The Minister for Local Government to-day complained of artificial heat that was engendered in this debate and, whipping himself into periodic bursts of passion, he endeavours to justify this obnoxious effort, on the plea of rates versus Exchequer. He tries to justify it on the basis that he was the hero that stood in the gap and prevented any of the moneys in the Road Fund drifting to some other Exchequer purpose. I pressed the Minister for certain information—information which I suggest to the House is readily available and should be available to aid this discussion. The Minister purports in this White Paper to get somewhere between £800,000 and £900,000 which he says is going to be entirely designated for road improvement. How much of it is going to be obtained by way of book transfers from one Department to another? How much of it is, in fact, going to be indirectly filched from the general taxation? I pressed the Minister and, with his usual surliness and display of ill-temper, he refused to come down to practical reality.
Is the position going to be that between the Electricity Supply Board, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, the State transport, Army transport and other transport such as Board na Móna, practically £500,000 or £600,000 of this money will be raised by one Department paying it to another? We have to analyse that in the light of the fact that the Minister is going to ask the hackneymen and taximen to carry a burden of £54,000, and no matter how he may talk about the 5/- tractors or about "this number of smackers", to use his own expression, there is no gainsaying the fact that the tractor owners are being asked in this White Paper to contribute £31,000 more to the Exchequer this year. Let agriculturists twist it any way they like, let them talk about the 5/- tractor, it does not detract for one moment from the fact that an indirect tax of £31,000 is being placed on the backs of the farmers—at a time when you have a Government exhorting them to increase production.
Deputy Flanagan, from Mayo, came into the House this evening to be rational and reasonable in one aspect of the case—because I suspect he is being pinched pretty hard by the Mayo Hackneymen and Taximen's Association. I made a plea yesterday in all sincerity to the Minister for deliberate and constructive reconsideration of the problem where these people are concerned.
The Minister to-day made some naïve suggestion capable of conception only in the peculiar intellect of the Minister himself, that the hackneymen could have expected, when things came back to normal, that their tax would go up. If the Minister is trying to make the case that things are normal to-day for the hackneymen and the taximen, I think he might as well be holding a conversation with the mythical man in the moon. The position is that the genuine taximan to-day is competing, at a time of increased cost of cars, increased cost of repairs and of tyres, increased cost of petrol and increased wages, against an ever-increasing supply of private cars and an ever-increasing abuse of private owners of their privilege. I am not afraid to say on the floor of this House that, to my own knowledge, people not having hackney licences at all are using their cars in parts of rural Ireland to deprive hackneymen of what might be legitimate fares. That is what the present Minister is trying to suggest to us is a position of normality for the hackneyman or the taximan.
I want the Minister to advert to this fact, that a large number of these hackneymen and a large number of these taximen of recent years have been granted their plates and their hackney licences by virtue of a priority they were given for service rendered to this country during the emergency. I want to impress on the Minister the urgency of the reconsideration of the case where the hackneymen and the taximen are concerned. The genuine hackneyman and the genuine taximan are facing an economic problem for which, with this impost, there will not be any solution. Mind you, in this particular type of effort by the Government, it is the weak man without considerable financial resources, the man working his own cab, who will be most likely to fall first. The wealthy companies that are running fleet cab services or fleet taxi services have a chance of surviving because, with the gradual elimination of competition, they will be in the position to corner what business may be left and charge what fares may commend themselves to them at any time.
I am genuinely anxious in this particular matter to impress upon the Minister the fact that he may be in a most unjust and unfair way eliminating the living of a lot of small people in this country who deserve better from the State than this will give them. I am not going to elaborate much further on that problem. I made a direct and determined assault on the Minister last night for the savagery of this particular proposal. I think there is no basis of truth nor is there any scintilla of wit associated with an argument that suggests that there is in that limited section of the community a back broad enough to carry an impost of £54,000 increase on it.
