I take it what the Parliamentary Secretary has just said means that the Milne Report is completely discarded. As a matter of historical interest, I would be glad if the Parliamentary Secretary will tell us if a single recommendation made by Sir James Milne, the greatest transport expert in the world, has, in fact, been acted upon. Sir James Milne thought this company could be put on a paying basis. He made a number of recommendations directed towards securing that result. It is true his estimate was based upon various assumptions which were not realised, but he stressed that if the reorganisation of the company was effected, and a capital expenditure of £10,000,000 on re-equipment was made in a period of five years, at the end of that time it would pay its way.
No capital expenditure at all has been effected. We went through the formality of passing a Bill through the Oireachtas authorising the Minister for Finance to give his guarantee in respect of money raised by this board for capital purposes to a limit of £7,000,000. The board have not raised 1d. The Parliamentary Secretary, as I understood his remarks of a few minutes ago, is now making a virtue out of the board's failure to begin the reorganisation of the company, or the re-equipment of its railway undertaking.
Is there any hope at all for this undertaking, unless the capital outlay which was considered necessary by Sir James Milne, and which was, roughly, the equivalent of that considered necessary by the previous board and its chairman, is not proceeded with? If there is to be no such reorganisation as was then contemplated, the only hope of avoiding recurring annual losses is a substantial reduction in expenditure on the railway undertaking. Has there been any reduction in expenditure?
The Minister for Industry and Commerce, when introducing the Transport Bill, stated that he anticipated the new board would find many ways of achieving economy. Have they found one way of achieving economy? Is it not reasonable for us to ask, when we are presented with a Bill for practically £1,000,000 to make good losses by the board during the past year, if the Parliamentary Secretary will name one single item of cost in the accounts of that company in respect of which any economy has been made or any economy has been attempted?
The Dáil was asked to pass the Bill on the assurance of the Minister that many ways of achieving economies were available to the board and they would find them. Have they done so? Perhaps they have, and I am led to the consideration of that possibility by the fact that when the Minister was presenting the Bill he told us that shortly after he became a Minister the members of the old board, led by Mr. Reynolds, came to him and asked his permission to increase rail and road charges, stating that if they did not get his permission to increase the charges the only possible way of balancing their accounts was to carry out drastic and uneconomic curtailments of expenditure.
The Minister rolled off his tongue, with considerable pleasure, the proposals which the board had stated would be necessary if the accounts were to be balanced and if the permission to increase charges was not given. Surely, Deputies here can well remember them? We were told 2,500 men were to be dismissed by reason of reductions in maintenance and that branch lines were to be closed and, as well as that, fares were to be increased. The Minister represented these as the proposals of the board and he used them to make that board unpopular, both with the railway workers who were threatened with dismissal and the people in areas in the country which had been promised the reopening of closed branch lines.
Has the Minister been converted to the proposals which, he alleges, were made to him by the old board in March, 1948? I asked a Parliamentary Question this week as to the number of people now employed in railway maintenance. Remember that in March, 1948, one of the proposals under consideration by the old board, according to the Minister, was the dismissal of 2,500 men engaged in railway maintenance. I do not know what number was then engaged in railway maintenance, but by 1st January, 1949, the total number employed on permanent way maintenance had gone down to 2,064. It would have been difficult to dismiss 2,500 men from the railway maintenance staff if there were not that number on it, so presumably when discussions were proceeding in March, 1948, the number was larger than the number proposed to be dismissed, or at least equal to it. By 1st January, 1949, the staff was 2,064 and on 4th March, this year, it had gone down further—it went down to 1,910.
What about the closed branch lines? Not one has been reopened. The rails must be fairly rusty by this; the signalling equipment must be difficult to operate; the crows are nesting in the stations and in the warehouses. They have been closed for a fair time now. There must be some Deputies on the benches opposite who remember their promises to reopen them; there must be some Deputies who remember how in 1948 they denounced the old company because they had closed the branch lines. Is it not about time that at least one of them was reopened, even as a gesture? Despite the fact that we got this reduction in the number of workers employed on permanent way maintenance, and not a single branch line was reopened, we still got the increase in fares, the increase that the old board was refused in 1948.
