a Minister responsible to this House for all these items. If one goes through the records of the House I venture to gamble even money that one will find that 50 per cent. of the answers over the last 20 years in relation to questions dealing with the activities of the Electricity Supply Board, has been that "the Minister has no function whatever in this matter and it is entirely one for the Electricity Supply Board itself". That is why I ask the House to reconsider Section 12 of this Bill and to consider also some limitation of the powers of the board by bringing them under the control of this House.

Mr. P.D. Lehane

I can understand the necessity for implementing very quickly those sections of this Act dealing with arbitration. Section 12 deals with the compulsory acquisition of land and property and I think that section is being taken much too hastily. This Bill was introduced last August. It was not circulated until last Monday and it is being taken in the House to-day. I think the people who have land or property that may be acquired should have been given an opportunity of considering this Bill to discover how it affects their interests; and they should have had an opportunity of consulting their representatives before the Bill was taken in the House.

At the moment the Electricity Supply Board has very wide powers of acquisition. It can take over farms upon which members of the same family have been living for generations past. It can arbitrarily acquire lands and property by the mere formality of publishing the plans and making an order. It is unreasonable that the Electricity Supply Board should be empowered to acquire any property without at least making plans available and, if necessary, having an inquiry. If we give this authority to the Electricity Supply Board, we may find that the board will ultimately become a callous impersonal entity. It may be that we are giving powers now which will cause regret at some future date. It may be that the day may come when we shall have no right to interfere with anything the board does because we are giving them authority now to do practically anything they wish. In Wicklow the board were able to take over houses and property; even the dead were not safe because at least one graveyard was transferred. Some of the people objected very strenuously to acquisition. They were left in their houses until the waters flooded in and they had to be rescued by boat. I think there are three schemes envisaged for the River Lee. In that area the same families have been living for generations on the same holdings. They do not like the present powers enjoyed by the Electricity Supply Board, and I think they would strenuously oppose any extension of these powers even in the slightest degree.

I would appeal to the Minister to consider this section very, very carefully and to consider the danger of giving almost unlimited powers to any board over which neither this House nor the Minister exercises any control.

Captain Cowan

In general, I think that this Bill is acceptable to the House. It does clear up a number of matters that needed clarification for some time past. I am, however, somewhat surprised at the approach to the Bill by some of those who took part in the debate. I had some difficulty in knowing whether Deputy Briscoe was in favour of the Bill or against it. Obviously some other contributors to the debate had neither read the Bill properly nor understood it.

To some extent the Electicity Supply Board has been condemned. As a consumer of electricity I have always found the Electricity Supply Board both efficient and well run. During the emergency they did an excellent job of work. I am glad that they should be given power to open up retail shops. Deputy Briscoe objects to that. I hope that, if they have the power to manufacture, to which reference has been made, they will in the near future establish factories for the manufacture of electrical equipment.

I join with Deputy Larkin in asking the Minister to include a section in this Bill to cover the case of a small body of former corporation employees who, because they were not serving on the appointed day, have failed to qualify for pension rights. The insertion of an amendment to cover these would be a very welcome and a desirable addition to the Bill.

I wish to give my own views in regard to Section 7. I accept the Minister's statement that the section was not drafted by him but was, in fact, a section already drafted and apparently considered by his predecessor and taken over subsequently by him.

Apart entirely from that, Section 7 contains a very dangerous principle. It contains the principle that one party to a dispute may be punished if that party takes strike action. As a general rule, strikes only occur when workers are up against what one might term a stone-wall mentality. If there is a correct appreciation of the claims of the workers, if they are met in a reasonable way, it is very seldom that workers are anxious to strike because the great majority of workers are people with responsibilities and with families to look after. Such workers are not anxious to strike at all but they are generally driven to strike action by the mentality of employers or by the mentality of the people with whom they are in negotiation in regard to the matters in dispute. I take it that if employees of the Electricity Supply Board take the serious step of strike action, it will be because of some stupid mentality on the part of the board or on the part of the particular people with whom they are in negotiation. If they are driven in the last resort to take strike action it does not seem to me fair that the workers should be penalised for asserting the right to strike —and the proposed penalty is a very serious one—whereas the incompetent stupid person driving the workers to strike will not be punished at all.

This section, as I say, contains a very dangerous and objectionable principle and I do not see there is any necessity for it at all. I do not know who drafted that section but I do say whoever drafted it originally had what I might describe as a Fascist mentality. Deputy Larkin has said very simply: "Why if we object to strike action, is it not said very clearly in the Bill that the workers cannot take strike action at all—put a penal clause in the Bill and deal with them by the machinery of the ordinary courts?" That would be the manly and the straight way to deal with them but that is not what is proposed in the Bill. There is a provision by which all service prior to the strike is forfeited. It is an extraordinary punishment. It is not only the period of the strike that is forfeited, but all service prior to the strike. If the tribunal, which it is proposed to establish, does its work well I think the dangers of a strike are very remote but it is an insulting challenge to the worker to say: "If you strike we are going to punish you, and punish you severely. You are going to lose all your service prior to the strike. You are going to lose the contributions you have made towards the pension fund." That is an insulting way to deal with a body of workers.

