I move:—
That a sum not exceeding £6,081,000 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1960, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (45 & 46 Vict., c. 74; 8 Edw. 7, c. 48; 1 & 2 Geo. 5, c. 26; the Telegraph Acts, 1863 to 1953; No. 45 of 1926; No. 14 of 1940 (secs. 30 and 31); No. 14 of 1942 (sec. 23); No. 17 of 1951; etc.), and of certain other Services administered by that Office.
The net Estimate for 1959-60 amounts to £9,576,000 being a gross total of £10,133,401 less Appropriation-in-Aid of £557,401. The net provision represents an increase of £476,740 on that shown for 1958/59. On the other hand, the increase of revenue we expect should somewhat more than offset our extra expenditure. However, it is the Commercial Accounts we must turn to for the real picture of Post Office working. On this occasion last year the acting Minister forecast that the small profit made in 1956-57 would be followed by a somewhat bigger, though still a relatively modest profit, in 1957-58. As shown in the Commercial Accounts published last December, his forecast was quite accurate. We made a modest profit also in 1958-59 and, so far as anyone can dare to predict the position at the end of the current year, we should also be on the right side then. So I am happy to say that, for the present at least, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs is in a reasonably satisfactory financial position, a welcome change from the long succession of years when it was a burden on the Exchequer. However, I shall deal at greater length with this point later on.
There is a slight complication in making detailed comparisons between the provision asked for and that actually voted in 1958-9 which I should first explain. At the end of Part II of the Estimate—the middle of page 281 of the Estimate volume—an amount of £260,000 is shown in the 1958-9 figures under the heading "Increase in Remuneration." This represents that part of the total extra Civil Service salaries and wages voted by Supplementary Estimate which relates to the Post Office and is thus shown as nominally transferred to the Posts and Telegraphs Vote. To get strictly comparable subhead figures for 1958-9 this £260,000 should be divided up and added to the original provision under various salary subheads.
The subheads affected and the amounts proper to be added in each case are:— A.1 — £15,000; A.2 — £45,000; A.3 — £169,000; A.4 — £7,000; I.1 — £24,000.
Taking account of these amounts the comparisons between 1958-9 and 1959-60 should now become:—
|
Sub head |
1959-60 |
1958-59 |
Increase |
|
£ |
£ |
£ |
|
|
A.1 |
564,000 |
556,000 |
8,000 |
|
A.2 |
1,420,000 |
1,412,000 |
8,000 |
|
A.3 |
3,266,000 |
3,257,000 |
9,000 |
|
A.4 |
205,500 |
199,000 |
6,500 |
|
I.I |
750,000 |
732,000 |
18,000 |
A revised arrangement for payment of rates has led to a transfer of £1,000 from Subhead L. 3 to the Vote for Rates on Government Property but the figures shown in the printed volume of Estimates take account of this change.
The more substantial variations— those of £10,000 or more—occur on the following subheads adjusted, where necessary, in the way I have described:—
Subhead E.4 — Packet Services. The increase of £10,100 is due mainly to greater use of direct shipping services between Irish and North American ports and to increased traffic. The extra charge is more than offset by benefits to revenue.
Subhead E.5 — Conveyance of Mails by Air. The extra £11,000 is needed because of increased traffic which will be reflected in increased revenue.
Subhead G.1 — Stores (other than Engineering). To facilitate the speedier completion of the Appropriation Account a revised procedure has been introduced. This will mean that our credits from other Government Departments for whom we buy stores will be reduced by about £10,000 for this one year only. Increased purchases owing to the exhaustion of reserve stocks, partialy offset by reduced purchases of mechanical transport, make up the remainder of the total increase of £19,000.
Subhead I.1 — Salaries, Wages and Allowances (Engineering). An extra provision for labour and normal increments for staff, the dropping of the provision for additional force and an increased relief from Telephone Capital Funds are the most significant items in the net increase of £18,000.
