When I reported progress last night, I was drawing the House's attention to the Minister as an unrepentant sinner. Last night, we again got the valuable information from the Minister that he takes responsibility for everything done by CIE. He takes full responsibility. He announced here on several occasions last night that it is under his directive that all these things that CIE have been doing for the last couple of years are done, in spite of public protests. It is he who is responsible for all these. The Minister has intervened every time I mention the name of Dr. C.S. Andrews. Every time I do so the Minister springs to his feet and says that he is not going to have Dr. Andrews attacked in this House. That is not what I was doing at all. We were under the impression that Dr. Andrews was responsible for the conduct of CIE but now it seems that he has been the victim of the Minister who makes the decisions and tells Dr. Andrews to carry them out.
Committee on Finance. - Vote 45—Transport and Power. (Resumed).
On a point of explanation, Sir, I do not want to be again misquoted by the Deputy. I did not say that I make individual decisions. I said that under the 1958 Act I had general responsibility and if I thought the carrying out of the Act by CIE was inimical to the interests of the country and if I felt it was necessary to come to the Dáil for an amendment of that Act, I would have no hesitation in doing so. I said that I was responsible for the administration of the Act and that is borne out by the fact that I have to authorise the continuation of the payment of the subsidy of £1,175,000. It does not mean that I personally administer CIE. I have had to say that every time this matter comes up and I should have thought that Deputies would have understood the position by now.
Last night when I spoke about the brutal tearing up of the Tramore Railway, I was interrupted.
It has been generally accepted by the House that the Minister is responsible to the House for the working of his Department. The Minister for Transport and Power is responsible to this House for the administration of his Department and it is to him that all the criticism should be directed. People who have not the opportunity of defending themselves in this House should not be dragged into the discussion. That has been the accepted rule in this House.
I was not mentioning anybody. I was going to pay Dr. Andrews a tribute because of the position in which he has found himself.
I am not saying that the Deputy is criticising anybody. I am only helping Deputies as to the manner in which the discussion should be carried on.
Does that mean that one cannot criticise anyone except members of this House?
It means what I said, that criticism of a Department for which the Minister is responsible should be directed to the Minister himself and not to the higher public servants and secretaries. It would be a very easy step to discussing secretaries of Departments and other such people if this were allowed.
Therefore the Minister's intervention was disorderly inasmuch as the Deputy was directing his criticism to the Minister and the Minister's intervention was for the purpose of stopping that criticism.
I am the authority on order here and I rule that the Minister was perfectly orderly in his interjection.
I am not challenging that ruling. I was criticising the Minister.
I am not discussing what the Deputy was doing but I am giving a general ruling as to what is generally accepted by the House with regard to the administration of Departments. Criticism of the administration of a Department should be directed to the Minister responsible for that Department.
It is an extraordinary state of affairs that one can mention other people here. I have heard the name of the head of another department for which the Minister is responsible mentioned here. I have heard the name of a certain Mr. O'Driscoll mentioned here and nobody took any umbrage.
I am not objecting to the name of an individual being mentioned. That may be unavoidable but criticism of the administration of a Department should be directed solely to the Minister responsible.
I am directing my criticism to the Minister and I mentioned the name of Dr. Andrews to point out that when Deputy Kyne and I sent a telegram to him to ask for the consultation which we had been promised by the Taoiseach, we did not get it. The Taoiseach gave a solemn promise to the House during the passage of that Act that there would be prior consultation before any lines were closed down. We were refused that consultation. That is all I want to say but the minute I mentioned the name "Andrews" the Minister jumped up and got hysterics. I am afraid the same practice will be applied in the case of the Youghal-Cork railway. I do not fall for this talk of reconsideration. Reconsideration is a dangerous word in the mouth of a Fianna Fáil Minister. When he says he is reconsidering something, it means that he is playing for time to chop it off. The Minister says he is reconsidering the question of the Youghal-Cork railway.
CIE is reconsidering it.
