I do not think that this discussion lends itself to the many gyrations that have taken place during its brief length. I think it is in the best interests of the situation, as it is presented to us by the Minister, to try and approach it basically and factually in an objective way. That is what tempted me in the course of the Minister's speech yesterday to ask a certain question. I do not think that we can completely divorce this present project from a previous project which was wound up by the Minister's predecessor in office. I think we can discuss it not on the basis of national unctuous balderdash such as was given to us by Deputy Burke, not in the spirit of the survival even of Shannon Airport, but purely on the question on what its economic potential is likely to be. I intend to demonstrate in a completely unimpassioned way the reasons for my doubts and for my saying that the Government should not proceed with this agreement. It is naive of the Minister for Industry and Commerce to come in here and to describe this sum of £457,000 — which accrued as a profit as a result of an investment of money directly obtained from the Exchequer — as not being the people's money. In fact, this is one of the few occasions on which I find the Minister for Industry and Commerce not his usual truculent, vehement, assertive self. The Minister for Industry and Commerce has conceived a technique of debate in which, where he has a grip of a problem and a belief in it, even if that belief is erroneous, he can give it that air of truculent assertiveness that can nearly sell a story. On this occasion that particular dominant feature of the Minister's approach is absent. I am suggesting in a realistic way to a man who is capable of a shrewd business assessment that he himself does not believe in this proposition which he has voiced to the House. I am quite sure that nobody is more aware than the Minister himself is of the many dangers and the many punitive clauses contained in this agreement to the detriment of the very venture. It seems chaotic to me.
Possibly the particular chaos that has arisen may find its reality in the unwitting and unguarded admission by Deputy Briscoe that this agreement was entered into in a difficult situation in which time was running against Aer Línte to maintain this transatlantic operational licence and in which the other party to the contract was aware of the difficulty and was, therefore, able to insist on terms that otherwise would not be considered. If that is so, I think we are very ill-advised and that it is a very ill-judged action to grasp at such an agreement. We have to analyse realistically the minimum number required to give each separate flight a pay load. We should be able to get a clear picture from the Minister as to what loads are likely to be attracted in seasonal peak periods and the likely minimum falling-off in the off-season period. We should have been able to get details to enable us to view this picture in its proper setting. We should know whether there will be a possibility of freight development, whether there will be a possibility of mail-carrying by this line from Ireland to America — whether there are other potentialities behind the bare passenger-carrying necessity — that might encourage us to believe not that this would ever be an economic success but that some day it might attain the stage of being even self-supporting. The Minister is well aware that what is vital to our consideration of this whole scheme is the real likelihood of passenger potential, the minimum number of people that will have to travel on a flight to make that flight remunerative, the periods of the year during which we are likely to have a sufficient number of passengers to make it remunerative and the likely balance in the first year and the second year as against loss. That cannot be done on the broad basis of an estimated figure. It will have to be broken down into the realistic position of letting us know exactly the likely cost per seat on these runs, the maximum carrying capacity of each Skymaster aircraft and whether there is any possibility of insufficiently-filled passenger planes being used to carry either a priority type of light freight mails, or other matters for transport, that might alleviate the strain of cost. If we want to give even a fair run to this scheme we must know these facts.
The agreement presents itself to me as a rather expedient type of agreement. It has all the characteristics of Aer Línte's being forced into a situation where its back was to the wall.
I am completely ad idem with Deputy Briscoe on one thing, that if we start such a project at all we should start it with Irish personnel. I am going to be fair to the Minister, as I believe the Minister did approach this problem himself in an effort to ensure that Irish personnel would operate these planes. The Minister might be frank to the House and explain to us what difficulties arose or what circumstances forced him to accept an agreement in which you had a hybrid situation, of Irish personnel operating one facet of the line and foreign pilots of God knows what nationality or origin operating the planes. It becomes of really serious import to the general situation and the general approach to the agreement to know what were the activating and motivating influences that caused that acceptance by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He himself, in his opening remarks, indicated that he was still in contact with many of the personnel who had been trained for transatlantic airflying and who had the certificates necessary and the recognition necessary to allow them to operate within the convention of the licence holder that was operating a transatlantic flight. What was the difficulty that prevented us chartering the planes as planes and operating them ourselves outside the actual charge hire for the planes? Was there any compelling factor that made it more useful to charter on the broad basis of incorporating maintenance personnel, flying personnel, supply personnel and all the various commitments in connection with fuel, spare-parts and so on? Was there some oppressive, weighty reason that forced us to accept that kind of proposition, as distinct from a proposition in which, if we had to charter planes, at least we would be able to develop and maintain the control and management, the general security and safety precautions of these planes ourselves?