Subhead K.—Engineering Materials. The replacement of the obsolete equipment at Valentia and Malin Head Coast Radio Stations, increased purchases of stores and motor transport replacements, the altered procedure for credits from other Government Departments to which I have already referred and a reduced relief from Telephone Capital Funds account for the increase of £108,000.
Subhead L.2—Contract Work. The increase of £29,000 here is mainly due to further provision needed for the work at Valentia and Malin Head stations.
Subhead M.—Telephone Capital Repayments. Money for development of the telephone system is provided by issues from the Central Fund. These issues have to be repaid by annuities extending over periods not exceeding 25 years. This subhead contains full provision for the annuity payments to be made during the year. The increase from year to year (the present figure is £85,353 more than 1958-59) is a natural consequence of the expansion of the telephone system—an expansion which in its turn leads to increased revenue.
Subhead N.1—Superannuation Allowances, etc. The total increase of £18,100 is due mainly to the anticipated higher payments of pensions and marriage gratuities.
Subhead O.2—Civil Aviation and Meteorological Wireless — provision and installation of equipment, etc. The provision of radar installations at Shannon Airport, teleprinter equipment at Ballygireen and navigational aids at Cork Airport account for the increase of £152,000.
Subhead T.—Appropriations-in-Aid. The extra £29,863 in receipts is the net effect of a number of increases partly offset by some few decreases. The principal sources of greater receipts are sale of stores (both Engineering and non-Engineering) and the payment from Savings Bank funds for the work performed by the Department.
In comparison with the previous year, letters posted increased by approximately 12 millions or 4% and in fact postings during the Christmas period 1958 were the highest on record. Parcel traffic about held its own. This was a welcome change in trend as it had tended to decline steadily since 1956.
Mail services generally worked satisfactorily during the year. Further progress was made with the reorganisation of rural postal services with the object of giving a standard 6-day frequency of delivery and a better all-round quality of service. Since this time last year the head office districts of Ballina, Carlow, Castlebar and Claremorris have been reorganised and the remaining portions of Limerick, Mallow and Waterford completed. Proposals for reorganising the Portlaoise and Westport districts are far advanced and will be implemented shortly.
There have been several developments in the foreign post services. Transmission of parcels by surface routes to twelve European and overseas countries has been speeded up by a revised system of forwarding in closed despatches which eliminates intermediate handling. The feasibility of applying this new system is dependent on the traffic for the particular country of destination; where the volume is small or the traffic infrequent it cannot economically be employed.
Deputies will have already read about the new small packet service which has been introduced in the foreign service as from the 1st April, 1959. The advantage of this service is that it gives the public the benefit, at an attrative price, of having packets of goods not exceeding 2 lb. in weight transmitted by the quicker letter post service.
The air parcel post service, which is at present confined to postings to the U.S.A. and Canada, will shortly be extended to a number of other countries.
To comply with the terms of the Universal Postal Convention, certain foreign post charges had to be raised with effect from the 1st April, 1959. The Universal Postal Convention, which is revised every five years, lays down minimum and maximum limits for foreign letter post rates. In contrast with the great majority of postal administrations the level of our foreign service charges has for many years been related to the lower rather than the upper limit permissible under the Convention. The Convention now in force made it obligatory to raise the minimum letter rate to 6d. and to adjust proportionately the charges for other categories of mail. At that, the charges of no other postal administration are lower than ours and we are among the tiny minority who charge no more than the absolute minimum.
A new International Parcel Post Agreement has now come into force which requires a world-wide increase in charges for foreign parcels. To comply with this agreement most of our charges for parcels sent abroad have had to be raised as from 1st July, 1959.
Special postage stamps were brought out during the year to commemorate centenaries of Thomas Clarke and Mother Mary Aikenhead and the twenty-first anniversary of the coming into operation of the Constitution. As already announced, a new stamp will be issued shortly to commemorate the first Arthur Guinness.
During the year ended the 31st March last, about 1,960,000 telegrams were handled, which indicates a decline of about the same order as in the preceding 12 months. There was actually a slight increase in foreign telegraphic traffic but this was insufficient to offset the fall in internal telegrams and in telegrams exchanged with Great Britain.