Now, Sir, who is being disorderly? Last night we had the Government Deputy who knows all the answers, Deputy Corry, coming in here challenging the Minister's figures and his challenge has not been taken up. I drew attention to the fact that figures given to me by the Minister were not correct. I have been asking the Minister by Parliamentary Question, and it is a reasonable question, whether the bus service being run by CIE between Waterford and Tramore is a paying proposition.
That is a gross repetition of what the Deputy said last night.
I will keep on repeating that question until the Minister answers it. We are entitled to ask these questions and we are entitled to get answers to them. The Minister now finds himself in the unpopular position that a political Party in this House has put down a motion which is now being debated that his salary be reduced. The reasons for doing that are his insolence and arrogance to Deputies.
The Labour Party have this motion down regarding a reduction of £1,000 a year in the Minister's salary. I thought when last night the Minister accepted responsibility for CIE, we could come in here this morning and justify it, but now we get a line of double-talk from the Minister—now he is responsible and now he is not. The Minister has a good public relations officer who manages to get him invitations anywhere. If two cats started to dance, he would be there. He was at the RGDATA lunch the other day and I am still wondering what the Minister for Transport and Power has to do with that organisation. I do not know who got him the invitation but I do know that practically half the Fianna Fáil Cabinet was invited to open the Waterford Festival and it was a case of when all fruit failed, the Minister's name was submitted. I did not intend saying this but I will say it because of the way the Minister opened up this morning. The Minister was invited to open the Waterford Light Opera Festival by its committee and the programme was that he was to be accorded a civic welcome by the Mayor and Corporation in the——
Surely that is hardly relevant? It is introducing light opera into the discussion.
There is nothing light about this at all. I am pointing out that the Labour Party are justified in this matter of asking for a reduction in the Minister's salary.
The Minister opening the Light Opera Festival has nothing to do with the discussion.
The Minister was invited down to carry out one of his functions. He is in charge of the Tourist Board and the Board has some interest in this and he came down to open the festival. He was to be there at 7.30 p.m. and he arrived in Waterford at a quarter to 7. I saw him at the hotel. There were 1,000 people in the theatre——
Did he give you a song?
He did not but he kept the people waiting until 9.30 p.m.
This is a complete libel. I carried out my instructions absolutely. I had been to the Cork Airport and I arrived exactly as I was told and carried out the instructions given to me. I do not know why this debate should finally end up in personal abuse.
I do not think the matter has any serious relevancy to the motion before us.
I think it is worthwhile. This Minister is in charge of tourism and tourism promotion. It was bad enough to keep the 1,000 people there but to keep the boys and girls back stage——
I did not keep anybody waiting. This is sheer scandal-mongering of the lowest order.
I know what I am talking about and I will produce the invitation the Minister got. This is not personal abuse. We have the right to come in and criticise the Minister. I was told I should criticise the Minister——
On matters having a serious relevancy to the matter before the House.
With respect, when a Minister of State is carrying out his functions as a Minister, which relate to his Department and to something for which he is responsible, as he says, if does not carry out that function properly, I do not see why a Deputy cannot come in and say he——
The Deputy has said it and should be satisfied now.
I want to reiterate it——
Repetition is not in order.
——in answer to the trained dog act over there on the far side. We are told that these railways lines which the Minister has up for the block, especially the one in which I am interested, the one from Waterford to Mallow, have to go because they are losing money. The Minister says they are uneconomic and when speaking to the Transport Bill in Private Members' Time recently, he said he was sick and tired of having empty trains going up and down the country. It is not nice to have the Minister looking at empty trains going up and down the country but the Minister will look at empty planes flying across the Atlantic. The Minister can lose £552,000 on the airports as he did last year, and it will not turn him around. I do not want the Minister to close the airports either. I want to say that because he might make that decision and give the order to the counterpart of Dr. Andrews in Aer Lingus and Aerlinte. If he gave the orders, then these orders for destruction can be carried out so quickly we would find ourselves without an airport or a plane inside four minutes.