I would like to hear later in the course of this debate Deputy Martin Corry justify the impost of £31,000 on the farming community envisaged in this White Paper as the excess to be drawn off on tractors and tractor users, to say nothing of the odd few pounds— or to be more euphemistic and to use the Minister's own expression "the odd few ‘smackers'" that will be dragged off the farmers by way of increased price for driving licences.
This problem and the problem of the roads is a big one: This solution and that solution have been suggested, but one fact has emerged in the course of this discussion upon which we are all ad idem and that is that the excessively heavy trucks of this country are undoubtedly doing immense damage to the roads. Is the solution to that problem the way the Government is going? Is it the solution to endeavour to crush out that type of traffic by prohibitive taxation? Would it not be more manly and, indeed, a more honourable thing for the Government to face up to the responsibility of deciding what was the maximum laden weight the roads of this country could carry and by use of the clause that is in the transport legislation fix an upper limit on weights of lorries that can ply on the roads?
What is the situation? We have heard much of "X" type of lorry. The fact remains that various State institutions or subsidiary State companies are the greatest transgressors where the question of heavy lorries are concerned. Very heavy equipment is being used by the Department of Agriculture and by the Electricity Supply Board. A considerable fleet of very heavy trucks is being used by Córas Iompair Éireann and the Electricity Supply Board are carrying immense loads on low trailers.
It seems farcical to me, as a rational being, if we are discussing road and road maintenance, that the Government would not take some cognisance of the damage that vehicles immediately under its own control are doing to the roadways. Would it not be a far more effective solution if the Government, instead of trying to crush out by excessive taxation, took the honourable line and fixed an upper limit? What will happen so far as heavy transport is concerned when these prohibitive taxes are enforced? Again, it will be the man of limited resources or the one-truck trailer owner who will go to the wall first.
I heard much criticism in this House of Córas Iompair Éireann, but I venture to make this prognostication, that, if any Government in this country faced up to the problem of fixing an upper limit on heavy transport, there would have to be a diversion of heavy traffic to the railways. With a reasonable diversion of that traffic to the railway there would be an immense step forward towards making the railway system of this country an economic unit.
The number of people employed on the very heavy type of trucks operated either by Córas Iompair Éireann, the Electricity Supply Board, the Department of Agriculture or any other semi-State organisation would not create the problem that has been created by the gradual deterioration in the economic stability of Córas Iompair Éireann. If there was a reasonable diversion of a small percentage of the heavy traffic to the railways of this country it would immensely improve the earning capacity of Córas Iompair Éireann and achieve the object so sought after by Deputy Flanagan from Mayo of preserving employment for the members of the staff of Córas Iompair Éireann, and ensuring, at the same time, the survival of their wives and families in the reasonable comfort they should expect after long years of service in such an organisation.
The answer to this problem, as suggested by the Government in this White Paper, is the answer of the butcher and the oppressor. It is not the answer of the thinker or of the person who is prepared to work out a plan that will redound to the benefit of the country as a whole. This is a further instalment of that insatiable lust that Fianna Fáil seems to have conceived for grabbing as much money as possible, as quickly as possible, from the Irish taxpayer.
Let us analyse the spurious case made by the Minister for Local Government to-day. He tells us in one breath that there are 34,000 miles of county roads untarred and over 2,000 miles of main roads untarred. To use the oft vaunted expression of many of his colleagues in the Government and, indeed, the oft used expression by himself: "What is this odd £800,000 but a ha'porth of tar where that mileage of road is concerned?"
Surely the problem must revert in the final analysis to the fact that the roads can only carry the weight of traffic that they are built to carry. If the Government will not support local authorities, and if local authorities will not support the central authority to exclude some roads incapable of carrying excessively heavy traffic, this scheme will provide no solution to the problem. With limited repair and patchwork on the roads, and a constant increase in the amount of the traffic it has to bear, the rate of deterioration will far outstrip the rate of improvement that could be hoped for, no matter how large the Road Fund would become.