That is the feature that is giving me most worry. I realise that there are two reasons, in the main, behind this scheme. There is a good deal of pique and maybe childish irritation in the Government that the 1948 scheme was scotched. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that a transatlantic airline owned and operated by an Irish company is never likely to be an economic success, never likely to be an enduring economic success, and for that reason the only way one might ever justify its establishment is that of prestige. We are very anxious — I myself personally, and I am quite sure most Deputies — for the development of national prestige where it comes within a reasonable ambit of what the country can afford; but can we envisage a situation where, particularly with the economic difficulties that exist at present, we can justify to the Irish people the seeking of such prestige at this moment and seeking it with transatlantic aircraft that, at their best, can be described as rapidly becoming obsolescent?
There is no doubt at all about it that if the supply of planes were readily available, even to the company with which we are entering into this charter agreement, to substitute alternative planes for the Skymaster, that they would in fact be substituted. From the safety angle alone — and it is time we stressed the safety angle alone — that would be done. Deputy Briscoe purports to know an awful lot about aircraft and I suppose that, with members of his family qualified in this line, he may have a family circle in which there is discussion on it; but he deliberately avoided some inherent dangers that must inevitably attach to Skymaster aircraft, particularly in off-season weather. They are not pressurised; we are told that; they cannot, if the emergency arises, make for the altitude that might get another type of plane out of difficulties that can arise.
It is true that they have a very airworthy and safe record in transatlantic work, but the tendency and the mind of people approaching air travel to-day can be safely summarised by saying they approach it to get the fastest, most modern and most up-to-date type of aircraft to carry them when they are spending their money on a fare to cross the Atlantic. I do not think that this particular type of plane will create that attraction. I certainly think that we are making a shabby entry into transatlantic air competition, if we are going to make an entry at all, by confining our efforts to the tourist class.
I was wondering if it were not possible for the Minister — even if he was forced into circumstances in which this type of agreement had to be entered into — to ensure at least a plane being made available that would give us a chance of competing in the top-class passenger trade, even if it were only to the extent of one run a week during the off season and two round trips a week during the peak season, thus giving us an opportunity to feel for ourselves in a real way the potential of the first-class passenger trade. There is no doubt about it, that with all the optimistic outlook in the world and with all the bright hopes that we can cherish, on a purely tourist basis we cannot expect to attract anything like the volume of traffic that the Minister says is necessary to make this venture a success. You have to remember that in the tourist season you will have to compete with all the various other companies using a more modern type of planes on tourist runs, too.
I am not taking the view, and never did, that we should damn a thing for the sake of damning it. I want to get from the Minister some kind of a realistic picture in facts and figures that might lead us to the conclusion that ultimately this could become an economic proposition. I would like to know from the Minister the real likelihood or the real probability regarding the date of delivery of the substitute Constellations for these Skymasters. I want to know from the Minister whether or not in the development of this project it is contemplated having a gradual infiltration of Irish personnel into the ranks of the pilots, operators and trained personnel that will operate these aircraft. I want to know if the State company entering into this contractual obligation has made the necessary arrangement whereby, as vacancies occur, there will be a preferential right to employment for Irish people in the replacement of crews.
This agreement, in general, presents such a lax and loose system of association that it becomes more and more apparent to me that it is of vital interest that the agreement should be revealed in its full significance. Instead of chartering each plane as the situation arises, we are taking a continuous charter which is to run over a number of years and in which we guarantee a minimum number of charters per week and are allowed to move up to a maximum number in the peak season. There is a penal clause in the agreement, as the Minister explained, whereby, if we neglect to do certain things, the axe comes down and we have to pay a fine of $100,000.
I pressed the Minister, and I now press him deliberately, to indicate if there are any safeguards for Aer Línte in this agreement. Is there an assurance that Seaboard and Western Airlines will not cut across whatever minor freight traffic they might be able to operate as an integral part of the passenger service and that Aer Línte will not be prevented specifically from going in for that type of development? Is there a counter-assurance that Seaboard and Western Airlines will not charter planes to a group of people who might ultimately be in opposition to Aer Línte? Let us conceive a situation in which the flight of the Gaels is reversed and a number of Irish people, for the purposes of some international competition or game — something like an All-Ireland Football Final or Hurling Final in America again. Could a situation arise in which Seaboard and Western Airlines could give one of their planes on charter in competition with what might be our tourist line of Skymasters.