I see in the Minister's speech that he says in regard to Shannon Airport that:
Adverse factors affecting the service are the decrease in transit traffic and the reduction from 500 dollars to 100 dollars of the dutyfree allowance of US tourists returning home.
That is normal business. Your business is good and your business is bad and you may be consistently having it bad but you have to carry on. The Minister must carry on and that is the policy he should adopt. That is the policy the House would like to see him adopt. The railway section of CIE should not be treated so lightly. It loses £1 million odd a year but it employs 14,000 people all over the country. If an entrepreneur came to the Minister and said: “I have a proposal that will employ 14,000 people in various parts of the country and which will pay wages and provide a livelihood and give a public service to the people,” the Minister and his colleagues and the Taoiseach would think seriously of putting up the money.
I am offering no criticism about the Veromle Dockyard. It was a brave venture. There was 5 million put up to employ 500 or 600 men. But it appears to be a hardship to pay out wages and any losses on the railways. I shall come back to that.
The Minister has constantly been asked in this House about helicopters and the advisability of getting some of them or the advisability of joining up with his colleague, the Minister for Defence, in having helicopters. There are no helicopters in this country under Government control or under the control of any of the Government companies. The Minister stated here that he was considering the matter— which is always a dangerous thing because when a Fianna Fáil Minister is considering something, he is either going to do nothing or he is going to do the wrong thing.
A short while ago, a former President of the United States was on a visit here. On one very bad day when it was raining cats and dogs, when visibility was not too good, and so on, he was able to take a helicopter to bring him to the home of a former President of this country and then he was able to go from there to Wexford and to return again. Surely that incident in itself should convey to the Minister that that type of transport is of some benefit.
I am thinking of men at sea and of the element of luck when their boat is in great danger. I am thinking of the crew of a boat which sank. The best lifeboat crews in existence were not able to reach these men because the storm was so great. However, the element of luck existed. There was a British aircraft carrier in the Bristol Channel. They launched a helicopter from the carrier and the seamen were saved. The same thing happened recently off the west coast. Surely these incidents should convey something to the Minister. However, having dug in his heels in his usual fashion and with the attitude: "I will not do anything for these boys," he says he would not even consider seriously the purchase of helicopters.
I have seen the result of Fianna Fáil prejudice against Waterford all down through the years. If there was anything that we had and that could be taken from us, it was taken from us. I may say, too, that it is taken from us in the most arrogant and the most insulting way—and the Minister is carrying out and continuing that policy.
There is a private bus service in Waterford which is run by a former colleague of mine. It does not run on Sundays. CIE were approached and asked if they would run the bus service because it would take in Ardkeen, the General Hospital in Waterford. The area manager is reported to have said, and I commend him for it: "Well, if nobody else will run a bus service there, we will run a bus service there, whether or not it pays." I would recommend that young man—I do not know him very well—to the Minister. That is the spirit.
We are not interested in this coldblooded spirit of the so-called traffic expert who will strike off buses and tear up railway lines. What we want is the spirit of the area manager or the traffic manager who is anxious to give the public a service and who is prepared to do so. That is the policy I commend to the Minister when he says he has responsibility. As it happened, competition being the life of trade, my colleague then said: "Oh, well, I shall put it on myself"—and so he did. I commend that to the Minister. It is good to have CIE in competition with other people and it is good to have other people in competition with CIE.
Farmers were in great difficulty this year with their harvest. There was a great deal of wheat and it was left long out of the mill because the CIE lorries did not come for it. If the Minister springs to his feet to deny that, I shall give him the names of the people and the dates, too, because the people came in to me and telephone calls were made. Some of them had booked lorries for that day and some of them had booked them for the day before and the lorries were not there.
I have been speaking to licensed hauliers from various parts of the country. They spoke about the distance they are allowed to travel and the conditions under which they hold their plates. That is all right. The Minister must have certain conditions. However, I am asking him or his Department or whoever is concerned with it to review some of the distances involved. I am not talking now of an addition of 20 miles or 50 miles and so on.
