On 22nd October, I asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs "if he is aware of the profound dissatisfaction over the new Telephone Directory; and if accordingly he will recall the issue and arrange for an issue in a size of type more easily readable." When he was answering that question the Minister took with it two other questions. He never answered the first part at all. I asked him if he was aware of the profound dissatisfaction over the new Telephone Directory. His answer was: "I am not aware that there is general dissatisfaction with the type used in the new Telephone Directory." That was, frankly, a rather slick effort, unworthy of a Minister, to try to dodge answering the general question which was put to him.
As reported at Column 313 of the Official Report, the Minister proceeded to say, relating to me: "The Deputy is casting a reflection on an Irish firm" dealing with the heaviness of the ink in the printing of the Directory. The Minister should know—if he does not he should know, if he did his job—that the printing of any document for any section of the Government is dealt with by the Contracts Committee who receive from the Minister concerned a specification of what is required. That Committee, with that specification, issues advertisements or requests for tenders. The Minister is responsible for one of the representatives on that committee. When the tenders are received they are received in accordance with the specification prepared by the Minister himself if he is responsible for his Department and when the goods are delivered again they are checked by people for whom the Minister is responsible.
Either the Minister did not know or did not take the trouble to ascertain the procedure in relation to the printing of this Directory or any document or else he made that statement—I am not allowed to say, "knowing that it was untrue" and I do not propose to say it—recklessly and without believing in its truth. If this document is not in accordance with the specification and if the inking in it is not as it should be there is only one person responsible for that to this House and that is the present Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. It is a mean. petty thing for him, like a schoolboy caught cheating in an examination, to try to suggest that it was not he who was responsible but somebody else.
What are the facts? The facts are that every person who has occasion to use this Directory will be unable to use it unless he has unusually good eyesight or has the opportunity of using the Directory in the best possible light. Anybody who has any acquaintance with the Directory from day to day, anybody who takes the trouble, as I took the trouble and as I asked the Minister to take the trouble, to ring up at random people in the telephone book and to enquire from them whether they are satisfied with the new Directory will know that the answers received show that there is the greatest dissatisfaction up and down the country with this issue.
I do not know, quite honestly, anything about this type that is called "Bell Gothic" but I know that this type was used up to 1953 and that it was then changed to the type that was available in the directories up to this year when it was changed by the Minister's direction without his taking adequate precautions whether by reason of not providing a proper specification, or of failing to check the delivery. Only he can tell which was the reason.
We have got an issue now which the people cannot read and find impossible to read. We have got an issue that old people will not be able to follow. We have got an issue that no person, with the bad lighting that there inevitably and necessarily is in call boxes and telephone boxes, will be able to read. We have got an issue that is so bad that it is commonly being suggested around this city that one of the reasons for it is that there will be more wrong numbers and therefore more revenue going to the Post Office. I do not accept that as the reason that prompted this mess but the fact that that opinion is so widely held is indicative of the extent of the mess that has been produced.
The only effort at an excuse that was produced by the Minister was that it was impossible to bind the other Directory satisfactorily. Books of a much heavier size than the old directory in common use are bound satisfactorily enough. The Telephone Directories in other countries and to which the Minister himself referred in his reply are considerably bigger in depth and in thickness than the last Telephone Directory we had here. If there was any difficulty in binding from the point of view of size then it must have arisen because of some niggardliness in the specification and in what was going to be paid for the volume. The plain fact is that the Minister can find nobody at all in the country to stand over this Directory and to say it is a decent and a proper issue, outside those who are so tied to him that they dare not criticise him. Many of those who are tied to him in this House have exactly the same views as I am now expressing in the directory itself.
I suggested to the Minister on that occasion that the proper thing to do was to recall this issue. I think the situation is that the Minister has made such a mess of this issue that it is too late now to recall it, but something can be done to remedy the situation. It would be quite simple and would not cost anything more in distribution —because the Minister has the postmen available to distribute them in the ordinary way when they are distributing mail—to divide the telephone directory not merely into two parts in the one book as it is here but into two separate books, to issue one of these books in April and the other in October. For example, if he took the first part of the directory and issued the Dublin part in April, then at least we would not have this blister on our eyes before us for more than six months in relation to that half of the directory; or he could take the country part—perhaps the lighting would be worse even in the country—and issue that in April and issue the other half in October.
It would be a far better situation that for the future the telephone directory would be issued in two separate parts, one in April and one in October. It would not cost any more in the way of printing. It would also have this advantage that the supplement that is included at the end of every directory would be only six months old instead of being twelve months old as it is at the present time. It would mean that the additional telephones that come in during any six-monthly period could have their numbers included in the book issued at the end of each April and October issue. Then if a person got a telephone too late for insertion in the annual book, it could be included in the bi-annual one. The additional cost involved would not be substantial at all. It would be possible then, if the Minister is correct in saying that the book was too wide to bind—I do not think he was—to have a book of such width and thickness as to be reasonably handy.
I understand that up to the beginning of this week many people in the country had not even yet received their new directory. Perhaps it is a significant thing that I got mine two days after I put down a question to know when they were going to be delivered throughout the country. Anyway I have enquired why other people have not even yet got a new directory which the Minister himself said was to be commenced to be delivered on the 28th September.