The Parliamentary Secretary said that he got a legacy of a loss of £1,000,000 a year from the old board. That loss was realised in 1948 because the Minister for Industry and Commerce refused the board permission to increase the fares. If he had given them, in March, 1948, permission to increase the fares by one half the extent they have increased since, there would have been no loss of £1,000,000 in 1948. And fares are going to be increased still further. This process of shoving up the cost of transport has not stopped.
We have, therefore, this position to reckon with, that Sir James Milne was employed at considerable expense to produce a report which was considerably publicised but not a single recommendation made by him has been accepted. We have the position also that, of the economies which the Minister for Industry and Commerce told us in introducing the Transport Bill it would achieve, the Parliamentary Secretary cannot mention a single one. He did not point to one single item of cost which has gone down since that date; and of the capital expenditure which was then deemed necessary to put the company in the position in which it could pay its way in the future, not a penny has been effected. Of the branch lines which were closed, not a single yard, much less a mile, has been reopened. Despite all that, we have this mounting cost of transport services and this increase in rates from 50 per cent. in some cases down to one-sixth in others. I think that when the Dáil is asked to vote this substantial sum to meet these losses, we should get from the Parliamentary Secretary not merely a series of figures telling us how the losses mounted up, but some explanation of the failure of the famous transport plan, fathered by Sir James Milne and foster-fathered by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. I take it that if one were to search the waste paper baskets in Kildare Street, one might find an occasional copy of Sir James Milne's report lying round but nowhere else.
Let us remember that this loss of £1,000,000 in 1950 does not reveal the whole picture because the Minister for Industry and Commerce came to the Dáil at the end of 1949 and asked for a Supplementary Estimate of £4,000,000. He was concerned to represent it as the loss achieved by Córas Iompair Éireann up to that date but it was nothing of the kind. It was mainly a subsidy for the new board in its first year. We even paid their motor taxation in advance last year. We went through the solemn farce of asking the taxpayers to cough up £150,000 to give to Córas Iompair Éireann to give back to the Exchequer in the form of motor taxation. Other of the charges which the company would have had to bear in 1950 were paid in advance out of Government subsidy in 1949. Then there was £2,500,000 provided for capital expenditure. What it went for we do not quite know. I assume that we shall see at some stage the accounts of the new board for the first year— I mean the financial accounts. Normally, we would have the finance accounts of Córas Iompair Éireann in our hands by this. The new board is not so expeditious in publishing the financial results of its operations as the old board was. That is understandable. Is it possible to get from the Parliamentary Secretary a more accurate account of the actual deficiency in revenue last year over expenditure, leaving out of account the subsidies slipped surreptitiously to the new board before it was set up? Is it possible to get an estimate of the revenue deficiency this year?
We have no option but to vote this money. The money has been lost and somebody has to pay it. Are we going to have a similar or a bigger loss this year and if not, why? Is there any plan in any Government Department or with any member of the board, for effecting changes in the company's organisation or methods of working which will avoid similar losses in future? Are there any Deputies in this House who would not, before they spent £10 of their own money in financing their own business, ask many questions about it? If that is so, should they not ask something before spending £1,000,000 of their neighbour's money?
I am convinced that the new board, whatever their intentions may have been when they were first appointed, are not being permitted to do even the limited things they might decide upon, that they have been told that their job is to keep the organisation going by whatever patchwork arrangement they can devise, so long as it does not necessitate any call upon the capital resources which were allegedly put at their disposal by the Transport Act of 1950. Surely, the people of this country are entitled to get from the nationalised transport organisation something more than the patchwork arrangement that exists there now? The old board were criticised because they conceived it their duty to present the country with a national transport organisation which would tend towards its economic development, which would be conducive to prosperity and of which the people would be proud, when the reorganisation work was completed. They never got a chance of starting upon that programme, but because they sketched out such a programme and because it involved special capital expenditure for some years ahead, they were held up to derision by the Minister for Industry and Commerce as being hare-brained and reckless. I do not know what idea the members of the Government have as to the elements of a sensible transport plan. If they have not got one of their own and if they are not prepared to adopt that which was put forward by the old board, will they not adopt the plan prepared by the expert whom they employed to give them a plan? Do something. Do not let this national organisation run to seed as it is going. It is necessary, as I said, to vote this £1,000,000 but I think the Dáil ought to refuse to vote it unless we get from the Government some indication of what they are going to do to avoid a bill of this size coming back year after year.
