The most important and essential components of an efficient and proper system of public transport services were considered in the legislation passed in 1958 in a particularly superficial way. The public are paying for the results of the superficiality of the approach at that time. In fairness, I imagine one of the people who probably now, if he were asked, would confess to regretting that piece of legislation more than anybody else in the country would be the present general manager of the company. Because of the over-riding consideration incorporated in the legislation that the company, not later than the 31st March, 1964, should balance its operating expenditure with revenue, he better than any of us must now know that that was an impossible task for anybody to be set and that he was a particularly foolish and vain man to think that he could have carried out that achievement.
He must share his foolishness with the foolishness of the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, the present Taoiseach, who, in considering the whole problem of public transport, clearly gave it only the most cursory examination and consideration. It is quite clear he was dominated almost exclusively by strictly doctrinaire, conservative economic ideas and policies and that, so long as the board appeared to carry these through, he really did not mind what the consequences might be for the country as a whole. His main concern is expressed in column 1598, volume 167 of the Official Report, in which he says that our public transport should be put on a solvent basis and so relieve the general taxpayer of the necessity of subsidising it by annual subvention. He gave the general manager approximately 5 years to do that.
He said in the same column:
Indeed, the Bill envisages that the board will not have reached that situation for five years. I know that at the present time there are few railway systems in the world which are not losing money and that in expecting the board of CIE to achieve solvency it may be said that we are asking them to do something that other railway executives are not able to do even under more favourable circumstances.
But that he did ask the railway executive to do, and it is quite clear from present findings that they will not do it.
The then Minister went on further, in column 1599, to lay down the figure that they were to be given each year for this limited period as a subsidy to carry them over. He said, in column 1599:
It is possible that the subvention of £1,000,000 per year will not be sufficient to close the gap between receipts and outlay in 1959 and 1960, and CIE may have to resort to temporary borrowing to tide them over these years. I would hope, however, that this fixed subvention of £1,000,000 a year for five years will be more than sufficient in the latter years and that CIE will be able to pay off any temporary borrowing incurred in the earlier stages and have something left to carry on with, if complete solvency has not been finally reached by 1964.
The most recent of the Annual Reports discloses how hopelessly wrong the former Minister, the present Taoiseach, was in the fact that CIE are still running at a considerable loss and that this loss is increasing and shows little likelihood of being significantly reduced. In fact, there is a very serious likelihood that by the 1963 or 1964 period, instead of paying its way or not needing this additional subvention, we will find that CIE are in debt by anything up to £2,000,000. When they started in 1959 it was £1.9 million; in 1960, £700,000; in 1961, £250,000 approximately; and in 1962, £1.6 million. For a self-assured person, as the then Minister was and the Taoiseach now is, it is of great value to remind him from time to time that on these very important things he is as fallible as anybody else and that he did make a grave error in his estimation of the likely pattern for the future which would be followed by CIE if he gave them these over-riding orders: "You must break even by March, 1964; you work virtually in isolation, and your subsidy from the State must stop then."
I hope that if the Minister intervenes in this debate he will tell us if he still seriously believes it will be possible for CIE, with Dr. Andrews in charge, to break even by 1964. For a man in the position the Taoiseach was then in to fix this sum of £1,000,000, at a time when everybody knew all currency was debased currency, because of its tendency to lose its value, shows the superficial approach of the then Minister to the problem. It was quite clear that this £1,000,000 would not have the same value from year to year as it has in the first year and that, if he wanted to give some sort of subvention from the State each year, it would have been much wiser to have based that on some percentage calculation of the loss existing at that time—a decreasing percentage— if he seriously believed he was going to find that in 1964 CIE was, in fact, paying its way. Not only are we facing the position that the cost of living has gone up, with resultant justifiable wage demands, which have increased the losses without any increase in revenue, but we are also facing the likelihood that, when we enter the Common Market, we may see anything from a ten to a 15 per cent. rise in the cost of living. There will then be further wage demands and, because of that, further losses in CIE.
