The Minister's statement in relation to the public transport of the country is a pretty sombre one, from the point of view of the taxpayer and from the point of view of the future of public transport in this country. As I took it, the position is that C.I.E. is operating at an annual loss of £2,000,000. The Minister has said—it is indeed poor consolation to the taxpayer—that he is limiting those losses to £2,000,000 annually. I listened carefully to his statement and, so far as I could gather, he has no alleviation to offer in this unfortunate situation that has arisen, except to endeavour to change over to diesel oil as the fuel for public transport.
I take it that the importation of this diesel oil fuel will be from the dollar world, which means that it will throw a heavy burden, by reason of the non-convertibility of sterling, on our dollar pool. How does the Minister propose to meet that? I should be glad if he would give us some information on that point. Admittedly, he did not dogmatically state that—it is just a suggestion on his part. In effect, really and unfortunately, he has no solution to offer. He also said it might be a matter for consultation with the trade unions. Am I to take it that the suggestion is that the employees of C.I.E., who, as I know, are clamouring for an increase in their wages, are to be asked to take a lesser sum each week? The public have already paid dearly for C.I.E. We have had an increase in all the fares and so far as we can gather from the Minister's statement, there is a possibility of fares being further increased.
Is it not time that somebody said, as, in effect, the Minister himself to a certain degree this evening has said: "There is a limit to the losses which you may incur; there is a limit to the extent of the mismanagement of your business?" If any private firm in this country was running its affairs in the manner in which C.I.E. is conducting its affairs and imposing a heavy drain like that on those who provided the capital, would the management of thatfirm be retained? I am not conversant with the people who are responsible for the administration of C.I.E., but it is quite obvious that they are not making a success of their job. That statement covers the whole organisation, but, of course, the people at the top must always be held responsible. The difficulty with this company is that if I, as a Deputy, write and make any suggestion to C.I.E. which is brought to me by some of my constituents—and I have made innumerable suggestions since I was elected—I am only wasting my time. I shall get a reply saying that the matter will be considered. I presume that my communication, like many others of a similar nature, goes into the wastepaper basket and there is no more about it. Then when I come into the Dáil here and ask a question about any matter in which C.I.E. are concerned, I am referred to the 1950 Act. The 1950 Act is apparently the cloak under which C.I.E. can spend the money which we, the elected representatives of the people, vote and get away with it every time. I do not agree with that system at all.
I think that the Minister has the responsibility to call in whoever the directors, the management or the controllers of this particular company are and point out to them clearly and emphatically that this is not a rich country, that it is already an over-taxed country and that we cannot afford to go on handing over £2,000,000 per annum or give them a ceiling of £2,000,000 per annum to run their business in the way they are doing it. In other words, we should call a halt to present trends.
It is not that C.I.E. have a particularly tough road to plough. They are not in the position of ordinary private firms who have to compete with rival firms in the country. They have a virtual monopoly of everything in the line of transport. Does not every Deputy know that, with the exception of a few lorries with trade plates, C.I.E. has a virtual monopoly of road haulage in the country to-day? In spite of that monopoly, which constitutes, to my mind, a very definite restrictive practice, they cannot make the organisationpay and they come in here and look for money to subsidise them. As if to add insult to injury, they have thrown into chaos all the private firms and many industrialists in this country who provide lorries for their own transport. What state of mind are the directors of these companies in at the present moment, facing the suggestion of a zonal limitation of about 20 miles? I am sure every Deputy has had letters from all over his constituency, as I have had from my constituency, asking if this suggestion is to be enacted into law or not. By a parliamentary question, I tried to elicit from the Minister what his mind in this matter is. He has told us he is not enamoured of these proposals but he has to give due consideration to them. Is there any suggestion that, even if C.I.E. were to be given these unnatural restrictions on private haulage in the country, they would be able to make a success of transport? I do not think so, and I think it would be a sorry day if they got any further grip on the country than they have now.
I should like to give the Minister some little information about the manner in which transport is carried on by C.I.E. This is one of the few chances one gets of mentioning these matters without being referred to the 1950 Act. In the town of Bunclody, in my constituency—some of you may know it by its older name of Newtownbarry—a delivery system is carried out by C.I.E. If you are a tradesman or a merchant in Bunclody and you arrange to have stuff ordered in Dublin delivered by C.I.E., it is sent out from Dublin in the morning to Tullow, in County Carlow. It is kept there until a lorry comes from Enniscorthy which takes the stuff from Tullow and delivers it in Bunclody, after closing hours in the evening. This happens twice a week. That is the transport which C.I.E. is providing for the people of Wexford. I am sure every Deputy has had a similar experience in his own constituency.
