In the course of his speech this evening, Deputy McGrath appealed to the Minister to get back to the system whereby he made appointments as sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses. I hope the Minister will set his face against any attempt to make the filling of these appointments a monopoly of the Minister's. Everybody knows perfectly well when there is a vacancy for a post as sub-postmaster or sub-postmistress Ministers are plagued with representations not merely from Deputies from one Party but from Deputies from all Parties and the local branches of the political Parties all go into action on behalf of their respective fancies. They create a political ferment by getting all the local branches of the local political organisations pulling and tugging with the aid of local celebrities to get each of the Deputies who represent the constituency to pull and tug at the Minister in the hope that by the time they have all finished somebody will be dragged out and crowned as the underpaid sub-postmaster of some place.
That is a thoroughly disreputable method of appointing people to the public service. It is thoroughly disreputable from every standpoint and a wise Minister who realises that he has nothing to gain politically by appointing one pal and disappointing the other 19—and the one pal would probably become ungrateful when he sees the scale of pay—will without hesitation give that job over to somebody who will approach the problem from the standpoint of finding the best man or woman there is for the job, who will take into consideration perhaps service in the national movement or service in the National Army but at all events they will be people who will approach it not from the point of view of doing what the local political organisation wants done but from the point of view of appointing a person who will render the most efficient service to the Post Office Department.
I hope the Minister will stand firm against any proposal to get back into his hands this scheme of distributing political jobs to political supporters, who regard Ministers as the fountainhead from which all privilege or place and all preferment necessarily descend. I hope the Minister will leave this work in the hands of the committee which was appointed to do this job. It was one of the most beneficial developments in the matter of eliminating patronage in recent years. My only comment is that I would like to see it continued and extended to other part-time posts of one kind or another, to full-time posts of one kind or another which are still under ministerial patronage, and to that whole job of making these appointments in this manner. It would be better if responsibility in this connection was taken away from the Minister and given to a group of impartial people who would look at the problem from the point of view of getting the best people to serve the State rather than have this horse-trading which goes on at present in the way of who has got the best pull with the Minister and as to the person to whom the Minister is likely to give the job in response to somebody being able to exercise the pull more efficaciously than somebody else. In any case, if there is any proposal to go back to the old system I hope there will be men and women in this House public-spirited and public-minded enough to resist any attempt to get back to that method of Tammany Hall, which is the only way by which one can describe the horse-trading that is supposed to be making appointments to the public service in so far as sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses were concerned.
The Minister has given us a very lengthy review of the activities of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. There is much meat in the speech he made and in the documents which he circulated. Quite properly a good deal of the speech is given over to the question of post office buildings and I am glad to see the Minister felt it desirable to refer in his speech to the necessity for the provision of better post office buildings than those which are available to-day. I want to make some comment on this Estimate with a view to enlisting—and I hope it will not be difficult—the co-operation of the Minister to find a solution to the problems to which I propose to advert.
One of these problems is the question of post office buildings. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the inadequacy and insufficiency of the accommodation provided by the Post Office Department for the transaction of public business to-day. Probably the worst public buildings in the State from the standpoint of inadequate accommodation are those which are described as post offices throughout the State. Many of those buildings, of course, were built away back in the opening years of this century, some probably towards the end of the last century. They were built before the Old Age Pensions Act came into operation in 1908, built before the National Health Insurance Act came into operation, which compelled them to sell national health insurance stamps; built before the Unemployment Insurance Act came into operation, which also compelled them to sell stamps; built before the Widows' and Orphans' Pensions Act; built before the Children's Allowances Act, built before rationing came into operation; built before wireless licences came into operation. They were built when a whole lot of those transactions which are now railroaded through the Post Office were unknown so far as post office business was concerned. They were built, too, when the Post Office was not the only carrier of parcels in the country, built when the letter and postcard traffic was substantially less than it is to-day, built when telephone traffic was in its infancy and when telegraph traffic was struggling to see the light, and, in fact, built in many cases before the Post Office operated the entire telephone service which, up to 1911, was operated in part by the old National Telephone Company.
Those are the kind of buildings which we have to-day serving as post offices for the enormously expanded public service which the post office operates to-day. Is there any wonder that the accommodation is grossly inadequate, grossly inadequate from the standpoint of efficiency, of providing accommodation for the staff and inadequate, too, from the point of view of affording adequate accommodation for the public who use the public counters of the offices. It is nothing unusual—I am sure the Minister has seen it both as a Minister and as a Deputy—to see people herded together around the public counter. There is no order, no system. There is a miserable little counter and on the other side of the counter a few clerks trying to operate in the very limited space available and trying to satisfy irate members of the public on the other side who cannot understand why the State cannot provide a better system of accommodation than that which is provided for the local post offices.