With the decline in traffic it has been found possible to reduce the loss on the service. According to the latest figures available, the loss for the financial year 1957-58 was £178,000 as compared with £195,000 in 1956-57. This has been achieved by further progress in reorganisation on the basis of transmission by teleprinter and telephone and thus economising in staff costs.
Various old telegraph agreements which had governed the relationships between the Post Office and railway companies for more than 50 years were replaced last April by a new simplified Railway Telegraph Agreement to the mutual advantage of the Post Office and Córas Iompair Éireann.
The Telex system continues to expand. During the year the number of subscribers increased from 63 to 85 and the number of messages rose from 72,000 to 126,000.
Turning now to deal with the Telephone Service, in 1958 the number of local calls was 104.2 million and the number of trunk calls was 15.4 million representing increases of 9 per cent. and 6 per cent. respectively over the 1957 figures. A record number of 10,550 new subscribers' exchange lines was installed in 1958—this is 1,570 higher than the 1957 figure. Applications for new telephones during the year reached the record total of 10,500, nearly 1,000 more than that in the year before. Over 5,500 miles of trunk circuits were added to the trunk system in 1958. A satisfactory standard of trunk service was maintained—some 95 per cent. of trunk calls being connected within 10 minutes of booking. Six manual exchanges were converted to automatic working and 140 other exchanges were extended and/or modernised during the year. Forty new telephone kiosks were erected.
It had been hoped earlier on, that the waiting applicant list would be cleared by the end of March 1959, but with the increase in demand for new telephones during the year it has not been possible to achieve this. Nevertheless, some reduction in the waiting applicant list has been achieved—excluding telephones in course of installation the total number of waiting applicants has been reduced from 1,950 at the end of February 1958 to 1,700 at the end of March 1959. The reduction would have been greater were it not for the fact that during the year a back log of deferred long lines in rural areas was cleared. The main hold up in the Dublin area is in the Dundrum exchange area (over 230). These will all be given service towards the end of this year when the new automatic exchange at Dundrum is brought into service. The capacity of the automatic exchange at Cork has almost been reached and in addition, the cables serving the Douglas and Western Road areas are almost fully utilised. In order to conserve the remaining terminations and cable spares in Cork to cater for business and priority applicants it has been necessary to defer applications for all ordinary residence lines pending the erection of two new automatic exchanges in the Douglas and Western Road areas in about 12 months' time.
Just over 2 years ago (March 1957) facilities were provided at Athlone which enabled Athlone subscribers to dial their trunk calls direct to Dublin and several other places. The results were encouraging and it was then decided to extend the experiment to a larger exchange. Cork was chosen for the purpose and Subscriber Trunk Dialling facilities were introduced there last December. Additional diallin facilities were also provided at Dublin, and Dublin subscribers can now dial calls direct to automatic exchanges within 20 miles radius of Dublin such as Greystones, Naas, Celbridge, Maynooth, etc. That these dialling facilities are appreciated by the subscribers concerned is evidenced by the fact that almost 100 per cent. of the calls that can be so dialled are being dialled by the subscribers.
So much for the past and now a few words about the future. A comprehensive survey of telephone development is at present in hands. We have made an analysis under "occupation" of all our existing 87,000 telephone subscribers and a detailed survey of prospective development in every exchange area in the country has been made. Plans for future development will be based on the results of this survey.
The success of the subscriber trunk dialling facilities introduced at Athlone and Cork points the way to providing similar facilities at Dublin and the larger provincial centres and it is hoped to be able to provide these facilities in a number of centres within the next two years. The promotion of subscriber trunk dialling on as wide a scale as possible is the best way of ensuring a highly efficient service and of keeping down costs and the ultimate goal is subscriber trunk dialling on a national scale. Although it will take many years to complete national subscriber trunk dialling we have been actively engaged in planning for it. As indicated last year, we had the assistance of an international expert under the United Nations Technical Assistance Programme for some months to study the problems here and to recommend the most suitable and economic means of introducing a national subscriber trunk dialling scheme. In addition, one of our engineers was sent to Holland for a few months. We have since been planning on the basic recommendations of the expert's report.