All these matters enter into this and it must be analysed — I am trying to do it in a completely non-political way — as a business proposition. Unless these safeguards are there, the agreement will amount virtually to this: "We will allow you to operate our transatlantic operational licences and we will pay the piper." If we have not got safeguards of a very strong character to ensure that this is not a one-sided or lopsided agreement, the Minister should be frank and tell us so. If he does so and tells us that these safeguards are not there, the House will be able to look on this agreement in all its naked reality, as an expedient, ill-advised and ill-judged.
It is easy to say here that not a penny of the taxpayers' money is involved. This profit was made as a result of direct subvention of money from the Exchequer to Aer Rianta. The collective decision of the inter-Party Government was that there was not likely to be the potential for an airline, and at that time we were in a better position to judge than now, because there was less competition than now, but, as a result of their scotching the idea of transatlantic airline, a profit of £457,000 accrued to the Exchequer. That profit was made on the people's money and no method of calculation or tricky finance can alter the fact that it is a gain properly accruing to the benefit of the Exchequer in the circumstances which arose.
There is no doubt that, no matter how you may juggle with the idea of its being given back to the Exchequer interest free against a possible future contingency, it is the people's money, earned by way of profit from the investment of the people's money, because every penny piece of the money in Aer Rianta or in Aer Línte was, as the Minister told us, subscribed to the exclusion of the £1 or whatever was the stipulated figure to become a director of the company. No matter what name you give to it, there is going to be a subvention back to this venture of £457,000. Are we using that to the best advantage of the Irish people? That is a problem which is fundamental to the main and basic issue in this argument.
The Minister cannot — and, in fairness to him, let it be said that he did not — hold out any prospect of immense success for this scheme. It is going to be a kind of last fling to see whether it is possible to justify an international airline. I feel, and I say it not in any spirit of political opposition but in a spirit of seeking to estimate its business potential, that, if this scheme were to be operated at all, this is the very way it should not be operated. We are going into a highly competitive field, with not the most attractive type of aircraft, no matter what their safety record may be or what their airworthiness may be. We are going into a trade which is to be a tourist class trade only and which is not going to give you any real idea of the potentialities of a first-class passenger carrying business.
I want the Minister to say whether it was not possible, when negotiating the agreement, to ensure that, if most of the planes must operate on the tourist trade, there would have been some plane available for even one or two round trips per week so as to give us an indication of what the earning potential of first-class passenger operation on the best type of aircraft would be. I feel that this is ill-judged, ill-timed and ill-advised and that we are not doing justice to the idea itself. If Fianna Fáil and the Government believe in the concept of a transatlantic airline, surely they cannot believe that this is the best way to try to break into it?
If this conception is to be carried into effect as a plan it cannot be better done, I earnestly suggest to even the most rabid advocate of a transatlantic airline on the basis now suggested, a basis on which we have penal conditions attaching to our side of the contract, conditions whereby we have to supply all the personnel necessary in connection with booking, and so on, and pay the rents of offices here and there where we propose to establish ticket-selling bureaux. I can readily imagine that these will be necessary in New York, Boston, and perhaps other cities in the United States of America where there is a strong proportion of Irish people.
We have to undertake all that type of expenditure in connection with a limited type of service, consisting of tourist traffic only, with machines that I venture to suggest, not in any spirit of acrimony or criticism, will be less attractive even to tourist passengers. Like many other Deputies I have spent an occasional summer's evening at Shannon Airport watching planes coming and going. I have seen planes from the scheduled, highly-advertised, high sales-pressured passenger traffic de luxe planes down to the chartered planes of the type we are now discussing. These chartered planes arrive with loads of displaced people or people of that character. I have seen the contrasts between these different types of planes and I come into this House to make the suggestion in an earnest way to the Minister that if a beginning were to be made in this at all, it certainly should not be with the type of plane now contemplated. I would go so far as to say that there would be less opposition to an infinitely larger scheme providing for first-class, front-line, first-rate aircraft and for even greater expenditure, if that were to be Irish controlled, Irish manned, completely Irish in every way, taking the Irish flag, not on a charter basis, round the world but taking the Irish flag proudly embossed on the tails of these planes as a real emblem of an Irish company. I would have infinitely more sympathy with that type of project than this type of back-door project. I am not going to delay the Minister any longer except to say that I believe the Minister should review, and get all the assistance he might need to review this type of contract lest we allow expediency rule this situation and lead us to a commitment unworthy of the effort of any Irish State company.