There are three salient points which emerge from the Minister's statement in relation to this Supplementary Estimate. The first is that C.I.E. is in its usual bankrupt position, a position in which it has been since the Minister put his hands to the amelioration of transport in this country. The second is the remedy to be taken. This is in two parts. For the time being we are to vote it further subventions until, through a lengthy process, some way is found to get C.I.E. to solvency. These subventions are likely to be heavy. At the moment £1,800,000 is needed. It is only kept at this figure because of the fact that a sum of £400,000 is carried over to the next financial year. Taking it all in all, nearly £2,400,000 is needed, reduced for the moment, by economies and postponements to the figure asked for in the Supplementary Estimate.
Whatever technical improvements may be under consideration, it did emerge from the Minister's statement that the C.I.E. Board feel there is considerable staff redundancy. Of the 14,000 members of the staffs in the railway services, it is estimated that two-thirds are not required. That deals with the railway services alone; it is not mentioned whether the staffs on the other services were more than adequate. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that there are 4,200 people facing the prospect of unemployment.
We are in peculiar circumstances in this matter. The Minister has established a new body called the Dundalk Engineering Company and the chairman of that body wrote to the Dundalk Urban District Council a brutal letter in which he told them that certain work in connection with railway locomotives, rolling stock and bridges were no longer open to the engineering works. The calculation made, on receipt of that letter, was that anything between 600 and 700 workers now employed would be thrown out of employment. It is to be remembered that the chairman of that body is the individual whom the Minister appointed to another controlling position in recent years and that, in his first appointment, he indicated that a tremendous sum of money would be required to replace existing railway lines and to get rolling stock into good order. He contended that there were far too many people employed in the transport service of this country.
The letter of this gentleman came as a shock to the people of Dundalk. There have been protests in Dundalk against this onslaught. Workers who made a walking protest said there had been meetings between their trade union representatives and Messrs. Lemass and Reynolds, the result of which was just more confusion. It is not human to leave more than 4,000 people working on the railways of this country, plus 600 more in Dundalk, facing the prospect of unemployment.
I hope the Minister will be able to give more hope to these people than the Deputy for Louth, the Minister for External Affairs, did when speaking to his Fianna Fáil meeting in Dundalk the other evening.
The Minister for External Affairs told his meeting the other night, according to a newspaper cutting I have got, that it would be impossible for anyone to foretell the steps that must be taken to improve the Dundalk Engineering Works or the exact type of equipment that would be needed. He spoke of the necessity for co-operation between management and workers and said that anyone viewing the position ten or 20 years hence would not look at it as the disaster it now appeared but as a great new industry which would grow and prosper. He spoke of the Dundalk Engineering Works and of the skill and equipment it would employ which would make it, in ten or 20 years, a great engineering enterprise.
That is great consolation to the people who walked in protest in Dundalk against the brutal letter sent to them by Mr. Reynolds the other day. It is the old slogan: "Live horse and you will get grass." The forecast of the Minister for External Affairs is that maybe it will not be so bad in ten or 20 years if you live the ten or 20 years in between. I have here a comment made by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in 1951 where he spoke of the Coalition's management of transport. He said the Coalition's efforts in regard to transport were without aim and without object. He asked how they had the audacity to ask to be put back in charge in view of their incredible shortsightedness and blundering interference in regard to transport.
That was six years ago. The best the Minister can do on the 27th of November, of this year is to say that the Government would have responsible proposals probably ready for discussion next year. In this speech in Waterford in 1951 he said Coalition propagandists were whispering to railway workers that Fianna Fáil would take some action which would reduce transport employment and that, of course, was denied.
I did not hear of those whispers at the time. The Tánaiste apparently did, and he set out to restore the morale of railway workers by speaking in these terms, that there were whispers to railway workers that Fianna Fáil would take some action to reduce transport employment.
The best we could be told—I at least hope it is the worst we could be told—on the last occasion when this was discussed, was that one-third of the 14,000 people employed on the railways could be regarded as redundant and might have to be taken off work. The Tánaiste did go on after that to speak of superannuation proposals. I do not know whether in the course of this debate he will be more precise about these.
At the time when my colleague, the then Deputy Morrissey, got the Milne Report, the author of that report asked both Deputy Morrissey, as he then was, and myself to see him and he outlined certain views he had with regard to redundancy on the railways. He had not reported directly on that matter because he did not, apparently, feel it came within his terms of reference but, in the pursuit of his terms of reference, he had got enough information to lead to a certain conclusion and that was that there was redundancy in the railway world. His proposal or suggestion then was that people should be enticed out of railway work.