As a first step in the new plan a revised system of charging is required. Deputies will be aware of the new system which was announced on 24th June and will be brought into operation on 1st August next. I may perhaps mention the principal features of the changes which are that the area covered by local calls will be greatly extended so that some 5,000,000 calls a year now charged at 6d. or 10d. or more will in future cost 2d.; the scale of trunk charges will be simplified and the maximum charge reduced; and an increase will be made in the night rates for certain cross-channel calls so as to achieve a better balance between night and day traffic.
Concurrently with the introduction of the new charging system two important rental concessions are being made; farmers will be supplied with telephones at the residence rental rate instead of at the business rate as heretofore, and the standard telephone rentals will apply up to 3 miles (instead of 2 miles) distance radically from exchanges.
The total cost to the Department's revenue of the various changes will be £125,000 a year.
One other important development worthy of mention is our entry into the field of trunk circuiting by means of radio links. A contract has been placed, and the system is scheduled for completion by May 1960, for a multi-channel radio link between Galway and Athlone where the circuits will join up with the existing co-axial cables. Tenders have been invited for another radio link system to provide circuits for Sligo—Bundoran—Ballyshannon— Donegal and estimates are being prepared for a multi-channel radio system to link Waterford with Wexford and Enniscorthy.
In the Post Office Savings Bank, deposits during 1958 amounted to £15,399,000, an increase of £257,000 on 1957; withdrawals amounted to £14,573,000 an increase of £67,000. However, the withdrawals include an amount, estimated at £600,000, which was withdrawn for reinvestment in Exchequer Stock, Savings Certificates and Prize Bonds. Estimating the interest for the year at £1,872,000, the total balance due to depositors at 31st December, 1958 was £78¾ million approximately as compared with £76 million at 31st December, 1957.
Deposits by Trustee Savings Banks during the year amounted to £860,000, an increase of £256,000, and withdrawals amounted to £430,000, a decrease of £156,000. The balance to credit of the Banks, including interest, at the end of the year was approximately £12½ million.
Sales of Savings Certificates in 1958 at £2,688,000 were £556,000 down on last year's sales. The decrease is attributed partly to a decline in the appeal of the 6th issue as it grows older—a feature common to all issues —partly to the attractions of alternative forms of investment and partly to a decrease in transfers from earlier issues.
The decrease in sales was, however, partially balanced by a decrease in repayment which amounted to £2,607,000, principal and interest, as against £2,663,000 in 1957. Approximately £130,000 of the amount repaid was withdrawn for investment in Exchequer Stock, Prize Bonds, and E.S.B. Loan.
In regard to Remittance and Agency Payment Services, the total volume of business in 1958 was slightly higher than in 1957, though there was not a uniform pattern of increase. The main factor in the growth of business was a rise of some 4% in both the number and the value of Postal Orders issued. The popularity of this service with the public has led us to decide to extend the range of values by introducing new orders of £3, £4 and £5, the commission in each case to be 6d. In 1953 the maximum was raised from 21s. to £2 and the additional denominations then introduced have fully justified their existence. I am confident that the new values will prove equally popular, particularly as the commission will be 3d. less than on Money Orders of equivalent value. It is hoped to have the new Postal Orders on sale in about 3 months' time.
In regard to Buildings, during the past year improvements have been made in the Post Offices at Castlebar, Donegal, Loughrea and Nenagh. New telephone exchange buildings were completed at Dundrum and at Still-organ Road in Dublin, at Skerries in County Dublin, at Galway and at Midleton, County Cork.
The new post offices in course of construction at Galway and Letter-kenny are expected to be completed this year. Work is in progress on a new post office and telephone exchange at Droichead Nua, and on new District Sorting Offices at Crumlin and Churchtown in Dublin. The erection of the buildings for the two new automatic exchanges in Cork, which I mentioned already, has commenced.