Is this a rational solution of the problem? I do not think it is. As I said yesterday, I will not voice any tremendous objection on behalf of the motorists to the tax increases proposed. They have reached such a stage of stoicism that they expect to get the "dig" all the time. The Minister talks about revenue for the Road Fund as if motor taxation and the cost of a licence were the only charges motorists are carrying. Let him have a look at the financial accounts for the year, and see what an extraordinary yield to the revenue came from light hydro-carbon and hydro-carbon oils, and he will see what the Exchequer got out of this limited section of the community over a period. If the Minister could bring into the Road Fund even 50 per cent. of the contribution made by motorists through oil and petrol duties, then he might be in a position to deal adequately with the local authorities in regard to road repairs.
At its best, this is an unsavoury effort to deal with an immense problem. Unfortunately, in the main, it is not the person against whom the tax is directed who will be the ultimate payee of the tax. We know well that where distribution costs are concerned they will be passed on to the consuming public. The people who are likely to suffer extinction under this resolution are the people deeply committed to hire purchase companies for lorries or taxi cabs running on limited capital and trying to make a living for themselves and their families and in many cases employing a helper or two. They are the people who will suffer extinction, while the people who are able to operate fleets of lorries will have sufficient capital resources to weather the immediate impact of this severe increase in taxation and at the same time adjust their rates to meet, over the year, whatever additional cost may be put on them by way of taxation. I venture to suggest that in that adjustment of rates they will add a little "tilly" to ensure themselves against any further increase that might be imposed by this Government.
Let us face up to realities, when dealing with the problem. The problem of Irish roads as envisaged by the Minister is not a question of rates versus the Exchequer. If we can do something to arrest the rapid deterioration of the roads by manfully facing the problem and putting an upward limit on the weight of loads that can be carried on the roads, we will be doing something that will very rapidly ease the difficulties of the ratepayers, something which would be infinitely more valuable as a contribution than £800,000 distributed between all the local authorities.
Take the area of West Cork, which I represent. The mileage of roads there creates an immense problem. The road problem is not one of maintenance and repair. It is one of a tremendous mileage of unnecessary roadways and in many cases of necessity for further roadways. It is a problem which must be attacked in a national way and which cannot be dealt with in a patchwork way. It is a problem which will have to be met by removing the primary cause for heavy road destruction by limiting the type of vehicles which will travel on the roads to the weight which the roads can carry.
If you travel on the main road from Dublin to Cork you will find miles and miles of it in various places where the whole foundations have gone because of the weight of traffic in excess of what it can carry which it is asked to carry. The repair of that road and the resinking of foundations in some boglands through the Midlands to reset that road properly involves a cost so large that it must forcibly bring to the notice of the Government the necessity for a constructive and realistic plan for the transport and roadways of the country.
The problem has been aggravated by the large increase in the number of vehicles. According to the best information I can obtain, there are 23,000 vehicles in this country between the two-ton rate and the heavy rate.
In the heavy vehicle group there are some 2,000 which one might describe as monster vehicles. Ironically, some of the heaviest vehicles using the roads belong to a company which purports to be a road repairing company. With their vehicles carrying 15 and 20 ton of sand on the way to whatever repair job they are doing on the roads, according to the Minister's own statement they are doing more damage than they would pay for in taxes in five years.
I suggest to the Government quite seriously that this is only a "slap happy" method of trying to deal with a major problem. I suggest that they should take back the whole scheme for reconsideration, set about the task of finding a constructive and realistic plan for the roads throughout the country and fix a limit to the weight of vehicles which will be allowed to travel on the roads. The roads should be only asked to bear the burden which they are able to bear. In that way the deterioration of the roads will be prevented.
Why single out limited classes of the community to carry the entire burden? Why impinge again for this tremendous sum of money on a section of the community whose contribution to the Exchequer through the petrol and oil tax is far out of proportion to their numbers? I ask the Government to withdraw this scheme and plan something that will inure to the credit of the country and perhaps inure to the benefit of the Government rather than force on this Dáil, by virtue of a precarious and ill-procured majority, something that may do untold harm to the State.