I asked a question in reference to this matter because the last time I was in Bunclody, the merchants there came to me and told me that they had to pay their staffs overtime and keepthem at work after hours to suit the whim of C.I.E. The stuff arrives, if it ever does arrive, about 8.30 p.m.
We are asked to vote £2,000,000 to C.I.E., but yet the answer I get when I question the Minister in regard to these matters is that, under the 1950 Act, the Minister has no jurisdiction. If I were Minister for Industry and Commerce—I am sure I never shall be, and I am afraid I would not be a good Minister—I certainly would not agree to be bound by the 1950 Act, and if a Deputy asked me a question in reference to such complaints I would go to C.I.E. and say to whoever is in charge of the particular section concerned: "Look here, the Government has to provide you with £2,000,000 per year and the least you should do is to give some decent service to the public for that." If the Minister thinks that C.I.E. are giving the Irish people satisfaction, let him dwell for a while on the points which I have put to him.
I want to refer briefly to the railways. I think anyone with a constructive national approach to the problems of transport in this country must realise, especially bearing in mind the difficulties which we had to overcome during the emergency, that railways are an essential part of public transport in this country. Without railways we certainly could not carry on in time of emergency. If there should be another outbreak of war, we would again be absolutely dependent on the railways. Of course it is difficult to make railways pay now. Things have changed a lot with the passing years, but I do not think railways have been given justice in regard to the general transport arrangements of this country.
It seems to me that it has been arranged by whoever controls the transport of C.I.E. that you must have trains and buses all going in the same direction. There are certain parts of Ireland where people have to walk, travel by private car, ride a bicycle or go in any way they can, and there are other parts, on the main routes mostly, where you can go by bus or train.
I think I am right in saying—I was not Deputy in the House in the lastDáil—that some sort of a commission was set up by the Minister's predecessor, Deputy Daniel Morrissey, then Minister for Industry and Commerce, to go into this question of transport. I think we had somebody over here to advise us on the matter, and I think that one of the principal things he advised was that the trains and the buses should not run in competition with each other. Am I right? I think I am. I do not know what that man came over here for or what he was paid to give us that advice, but it did not produce any results, anyway, because in my part of the country— and as far as I know in other parts of the country—the buses and trains continue running in opposition to one another.
Take the case of Bray. I think there are 84 buses per day travelling between Bray and Dublin. I may not have my figures quite right. Before C.I.E. came into existence and before the happy days when we shook a couple of million pounds round to keep these white elephants alive—real white elephants, not the ones we heard of 20 years ago—the Dublin South-Eastern Railway, on the Bray to Dublin line, carried all traffic economically. It was solvent and kept the line alive. It could be the same again to-day if given a chance but what chance has it with 84 buses per day going into Dublin? There might be some sense in it if they ran some buses from areas where there is no transport and bring the people to the railway station so that they could take the trains in to Dublin. Who will walk to a railway station if he can step into a bus in the main street? It may be a little difficult and hard on the residents but if it is going to save £2,000,000 or portion of the £2,000,000, it is worth considering.
Another piece of fatuous nonsense I heard about the other day was in connection with a branch line that was closed down somewhere in Ireland. A train has not run on it for some years. There are four or five houses on it with nobody living in them. Somebody was sent out the other day to paint them inside and out. That is the sort of thing that is being done in C.I.E.— money thrown away for nothing.
Nationalisation or State control at any time is a step in the wrong direction. Nobody wants that in this country. The railways and the public transport in this country are not actually nationalised, but I think we may say that they are next door to it. I think we must all speak with a sense of responsibility here now. Unfortunately, we have got to face up to the unpleasant fact that this firm is running at a heavy loss. I think there is only one solution to it. I think it would be better for the present governing board of C.I.E., whoever they may be, to be superseded.
We have in it, of course, very fine engineers, architects, running engineers and fine people who are concerned with transport and the timing of trains but what we really need in C.I.E. is somebody with a good business capacity. It would be worth the country's while to try and get somebody who is fully conversant with the running of transport and pay him to do it in order to try and save this country from the drain on our resources. There is not a bright future as we stand at present.
May I digress slightly, Sir, for a moment and refer to the rumours of deficits in Budgets, unhappy financial positions and a further increase in the cost of living? It is a natural sequence of events that the employees, the working men connected with C.I.E. will be looking for more money to subsidise their weekly budget. That means that you will have further overcharges on an already overburdened C.I.E. exchequer.
I suggest now to the Minister that he get hold of somebody who has got a real good business head and try and save Irish transport and take it out of the maelstrom and the muddle in which it is at the present time.