I hope it is not necessary to impress this on the Minister and I feel sure that it is not from discussions I had with him on the subject. The whole position we have to-day is the legacy of years and years of neglect. I do not think making the Board of Works responsible for the provision of post office buildings is the happiest solution of that problem. I agree a case can be made for it in certain respects but when you look at the existing post office buildings and realise how inadequate they are and remember the Board of Works has been responsible for constructing or maintaining them for the past 30 years, it is permissible if one loses faith in the system by which the Board of Works is the sole authority for erecting, renovating and reconstructing post office buildings throughout the country. But if we must use the Board of Works for some time to come pending the examination and perhaps adoption of another and better system of providing decent post offices, then at least the Post Office ought to be able to get attention from the Board of Works. My experience of the Board of Works was that it operated on the principle that the crying child gets the most attention. Anybody who can screech loud enough will get the best attention from the Board of Works. If you are decent and patient and just wait for the circulation of files, your case is hopeless. The Board of Works have the most fantastic contempt for files.
The word "urgency" is unknown in the Board of Works from the point of view of trying to get work done quickly. One can only get work done quickly by that office by getting some kind of Cabinet arrangement which gives the Post Office, in urgent need of proper public buildings, some lien or some right to operate on some particular section of the Board of Works in order to get it to provide the many decent post office buildings required to-day.
The Minister gave us a long list of buildings in his speech in connection with which something was being done. He gave us a list of other buildings in connection with which it is hoped to get something done. If the Minister would reveal his innermost thoughts on this question of public buildings he would be compelled to confess that even in his own experience of dealing with the Board of Works over the past 12 months it has not been possible to get that body to move with the speed and acceleration the situation so urgently demands.
I would urge upon the Minister that he should by means of ministerial or Cabinet action get something effective done in the way of providing additional accommodation in post office buildings throughout the country. The problem is becoming one of extreme urgency because of the deterioration in the standard of accommodation and because of the many additional transactions which are being unloaded on to post office staffs as being the best agency in the country for the transaction of certain business and the operation of national services, such as our wireless service and the newly coordinated code of social security.
In these days when the operation of an efficient telephone service has so much to commend it and when there is unanimous recognition of the necessity for efficiency at a high level on such a technical question as telephone operation, I am glad that the Minister devoted some time in his speech to an exposition of what the telephone service is, how it is costed, how many subscribers it has and how its volume of business continues to mount. If we are to have an efficient telephone system we must have as a prerequisite a satisfactory telephone staff. In that connection I want to call the Minister's attention to two aspects of the staffing problem, again in the belief which, I think, is well founded on my part, that the Minister will make a serious effort to find a solution to the problem of which I complain.
I would appeal to the Minister to do something quickly in relation to the recruitment, appointment and retention of night telephonists. At the present time that class is recruited as a temporary class. Having recruited a big batch of night telephonists in one year the Department may, as the Miniister knows, lose more by resignations in that same year than the number that was recruited. That is a phenomenon that good administration ought to probe. If it is probed it will be found that the reason why so many resign is because they are dissatisfied with their conditions, their wages, accommodation and hours of attendance. At present they are required to work six nights per week the whole year round. I believe an enormous improvement could be effected in their conditions, leading to a substantial measure of contentment in the class as a whole, if the Minister would accept the principle of giving them two nights off per week and permitting them to adjust their hours of attendance over the other five nights.
These matters have already been brought to the Minister's attention and, when he is replying, I hope he will be able to tell us that he proposes to apply a remedy at an early date which will, I believe, do much to retain in the service of the Post Office those night telephonists on whom the Post Office spends a substantial sum of money in training so that their services will not be lost because the staff are fed-up with the conditions under which they are required to work. I am certain that the Minister would not permit such conditions to occur in any private firm with which he might be connected. Mass resignations go on year after year and the Post Office has taken no effective steps to get down to an examination of the cause and to find a remedy. Public money is wasted on the training of these telephonists and at the end of their three months' training they leave because they do not find the conditions of work acceptable. These night telephonists should be recruited by open competitive examination. Their appointment should be permanent. Some effort should be made to improve their attendances. If the Minister will attempt a solution along these lines, as I hope he will, I venture to say he will find a substantial improvement in the efficiency of that section of the service.
A good deal of attention is being given to-day by public health authorities and by the Press generally towards the promotion of cleanliness and to exposing the danger of dirt. I think it is appropriate to call the Minister's attention in that connection to the rather primitive conditions that exist for the cleaning of mail bags. An enormous number of mail bags are used each year. Very often the bags are too heavy to carry and they are dragged along the ground from the post office to the van and vice versa. Clearly it is quite impossible to keep the bags clean for any length of time. The only solution is to clean the bags as frequently as possible so as to keep the dirt down to a minimum.