There was no question of compulsorily making people leave, giving them their papers and telling them to walk out, and there was no question of dismissals, particularly on a large scale, because he said he thought that in the conditions of railway workers that would be completely inhuman. I think I know what he meant when he said that. Railway work in the old days had a characteristic of permanency and was exempt from the impact of the unemployment insurance code. They were not asked to contribute to that, because it was felt they would never have to draw on it. That is a measure of the strength of that characteristic of permanency in regard to railway work in those days. In no circumstances, could the author of the Milne Report have suggested putting into operation, in the case of work which had such a characteristic of permanency about it, a policy for mass dismissals which he thought would threaten if some of the proposals were put into practice. The Tánaiste has now left the House, and not merely the House but the men concerned, under considerable doubt and anxiety in regard to what his proposals in regard to them are.
The Milne proposal was that a scheme of pensions should be arranged at an earlier date than that at which pensions are usually given so as to provide for a person to retire, say, five years before the time at which he would have to go having earned a pension, so that an earlier retirement might be attractive for him. It would be less than his pay, but more than the pension which he might receive if he stayed on until the pension was due to him. Naturally, this would have the effect of increasing the bill for pensions but it would also have the effect of reducing the bill for salaries. If there is something like that in the Tánaiste's mind I think it is time it was revealed because it is hardly fair to people concerned that they should learn in the course of the debate that one-third of them are regarded as redundant and that there is some question of pensions or compensation but that that will be attended to afterwards.
I do not know where the anxiety at Dundalk arises. Apparently they got a letter from the chairman of the Dundalk General Engineering Company on the 28th ult. At least it was in the newspapers dated the 28th and presumably was written about that date. The debate took place on the 27th and was reported on the 28th. On the 29th November the Dundalk workers issued a special protest against what they described as the misinformation given by the Tánaiste with regard to their pensions and they put into inverted commas the statement that the Tánaiste had said that they had no pension rights or no rights to compensation. That may be their reading of the debate on the 27th on this particular Estimate, or it may be that the chairman of the Dundalk Engineering Works, who apparently had some conference with these people made some statement to them that they were not entitled to any scheme of superannuation if they were to close down because there was insufficient work on which to engage them. Where that springs from I do not know but they made that part of their protest. They are clearly in a state of anxiety in regard to their position.
They have had these indications in the papers, and in the newspapers of December 2nd it was reported that after they had met Mr. Reynolds and the Tánaiste the result was "just more confusion." The main points in their protest are:—
"(1) Work must not leave Dundalk; this we will dispute and resist with everything in our power, and
(2) we demand that our compensation claims be settled and pension rights preserved before the new company takes over."
That has reference to what was in the newspapers. As I say, whether that was a special statement made to them arising out of their special circumstances or whether it is the reading they had of what was said when the Dáil was considering this Estimate, reported on the 27th November or next day, I do not know but it would be well to have it cleared up.
It seems to me that no proposal has any chance of getting through this Parliament unless there is provision made for the proper compensation of people who are to be regarded as redundant. Again, I think it is most unlikely that Deputies could withstand the storm of protest that would be aroused if any proposal came in to force people out of employment even if they were to be benefited by pensions at an earlier age.
The Milne proposal, as put to the then Deputy Morrissey and myself, was made on the basis of something to tempt people to leave the railway service by bettering themselves and by entitlement to pensions. But there was certainly nothing in the Milne proposal, in the spoken proposal, to indicate to both of us that he would have favoured —certainly we would not have done so —any proposal to compel people to leave the railway service, but favourable consideration might have been given to a proposal to induce them to leave their employment for their own betterment. For the remainder of the debate we shall have to wait until we see what the Minister will propose. Many commissions have been set up on this matter and many different proposals have been put forward but none accepted, in the main, in regard to the betterment of the railway position.
In 1951 the Minister was so annoyed over the fact that years had passed without anything being done, in what was called "a policy of blind drift, without aim or hope," that I am sure he will be more alert to bringing in adequate proposals at the earliest possible moment. I presume they will be brought in with a better realisation of the circumstances and with more humility than accompanied the proposals that were brought in in 1944 when the Dublin people, who have borne the brunt of the heavy charges that had to be imposed in order to keep the rest of the system in some sort of operation, were told that the well-running bus and tram services in the city were being handed over to C.I.E. They were told that we could count on more efficient running and cheaper services. Certainly the prospect that the railways under C.I.E. would puff or propel themselves into a position of prosperity and of giving cheaper service to the community was held out, but the passage of the years shows that we are now down to the point where very many thousands of railway employees may have to seek employment across the Channel.
We are apparently back again at the same sort of proposal but this time with some humane background, namely, that of doing something for those who will be rendered redundant and those who are discovered to be redundant by way of providing them with some compensation. We have to give this money to keep C.I.E. going and, though it is not a pleasant thing, the money will have to be found again by the taxpayer. We hope that proposals will not be long delayed and, while they may be produced with less exhilaration than heretofore they may be more realistic and give us a chance of getting a full account of the transport muddle which started in 1944, if not earlier.