If these workers or their representatives make any approach to the board in regard to conditions of employment, they always have the threat hanging over their heads, that should they, in the long run, take strike action they will be punished in this way. I can see why it is undesirable that people engaged in what might be termed essential services would take strike action and I know that the general body of workers have no desire at all for strike action. If we look at it from that point of view, we shall find that a little common-sense in the relations between the board and the workers will result in a happy solution of all problems that may confront them but if you are going to hold this guillotine poised over the necks of the workers and they dare not assert their rights by the final weapon left in their hands, the weapon of strike action, I suggest that shows a want of confidence and a want of ordinary respect for the worker.

Deputy Lehane has said that he does not believe the Minister introduced that section because of the present dispute between the board and a section of the workers and the Minister assured him that he had not done that. I accept that but I agree with Deputy Briscoe that when we pass a section of the Bill into law it is not the intention of the Minister that counts but the wording of the section. If this section is passed into law, there is no guarantee that the present Minister's intentions in regard to it will have anything to do with its interpretation in the near future. That, I suggest, is not a correct approach to a section of this kind. The section is dangerous in principle; that is the only way in which the section can be considered and not by the intention of the Minister introducing it. I am perfectly certain that the Minister, in stating that he had no such intention as was suggested, was stating the truth. I would ask the Minister to reconsider Section 7 in the light of the objections that have been taken to that section in this House. If the Minister takes his courage in his hands and agrees to the elimination of the objectionable parts of that section there will be no danger whatever of any strike action taking place in the Electricity Supply Board in the future. If the representative of the board, the representative of the workers and the independent chairman—the board of arbitration that is envisaged here—can sit down to consider the matter in dispute freed from this threat over one section of the parties to the dispute I am perfectly certain that a happy solution will be achieved. I am perfectly certain that the workers themselves will be quite happy knowing that there is no portion of this particular Bill which imposes very serious punishments on them if they should dare to assert their rights to their final conclusion. With the exception of that section I think this is a good Bill, a Bill that was badly needed and I, for one, cannot agree with the viewpoint that was expressed by Deputy Briscoe or by Deputy P.D. Lehane in regard to the powers of the board. The Electricity Supply Board must have the very wide powers that are given them in this Bill and in the Act that this Bill is intended to amend. Those wide powers are absolutely vital and essential if the Electricity Supply Board is to be a success. In regard to the matter of capital expenditure I think the Minister was perfectly wise in confining the amount, £16,000,000, that he has mentioned to the amount that is asked for by the board at the moment if they do not want any more.

If they are not in the position to expend any more with advantage to the community, then I think it would be very unwise to give them that power at the moment. It is better in a general way for this House that when the board have taken steps to utilise the moneys made available for them the Minister should come back to this House and ask for the additional moneys. In that way there is some check to this House in regard to the Electricity Supply Board. I ask the Minister, in conclusion, to examine carefully Section 7 with a view to the elimination from it by general consent of the House of those parts of the section that I and quite a number of other Deputies consider objectionable.

Major de Valera

On a first perusal of this Bill I had thought that the scope of it was fairly narrow. In the course of the debate it has widened considerably beyond its apparent terms. In the course of that debate remarks were made about the constitution of the board and the functions of the Minister in that regard. If I were left to be ruler of order myself regarding it, I feel that I would rule it out, but, perhaps, as the matter has been dwelt upon by other speakers the Chair may permit me to make a few observations.

In this undertaking, whatever its history, you have a national undertaking comparable with the Post Office. The case of the Post Office is that of an organisation which grew out of the carrying of mails to be an organisation catering for communications generally so that now the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs is in fact Minister for Communications. All modern general means of message communication come within its scope—radio, postal service, telephones and telegraphs. He is in the position of controlling the organisation which controls communications but he is also in the position of answering for it, with the result that the public, through the Deputies of this House, can acquire information readily. The affairs of the Post Office are in every way public affairs and subject to question as such. Institutions and monopolies—State monopolies as they really are—such as the Electricity Supply Board and others which are developing in the offing grew up on the same lines under more modern conditions where the administrative personnel of the Civil Service began to feel that they had directive as well as executive and administrative functions. They began to feel, perhaps completely unconsciously,—I am talking about a machine—that they had the right to do things in a way that their predecessors, regarding themselves completely as servants of the public, did not believe they had the right and felt they were there merely to carry out the will of the public as expressed through the Ministry of the day. They felt this completely unconsciously, and I want to be very clear so as not to be taken as making any allegations about our excellent Civil Service. There is probably no better to be found in Europe at the moment and there is no service of a higher degree of integrity.