It just happens that a man living in a certain place is allowed to travel a certain distance, north, south, east and west of that place. That appears to be all right, if all the towns were equal distances apart. There are centres of population which these people are not able to reach, because they are permitted to travel only a certain mileage from their own district, though they are within a few miles of them. When the extra distance involved is only a short distance, I think that in these individual cases—because the individual is important—the Minister should see to it that the rights of these men are reviewed. They are giving a very fine service to the people in the country.
I come now to tourism. Our most valuable tourist asset is the British tourist. When Deputies from all sides of the House talk about tourists from Britain, they always refer to them as British tourists or English tourists. Yet, if these people try to sell us sixpence-halfpenny worth of mousetraps or something like that, they are then referred to by some Deputies as "foreigners" and the commodity is "foreign". That kind of "carry-on" is no good for the promotion of tourism. These people come over here and, as is well known, they are our biggest asset. Next in order of importance are our own people returning from England. I heard Deputy Kyne criticising the service between Fishguard and Rosslare. That service is run by British Railways with very fine ships and crews who have great esprit de corps. But the ships are often overloaded because, through feelings of decency, the officials do not leave people standing on a pier, but allow them aboard for the short trip in peak periods.
I suggest that the Minister should approach British Railways and remind them that, under an Act of their own Parliament, they are bound to provide a daily service and in the Minister's phrase "an adequate service". I am not concerned with Dún Laoghaire which is well able to look after itself and is better looked after than any other place in Ireland.
Some years ago, British Railways told Waterford Harbour Commissioners that they were going to remove the passenger service, not because of lack of support but because they wanted to rip out the passenger cabins to get more container space and more space for cars. That sounded all right but we lost the passenger service because a colleague of the Minister, the present Taoiseach, was then in charge of tourism as Minister for Industry and Commerce. Waterford Harbour Commissioners approached the then Minister as their father and protector and told him there had been an agreement, copper-fastened by an Act of the British Parliament, which provided for a daily service to be maintained in Waterford. The Act was passed about 1903 or 1904.
The Minister then did not think much of it and said the British could amend the Act. I know that can be said of the British in other respects but I do not think they would have broken that promise if it were put to them that they had given an undertaking about the service to Waterford and we wanted them to stand over it. But the old prejudice against Waterford was at work and we now have no passenger service into Waterford. All the passengers pile into the Rosslare service, although no extra boat was put on that service. I draw the Minister's attention to that.
It is very hard sometimes to convince the House and sometimes impossible to convince the Minister, but if the Minister were to travel on these boats, he would see conditions for himself. If he said: "I shall suffer the discomfort of staying up" and travelled third class, he would see the people crowded in with no berths. I have seen that on the B. & I. service also. That is not the fault of the crew or those running that service; it is the fault of British Railways who are not providing an adequate service and it is the fault of our Minister for Transport and Power in that he does not approach his British counterpart to ensure an adequate number of ships will be put on this service. If the British are not prepared to do this themselves, we have ships—and this is in the Minister's bailiwick also—on charter all over the world and if British Railways are not prepared to provide extra boats let the Minister be brave enough to say: "We will put on our own ships or I shall charter passenger ships and put them on." He could then advertise in Britain, from which most of the tourist trade comes, inviting people to travel to Ireland by the most comfortable possible service.
Perhaps the Minister does not want it to be comfortable because it is cheap. Perhaps it does not matter about the ordinary working people who must travel by boat; perhaps the Minister is trying to funnel as many as possible into the airports. I do not know the Minister's mind. Sometimes he does not know it himself.