The whole proposition was, therefore, a completely impossible one to put to the management of CIE. It does not matter whether it is Dr. Andrews or anybody else. It just happens that he used his position in a particularly arrogant and inhuman way and, because of his brash and insensitive manner with the public, he not only did not make a go of the concern but he succeeded in creating widespread dissatisfaction with the whole transport system on the part of the public, on the part of labour, and even on the part of those who might have used the concern, farmers and others. Deputy Corry gave his reaction the other day—the reaction of the civilian—to the organisation of CIE. There would, he said, be an end to contracts. That is because of his resentment at the way they were treated as members of the public. That is a particular incident. Most of us could add to that incident and the whole adds up to a position wherein the overriding diktat of the Minister for Industry and Commerce at the time made it impossible for CIE to operate successfully.
It is quite remarkable to note in the annual report of CIE the ingenuous, childlike irritation of management because they have had to face demands for increases in wages. There is a most astonishing reaction from Dr. Andrews and his colleagues on the Board. In one report alone, the matter is mentioned four times in a very short preamble: they did not make as much as they hoped they would because of wage increases, because of the eighth round increase, because of the demands of the unions, or some similar smeary suggestion that, if it were not for this covert sabotage on the part of the workers and the unions, everything would have been rosy. It would have been "roses, roses all the way" for CIE, if it were not for the disloyalty of the servants of CIE. This was the absusrd and insolent suggestion on the part of the management in the Labour Court, the boardroom, or somewhere else.
Why should an unfortunate worker care whether or not CIE will break even? Why should he make a sacrifice? Why should he resist a legitimate demand for an increase in wages following on an increase in the cost of living or, following on something much simpler, namely, a demand for some improvement in working conditions, a shorter working week, better overtime pay, better weekend work? Why should the CIE worker have to make a sacrifice which notably none of the higher-ups in CIE made? I have not noticed that any of them is prepared to take a voluntary cut in salary or emoluments in order to facilitate the implementation of this absurd provision of the 1958 Act that CIE should break even by 1964.
Did Dr. Andrews think when he went into it that he had dictatorial powers to establish or insist on a wages standstill? Did he think he still lived in the kind of world in which he could ask workers to ignore the fact that they could not buy enough bread, enough butter, enough tea, enough sugar, clothes for their children, or pay school fees for their children, merely because they had the privilege of working for CIE? That was sufficient in itself! What an absurd suggestion! But it was made again, and again, and again, and it was incorporated in print in this report.
It is part of private enterprise and capitalism to say, whenever there is a demand for a wage increase, that the workers want more money, for no clear reason that they can see, and, if it were not for their wanting more money, everything would cost little or nothing. There is no reference at all to profits or to dividends. All the references are to wage demands. It is the same with CIE. The accusation is that the workers did not listen to Dr. Andrews when he said: "We have got to break even. If you do not mind, no increase this year; possibly not next year; maybe not the year after; possibly in 1964." What good is that to the worker faced with a school bill, a grocery bill, a hospital bill, or whatever it may be?
Irish industrial concerns have absorbed the eighth round increase. Admittedly, they were not tied like Dr. Andrews and his people. But they absorbed it. They passed it on to the consumer ultimately. Dr. Andrews did exactly the same thing, but he still did not achieve his overall objective of breaking even. He comes up with the suggestion then that because CIE had to meet these increases, they suffered this unexpected deficit. One would think he lived in the moon. Surely he was in this situation before? Did he not expect the CIE workers to look for an increase? Did he think they would not behave in precisely the same way as Bord na Móna workers behaved when they were faced with an increase in the cost of living?
It is very wrong to poison the public and labour relations by indicting the worker in this way in these semi-State concerns, making them appear responsible for the fact that Dr. Andrews is not able for the job, is not able to carry out an impossible undertaking imposed on him by Deputy Lemass as Minister for Industry and Commerce. The result is a conflict. Dr. Andrews will not say to the Minister: "I cannot possibly expect these people to take a voluntary cut or make a voluntary sacrifice in order to carry out an impossible undertaking". Instead of saying that, he goes to these various courts and fights the workers on the sole ground that he must "break even", as if that were any concern of theirs.
The result of all this has been labour disputes of one kind or another, official disputes and unofficial disputes. The result of that is repercussions in the trade union movement. It has reacted throughout one of the principal unions in a most serious way from their point of view. The workers were not satisfied with what they were given by CIE.