The sketch plans for the new Central Sorting Office in Dublin have been approved and the Office of Public Works is considering the type of structural design best suited to requirements. The undertaking is an outstandingly big building project and the preparation of contract drawings, etc., will necessarily take a long time.
I shall now deal with the question of staff. The number of staff provided for in the estimate is 16,179. In making a comparison it has to be remembered that a lump sum of £50,000 was included last year under Subhead I (1), which is not repeated this year, to cover the employment of additional men on telephone development and that, to this extent, an addition has to be made to the heads, specifically provided for last year. In fact, there is a small reduction of 15 in the total number of staff employed.
A good measure of agreement was secured in matters discussed at the Departmental Conciliation Council and the Sub-Postmasters' Consultative Council. I think I can claim confidently that, not merely the Administration, but the Staff Unions and Associations regard the existence of these Councils as doing a great deal in promoting good relations in the sphere of pay and conditions of service generally.
The search for improvement in organisation has gone on with unabated vigour. Noteworthy during the year was the completion of the reorganisation of Inspectors' Districts in the Engineering Branch and the provision of a construction depôt on the south side of Dublin City, both of which contributed materially to an expansion of telephone development.
The holding of Conferences between Headquarters officials and Postmasters has been a feature of the work of my Department over the past ten years or so. At these conferences, questions arising out of the administration of the whole range of Post Office services are discussed; Departmental policy is explained to Postmasters, and they, for their part, have an opportunity of putting forward their difficulties or suggestions for improving the services. In this way, the essential link between Headquarters and the local managers in the field is maintained and strengthened. This year, as an experiment, a conference of the residential type was held in Bray and, in line with modern ideas, the proceedings mainly took the form of group discussions. I am happy to say that this type of conference proved to be a great success and that the advantages deriving from it are likely to be long lasting.
In view of technical advances in telephone equipment, the Engineering Branch has developed courses for training of technicians on 12-circuit carrier systems and rural automatic exchanges of types not previously covered.
On the financial position, as Deputies are aware, the Commercial Accounts for 1957-58 which were published towards the end of last year, showed a profit larger than that for 1956-57, though modest in relation to the size of our business. It was stated in reply to a Parliamentary Question on 6th May that we had not sufficient information to prepare Commercial Accounts for 1958-59, but that on such information as was available it was estimated that we would make a net profit of about £200,000. We have not yet got all the data necessary to prepare an Account for 1958-59 and the forecast of 6th May still stands.
The result of last year's working is all the more satisfactory when it is remembered that we had to meet a considerable addition to our wages bill as a result of the general increase in Civil Service pay. Moreover, the only rate increase made during the year was on foreign telegrams and then it was to offset the increase in payments to foreign administrations and operating companies.
So far as can be seen at this stage, we will be also on the right side, in the financial sense, at the end of the current year. The basic reasons for this are the steady growth in postal and telephone traffic and the fact that we have been able to handle a higher volume of business in our stride. While the telegraph service is a losing service and one which it is quite impossible to run at a profit, we have been able to reduce the loss on it down to something in the region of £160,000 for the last few years. A factor in this has been the success of the Telex service, which is very much appreciated by commercial and industrial concerns. Growth of traffic is, of course, dependent on many factors not within our control, but I think I can claim that the high standard of the services we provide for the public and the relatively low rates we charge for them has been an important factor in stimulating the demand for them.
The sound position in which the Department now finds itself is, as I have said, due to the increase in its volume of traffic; but it would not have been possible to handle this economically without the zealous and efficient service which has always been given by the personnel of the Post Office to the public. To all grades of the staff I should like to express my appreciation of their service during the past year.
I should also like to add some words of appreciation of the Minister who immediately preceded me. When the announcement was made here in the House, that Deputy Ormonde did not wish Ministerial office and had determined, for health reasons, that he would no longer serve as a member of the Government, I was very pleased to hear the good wishes and tributes paid to him by Deputies from all sides. The fact that such tributes and good wishes were extended to him was very much appreciated by me also. I hope that Deputy Ormonde will be with us for many years to come as a Deputy for County Waterford.