The Irish Shipping Company fleet consists at present of 17 dry-cargo vessels totalling 138,500 tons deadweight and three tankers totalling 39,400 tons deadweight. The dry-cargo fleet includes two recent deliveries of 15,000 tons deadweight each, the "Irish Rowan," which is a sistership of the "Irish Sycamore" delivered last year, and the "Irish Cedar," the first of two sistership bulk carriers. The second bulk carrier is due for delivery in March, 1963. These carriers are to enable the company to participate in the growing development of specialised bulk carriage. I want to know are these being built for ourselves? I know we are told they will always stand by in case of emergency but can a 15,000-tonner fully laden be discharged at the port of Galway, Limerick, Fenit, Cork or Waterford, Drogheda or Dundalk? I do not think it can; they can be discharged only at the port of Dublin and I doubt if they could be discharged there, if fully laden when coming in. We are not really building these as reserves but because we are going into the world charter business. I have no objection to that but I should like it to be stated.
I come from a port city and I have noticed a trend in shipping. I have seen the Dutch who had all their shipping sunk during the war and their cities smashed, coming out again in the year after the war. I saw one of their small motor vessels coming into Waterford. She was run by a family. We can see these vessels in all our ports as common carriers for everything. But we had to be big; we want to build 15,000 tonners that could not be seen in any of our ports. If there are cargoes to be sent to ports on the western seaboard where they can take vessels up to only 2,000 tons, the ships that will go there will be flying the flags of other countries or flags of convenience. Seldom can our ships go there. It is not good policy, if we are making provision for an emergency situation, to build these two ships of 15,000 tons each. If there are two sinkings, we are without the two ships. If ten ships of 3,000 tons were built and the ships were distributed properly, cargoes could be discharged at ports convenient to distributing centres.
During the war, ships came into Waterford and Dublin and the cargoes that were destined for Dublin were on the ships berthed in Waterford and valuable petrol was consumed in bringing the goods to Dublin and surrounding districts. People engaged in shipping and people who have been at sea have suggested to me that while you will not make much money out of a small ship, you will not lose as much as many of our big ships are losing daily.
I notice that a contract was given to the Verolme Shipyard and that the ship has been launched. I am sure that, if a concession or preference were to be extended, the Minister would give it to the Verolme Shipyard. I would suggest that, after the Verolme Shipyard, preference should be given to Belfast in the matter of orders for ships. People go around with their hands on their hearts talking about the Six Counties, Partition, and all the rest of it and saying that they will force the North to come in, and so on. Why not do business with the North, where possible? When there is unemployment in Belfast, we could do the generous thing and give our orders to them. I notice that an order for a ship for Irish Shipping was placed in Holland. I would prefer the ships to be built in Belfast, even if there were never any political division between us.
Harland and Wolff have always been asked to tender. They have not tendered.
I am sorry the Minister did not make that public.
It was made public long ago.
They have not tendered?
It was made public in this House long ago. The Deputy knows that well.
I should like to know how long ago it was made public.
I cannot tell you.
I put down a Parliamentary Question one day—— and I will be able to get day and date for it—asking if preference were given to Belfast and I was told that their tenders would be considered with those of anybody else. I am suggesting to the Minister that if the Belfast shipyard tenders for a ship, we should meet them, even if they are a little bit dearer.
And a good bit.
And a good bit. We should take the Belfast ship because a Belfast ship is a good ship. Harland and Wolff are good shipbuilders. Of course, the Verolme Shipyard should be taken into consideration all the time but if the contract did not suit Verolme and if the Belfast Shipyard tenders and other countries tender, I would take into consideration that we have many ties still with the North and would do the generous thing.
The Minister has devoted pages of his speech to Dún Laoghaire. Rosslare and Fishguard come in at the end. The Minister said:
Improvements at the Mailboat Pier at Dún Laoghaire are continuing. Covered queuing space and improved toilet facilities have been provided, and two cranes which will facilitate the handling of cars have been delivered and are in course of erection.
That is all to the good. Then he says:
Improvements at Rosslare Harbour include the provision of increased space for customs examination and the marshalling of passengers. New toilets have been provided and the refreshment rooms have been extensively improved.
I hope they have been extensively improved. I must go down there to see. The Minister also referred to the proposals for the introduction by Aer Lingus of an air ferry for cars next year. I know we are very keen to get into this business and that is a good thing. A careful watch should be kept on what other countries do in the off season. In the month of May and June, when countries make a great effort to attract tourists, our friends in Sweden will take a car from England, if there are four or five passengers with it, for about £4. We have done something similar in giving reduced rates on boats in the off season. This is a cut-throat business. We should be in the forefront of bidders for it.