An Ceann Comhairle

Does the Deputy consider the employees of the Electricity Supply Board to be civil servants?

Major de Valera

I am coming to suggest that they should be in that position.

An Ceann Comhairle

Then, this eulogy did not apply to them?

Major de Valera

I am trying to show an analogy between the board and the Civil Service in certain respects. Why should they not be placed vis-à-vis this House and the securing of information in the position of the Civil Service? We have unconsciously developed the system here that a Minister sets up an organisation. It is, in fact, under the very close control of that Minister and of the Civil Service organisation, but on the other hand, technically it is a unit and difficulties can be avoided by the simple expedient of saying that the Minister is not responsible. The result is that information which Deputies seek to secure in this House is not as readily available as it is in the case of the Post Office. As this opportunity offers itself, I would like to ask the Minister whether it is not desirable in the first place in the case of such a body as the Electricity Supply Board to place the same onus on the Minister and to place the Minister in the same position vis-à-vis that body as he is in regarding his own Department and its functions so that he can answer questions directed to him by the Deputies of this House so as to deal with problems in the same way as they can deal with the problems of, say, the Post Office.

I am not suggesting introducing any technique or interfering with the Electricity Supply Board beyond that. It should create no difficulty because it is an organisation, an efficient public organisation, that has the information available. All that is necessary is that the Minister's organisation should have the information necessary for answering questions in the same way as he would have upon any subdivision of his Department. It should not be the case, as I understand it has been in the past in this House, that the Minister is able to answer that he has no direct functions in that regard and in that way evade giving the information sought. That is the first comment I would like to make.

Regarding the question of reorganisation machinery I did not quite see it arises on this Bill, I must confess. I prefaced my remarks by saying that I would be wide of the mark. Though I am against multiplying Ministerial offices, where the functions of the Minister for Industry and Commerce are becoming so complex in modern times the suggestion made by another Deputy might be considered. I am not expressing myself as being in favour of it or against it at the moment.

Under the present arrangement, an arrangement which I have tacitly suggested in my remarks, what should be the relation of the board to the Minister? This has a direct bearing upon a number of things which were said here by Deputy Larkin, in particular those relating to the technical nature of the board. I take it that the Government, and in particular the Minister, is the proper authority to direct general policy regarding such matters as power production and the affording of facilities for electrical power to consumers, whether they be private or industrial, and so forth. The proper authority who will have all the information at its disposal, the authority which within itself is a body representative of all facets of the community, is the Government and the immediate authority under that Government is the Minister concerned. If that be the position, where are we vis-à-vis Deputy Larkin's suggestion that the board is too technical? They have all the information; they have all the power; they have, in addition, the general executive power of the State in their hands; they have immediate control and immediate access to this House with a prior claim in respect of time. No other body is better placed to dictate and expedite policy and the suggestion that such power should be delegated to a board of this nature is to my mind a retrograde step. It is a retrograde step because the delegation of general powers of that nature to a board with limited functions must necessarily result in lopsided action. It is wrong also because that board, having one particular function, cannot see the totality of the picture. It is further wrong in that if you adopt a policy of that nature in distributing out functions at the expense of the proper functions of the Government you will soon emasculate the Government and it will have no functions left. It has functions, responsibilities and facilities which no other body or group in the State can have; that is so, whether it is a case of the Post Office or of the Electricity Supply Board or of any other body which has limited and to a large extent executive functions—executive in the case of the Electricity Supply Board because it has to get a job of work done.

I thus consider it to be the duty of the board to be an advisory staff in technical matters to the Minister. The Minister, with other sources of information available, cross checks in his Department and access to his colleagues with regard to the repercussions on the rest of the community, will have ample opportunity of getting a general picture. The board's information and the useful work the board can do are confined to technical advice very closely and definitely related to the objectives of the board, namely, the supply of electric power. The board will have administrative functions as well and more so as time goes on and until it reaches the peak of its development, whenever that will be, but even so, I would join issue with Deputy Larkin and say that of its nature it must be largely a technical board because only the board can examine and assess the mass of information collected from its own engineers and technical people, including technical people to deal with purchases of materials and engineering construction work. The members of the board must be technical in order to assess the value of the information they accumulate, to make firm recommendations to the Minister, to understand the potentialities of any particular problem and the difficulties and physical limitations of its solution. Put it this way: it has been the case in any work, whether it be the construction of a factory of a dam, or the organisation of a factory for the production of technical goods, that you will usually find in the general planning of how it is to be run, and even on the business end, engineers and technical men and their knowledge comes into play. When you are handling something which is of its nature essentially technical, in the ordinary day-to-day administration of the affairs of the board, the technical factor will be dominant and the general factor, which seems most to appeal to Deputy Larkin, comes second as far as the board is concerned and it should be more directly referred to the Minister.