The present method adopted by the Post Office is to send the mail bags to some prison where they get some kind of beating. One can imagine the pride of craft a prisoner takes in beating a mail bag while he reflects on the number of years he will have to spend in jail. When they have been beaten by the prisoners they are returned to the Post Office as "clean bags". One would almost think they were being returned, judging from that description, from some well-known cleaning agency in the City of Dublin. There is often very little difference in the condition of the bags when they come back from the prison according to the people who have to handle them. I believe there is one firm to which the bags are occasionally sent. I do not know whether or not it regards the Post Office order as up to expectations, but now and again it does clean post office mail bags. It is acknowledged that it cannot do all the cleaning that the Post Office requires, even if it had the equipment or enthusiasm for the work.
The Post Office is unique in a number of respects. It is unique in that it is the only Post Office in Europe which has no machinery at its disposal for cleaning mail bags. Whatever changes have taken place in the last 30 years, nobody succeeded in inducing the Post Office to change their notion that it should not have cleaning apparatus for mail bags. Many devices and gadgets have become available to mankind in the last 30 years, but the Post Office remains impervious, and have not attempted to equip themselves with such apparatus.
Whatever our financial position is, the Post Office is not so hard up that it could not afford to buy a few bag-cleaning outfits which would be installed at various centres, where dirty bags could be cleaned and put into circulation again. That is so elementary that one would imagine it would have been in operation long ago. If the Minister makes inquiries, he will find that this country is unique in that it has no cleaning apparatus for mail bags. If one raises the question, one is told about the cost. Every other Administration regards such apparatus as essential. I do not think that things here are so perfect from a hygienic standpoint that we can afford to do without apparatus that is regarded as essential in every post office in Europe and, I am sure, in places outside Europe.
I commend that suggestion to the Minister for examination in the hope that he will see the value of getting proper apparatus for cleaning mail bags instead of committing them to prisoners and asking them to beat the dirt and germs out of them and, perhaps, to throw some disinfectant on them. In 1952, common sense dictates that we ought to invest in such apparatus. It is scandalous that our methods of cleaning mail bags are as bad as they are.
I notice in the Minister's speech a reference to the fact that a departmental committee has been set up to inquire as to what improvements or modifications can be usefully effected in postmen's uniforms. I do not know what sartorial specialists are in the Post Office. They are quite unknown to me. There are many people who could produce a better design of uniform for postmen than the present one and who know that there are better cloths on the market than the cloth at present used. If postmen have to wear uniform they should have some say in the design. They should not be asked to appear in public in a design prescribed by people who have never worn uniform and who certainly never wore postmen's uniform. I do not know where this departmental committee came from. I do not know how it is constituted. I do not know what qualifications the members have for designing a uniform. I do not know what they know about the value of protective clothing, waterproof capes, coats, etc. I suggest to the Minister that, as a matter of ordinary prudence and good sense, if this committee is to deal with the question of designing uniform and with the quality of the cloth used, he should invite the co-operation of those who represent postmen in the work of this committee in the hope that, with the practical experience of those who know the problem and the theoretical views of those who have no practical knowledge of it, it may be possible to evolve a uniform more suited to postmen, more suited to conditions in this country than the present type, and that is made of better cloth than is at present used.
It seems to me that the cloth that is used suffers from the basic defect that if there is any dust near a postman it it only a matter of minutes until the uniform picks it up. The dust shows on the uniform in the same way as dust shows on the hedgerows when motor cars pass by. My complaint is that the cloth is too prone to pick up dust because it is too soft. An effort should be made to find a cloth which will attract less dust. The co-operation of those who know a good deal about this problem and who are anxious to assist in this matter should be invited.
The Minister referred to the St. Andrew's St. exchange. I gather from what he said that portion of it will be open this summer. This is July and I suppose normally summer would be regarded as ending in September. Do I take it that the exchange, or part of it, will be opened and staffed, say, by September? I would ask the Minister to tell us about that when he is replying.
Then there is the question of the Pearse Street office. As Deputy Alfred Byrne described it, the Pearse Street building is a ramshackle one. Originally, it was a distillery, then for a long time a disused distillery, then a gaunt rookery and finally it blossomed out as a central sorting and postmen's office. Since 1922 it has functioned in that capacity. If ever money was misspent, it was surely misspent in trying to hold the Pearse Street office together. I do not know what the situation is at the moment. The roof had two rather unusual moods. In the winter-time the rain would percolate through the roof on to the letters and one had to move about and sort the letters where there was no rain.