Then on another occasion there was a lock-out. Using the archaic procedure adopted by Dr. Andrews, following in the footsteps of the great William Martin Murphy, a lock-out technique was used. All these things add up to the fact that the public got, get, and have the impression that labour relations in CIE are very unsatisfactory. Certainly any of the workers I know in CIE are most unhappy in their relationship with management.
It seems to me that if this man cannot do the job properly, he should either tell the Government or the Minister: "This is an impossible undertaking to ask me to carry out," or he should resign. He cannot have it both ways. The fact of the matter is, as the GNR and the GSR have shown, that it is not possible, consonant with the social needs of society— and particularly in a complicated society like ours with its great rural overlap—to operate a transport concern at a profit.
That is becoming obvious and for that reason we felt it was desirable that the Minister should reconsider the basic principles of our public transport at this time. One of the repercussions of the labour difficulties has been reflected in revenue. In his short speech the other day, Deputy O'Connor really touched on a consequence that had arisen, the uncertainty amongst merchants—and I suppose it could be said, the legitimate uncertainty — as to whether they could rely completely on CIE to deliver their merchandise of one kind or another. The result was that because of those labour difficulties that occur from time to time, most of them decided: "It would be better for us to run our own independent transport service."
That, of course, is reflected in the transport figures generally and there is no significant advance by CIE in taking over the general public transport services of the country. One Deputy was given figures last week which demonstrate that very clearly. I think the ratio is something like ten to one in haulage and merchandise as between the private service and CIE. There is no significant impact by CIE in whittling down the domination of the private enterprise section of the public transport service generally where it is related to merchandise.
I wonder whether the Minister has considered, or would consider, the whole position arising from the fact that there is a preponderence of private transport and where there is private transport there is naturally no need for public transport for the reason that it follows, as in most other services, that private transport tends to go for the easy return and the foreseeably sound undertaking. It is never a risk because it is largely certain of the work it has to do. It is purchased for a particular purpose and it can usually manage to draw even or make a profit, while the public transport service is at the beck and call of virtually everyone and tends to be squeezed into keeping only the uneconomic public transport sector which the private sector does not want.
I wonder if the Minister has given any serious thought to the likelihood or desirability of reconsidering the whole position of private haulage transport to see whether it is possible to assimilate it into the public sector, where that is desirable. This merely re-emphasises the impossibility of geting the whole public transport service to pay its way, not only by 1964, but by 1974, 1984 or ever. The Minister might decide that he cannot touch private haulage for political or other reasons, but because he cannot, then the public sector must be run at a loss, that that is one of the penalties which he must pay for believing in private enterprise, and recognising that fact get rid of this provision which is impossible and which cannot be honoured by anyone in charge of CIE.
I suppose one of the oddest answers one could get—and it is most significant in many ways—is the answer which I got from the Minister to-day on the number of employees in CIE. One of the things which the public find it so difficult to understand is the persistent news of redundancy in CIE, with varying degrees of consultation or lack of consultation with the trade unions or the workers concerned, men laid off, and calculations as to what precise compensation should be paid, and whether or not the men were satisfied, and allied with that redundancy, periodic advertisements in the paper for recruitment to CIE.
What underlies this extraordinary approach to the service which the Beddy report said should be drastically pruned and reorganised? How is it, if there is this reduction in services, alteration in services, closing of railway lines, closing of stations and all the auxiliary services involved, that now after three or four years, out of a total of nearly 22,000 workers, there are 200 fewer people employed in CIE. While there are 200 fewer persons employed in CIE, we are paying out in the region of £800,000 for redundancy compensation.
The Minister may have an answer pat that satisfies him but throughout the whole of the operation of CIE, since Dr. Andrews took over, in particular, and since the Minister took over his position here in particular, there has been this appalling contempt for the public. I know what is going on and I understand what is going on. I have proof of what is going on. It is a complete lack of appreciation of the reality that both the Minister and Dr. Andrews are employees of the public. They are responsible to us. We pay their salaries. We lay down the conditions on which they are employed and they are answerable to us. CIE should not be run as a sort of dictatorship in which we are told that everything is all right because the great panjandrum, the boy wonder from Synge Street, is in control, that everything is all right, that "Dad is at the wheel" and consequently no one need bother.