As I visualise the situation, I think it highly desirable that the board should be a technical board and that right through the organisation of that undertaking, which of its nature is almost completely technical, the technical personnel must be the directing force. The Minister, with his powers, representing as he does the public in general and knowing the other factors that come into the picture, is the counter-balance, the proper person to be responsible in the sense visualised by Deputy Larkin. It is the Minister, for instance, who should have to deal with problems in the nature of disputes. The board should be primarily concerned with pressing ahead with plans for development, the efficient production of power and distribution to the consumer and, of course, the incidental administration concerned with that. If major problems arise, then the board will naturally have its view. If there is a counter public view, a labour view, that particular labour problem is a matter for the Minister by right in another regard. Then, it is in my opinion wrong that such an important problem should be merely passed back to the board and the responsibility evaded by the Minister. If that is involved in the Deputy's suggestion, that would be wrong. For these reasons I join issue with him upon it.

After all, what is this board? Deputy Larkin, Deputy Cowan and these people go on talking about this board as if it were a private board, what certain people like to call a capitalist employer, somebody exploiting the worker. What is this board? The Electricity Supply Board is a board of directors appointed by the Government, or, let us say, they are appointed by this House acting on behalf of the people, through legislation providing a concern for the benefit of the people. The employers in this case are the people. The sooner we get down to see what the real issue is the better. By all means, let us have fair play; let us have the worker get a fair crack of the whip. I would go a little bit further and say that where leeway has to be given, let it be at the top by the people who have big incomes, if there are any such in the country. Let the "give" be there first. I grant you all that. But the reality of the situation in dealing with such a board as the Electricity Supply Board is that the real employers are the people, including the workers themselves. Therefore, it is futile to talk about the board or any other such body as if it were an oppressive employer. You have to get it into perspective. But really it is the Government acting for the people who are the employers. For that reason, I suggest that when tackling these problems they must be tackled soberly and quietly. We must understand in connection with such disputes that the payment both of capital and ordinary incidental outlay in the case of this board, if it does not come from collections from the consumer or profits on ordinary working, which are in the nature of collections from the consumer, comes from the pockets of the ordinary people. These are all problems that have to be balanced, but they are problems which can only be rationally balanced by this House with the advice of the Government which is able to give us all the information.

I merely mention this point in passing just to offset slightly what seems to be the instinctive attitude of certain Deputies like Deputy Cowan and to bring into clear relief that my conception of this organisation is that it is virtually a State Department, a State Department in which in the present set-up there is a gap which prevents us getting the same clear view in this House that we have of the Post Office where the State did it frankly without any apparent gap. I suggest in the interests of efficiency that we should realise the true situation, that the board is put in the position of making such information available to the Minister and so can make itself, shall I say, amenable to affording information as other Departments are but, its set-up should be preponderantly technical; right through its framework the technical angle must take precedence. The engineers, the skilled technical men, should, in my opinion, take precedence over the mere administrative angle in that Department. As for the general social question, it is for the State to hold the scales in the way I have indicated. So much for the point about a technical board.

The question of power production was also touched upon by certain Deputies. I quite agree in principle with Deputy Larkin that if you can coordinate such a thing as a drainage programme with a power programme so much the better. But the trouble, or may be the blessing, is that when dealing with things like power production you are up against definite physical laws and you cannot talk round them. I immediately ask myself when people talk about drainage: is there not very often fairly low land that needs draining and even some draining that may mean pumping? If such very low land needs draining and you are trying to get the water off, where do you stand with regard to getting the head necessary for power?

If it can be done, by all means let it be done, but I have doubts about the augmentation of our water power resources by such a scheme. In certain localities, perhaps yes. If in any way such a drainage scheme can be designed to increase the volume of water in the main power rivers, for instance, the drainage of an area increasing the volume of water going into the Shannon, subject to what the engineers would have to say, generally that might appear to be a desirable thing. Personally, however, I have doubts as to real contribution that can be gained from that source.

Secondly, we have been talking about turf. The big advantage about a water hydro-electric power scheme is that you have a fair expectation of continuing power, whereas when you develop your bogs you are likely to use up the fuel supply at a greater rate than it can be replaced and to that extent you are impoverishing yourselves for the future. Therefore, in answer to Deputy Lehane, I think it was, one has to work it on the hard physical basis of how much is actually available for burning and what is the economic or useful rate to burn it. I am merely giving the other side of the problems with a view to stressing again the fact that you cannot dispose of things of that nature my merely flicking your hand.

I move the adjournment of the debate.

Debate adjourned until to-morrow.

Dáil Éireann debate - Wednesday, 9 Mar 1949