That, of course, was completely exploded by the remarkable blunder made in the purchase of diesel electric locomotives which could only be safely driven in one direction, a fact which was only recognised when we got them back here to Dublin. It is deplorable that the Minister makes no attempt to carry out any serious inquiry or to give the public or the taxpayers, who are paying for this, some undertaking that this will not happen again or that some measures will be taken to see that the people who did it will not do it again.
No matter which aspect of the operation of the service that is taken there is very little that can be said in favour of the man in control of its operation. It was recommended that there should be serious pruning. It was intended to reduce the number of staff needed to operate the service. That was the intention of the 1958 Act, that this would lead to a reduction in the cost of the service, and in practically every case the reverse has happened. The only aspect of public relations which is adequately handled is the build-up this Chairman of the Board gets in order to prove that he is infallible, that while he has control everybody is safe and well, everything is going on as was ordained and that there is no need to criticise or question him in any way.
We have attempted on a number of occasions to get more information, so that we could carry out a debate of this kind intelligently and usefully from the point of view of the House, but on nearly every occasion we have been told either that the Minister has no responsibility or the man in charge, the Chairman, Dr. Andrews, simply will not give it. That is one of the things which has led to very bad public relations and labour relations. On the one hand he is responsible for public relations and he is also responsible for labour relations. If we suggest there should be a better city service, that the schedule for Sunday be changed, or whatever it may be, and we ask to see this man, we are told there can be no discussion with him. He is completely inaccessible.
This is an extraordinary, a new principle, in relation to public life in Ireland. I do not think there is a single Minister on those Benches, including the Taoiseach, or the former Taoiseach and his colleagues, who was not accessible to every one of us any time we wanted to see them. I know certainly in my own time that was true, that we were completely accessible and we were glad to see anyone who wanted to talk to us about matters which concerned them. That is not permissible now under this new rule laid down by Dr. Andrews.
If the Chairman of CIE has a good case, why does he not put it to us? What has this particular man got that makes him so inaccessible as opposed to the Taoiseach, the Minister for Transport and Power or any other Ministers or their predecessors in the Cabinet? Why should he be permitted to institute this new doctrine? If Deputy Seán Dunne comes in here and says what he did say, he cannot be blamed. None of us is afraid to say these things personally to Dr. Andrews. We should be delighted to do it in precisely the same terms as I am doing now but we cannot see him.
Similarly, in relation to the Minister's position, we are not allowed to ask him questions, so it is about as easy to find out about the detailed workings under the Secret Service Vote in this House as it is to find out about the workings of CIE. We can only surmise and put together the best information we find, the limited, sparse and biased information which is handed out, and because it is handed out by Dr. Andrews and his executive it is suspect information. We should be given information as we wish, whatever reasonable information we ask for. The information I sought was perfectly reasonable information.
The result of all this is that there are bad labour relations and bad public relations. Deputy T. Lynch and other Deputies were asking for information which they required for a deputation. Again, in my own experience, it was the first thing for which we asked: if any deputation was coming along could they submit a memorandum of the general views so that it would be possible for us to have an intelligent discussion, so that it would be possible for us to prepare our side of the story. If any useful discussion is to be carried out, it can only be carried out when the maximum information is available to both sides of the table. Why should it be withheld if there is nothing suspect, if there is no sense of guilt about it? If it contributes to the discussion or if it contributes to eliciting the truth in regard to whether you should or should not limit a service, extend a service, increase somebody's pay or whatever it may be, why not make that information available?
As I understand it, sometimes the information is changed two or three times. I know that in relation to the Bray-Greystones position, different figures were given. That merely shows the fallibility of these people. If there is a good case let us remember the cliché: not only should justice be done but it should be seen to be done. That would seem to be the ABC of public relations. He must bring the people with him. On the other hand, he can go against them and except for the odd protest we make here there is little we can do about it. However, we have heard what Deputy Corry had to say and he is only one of the many people——