It has often been suggested to me that in respect of the months of May, June and early July, arrangements should be made between CIE and British Railways, even if it involved subsidisation, to have excursion fares from various English centres. That is the period during which hotels are working at half capacity.
The Minister said:—
The provision in 1961-62 was for a total expenditure on harbours of £240,000, but expenditure in the period reached only £151,930 because certain works, contrary to expectations, did not commence within the year or did not proceed at the expected rate.
I do not know what was the cause of that. I could wager that the port of Waterford was not getting any of it. The port of Waterford is a paying proposition. The Waterford Harbour Commissioners are progressive people, who know their business. I heard one of the great captains of Irish Shipping saying when the jetty was declared open on the north side that this was one of the finest jetties in the country, a magnificent jetty for a ship to come into and to berth at. Many other people thought the same thing. There are many ships berthing at the jetty. In fact, there is some overcrowding at times. The Waterford Harbour Commissioners, in their wisdom, had bought the portion of the jetty at the north side that was known as McCullough's Wharf.
This is an old wooded wharf that is past its time. I do not know whether the people there have applied to the Minister for a grant but if they have, I hope he will give them assistance to extend the great jetty at the north end of McCullough's Wharf. That would bring us into what should be dear to the Minister's heart—the CIE railway lines run down on to the wharf at one end and into the premises of firms at the other. They have a marshalling yard there and railway wagons can be brought in alongside ships. That would do away with the necessity for a lot of the lorry traffic that comes in there. The availability of a railway line direct from the wharf to business premises should make the discharge of cargoes and their delivery much easier and would be of mutual benefit to CIE and to the firms concerned. The Minister said in his opening statement:
The present trend in international trading indicates clearly that more and more commerce is entering and leaving the larger harbours, creating a problem for coastal shipping and for the continued existence of the smaller harbours.
With respect to the Minister, it is he who is creating a problem for these harbours by bringing in 15,000 tonners. The Minister goes on in his statement:
Harbour facilities have to be sold just as air traffic and railway traffic are sold and the smaller harbours cannot expect to survive unless there is active selling in every single case.
There is a whole series of losses of this sort the Minister has to do away with. I am speaking for the port of Waterford where they pay their way. This, in a way, could be a handicap to us, because the fact that we are paying our way might mean the Government would give us nothing.
Bord Fáilte come in for a lot of criticism, but, by and large, I think they are doing a good job all over the country as far as the ordinary hotels are concerned. They have encouraged improved standards in hotels. The standard in a number of our pubs has also been raised through the encouragement given by Bord Fáilte. Accordingly, there is no use decrying Bord Fáilte. They have done a great deal to improve tourist amenities all over the country. I read a letter in the newspapers recently from a man who had returned from abroad—I think it was Turkey—comparing hotel prices in Dublin with those in the country he had come from. He said he had paid at the rate of £12 to £14 for six days in a Dublin hotel by comparison with £2 a day abroad. What is the difference?
With all due respect to a lot of these people who talk about over-charging, I have gone to all kinds of hotels in the country during the past few years and it is only on rare occasions that I have seen over-charging. There are many very good hotels in Dublin who provide a luncheon as cheaply and as well as anywhere else in the world. There are numerous fine hotels and small restaurants of very high standard in Limerick, Waterford, Cork, and Galway.
There are a lot of bad ones also.
There are some bad ones but it is unfair to smear the hotel trade in general because you find an occasional bad hotel. I have visited many small hotels in Galway and was surprised at the fine standard of the service. I have talked to some of these hotel owners, very intimately with some of them, who complained that they were not getting enough help from Bord Fáilte. Bord Fáilte cannot do everything, but over the past ten years, apart from the efforts of the hoteliers themselves, the board have done a great deal to encourage and help hotel development generally.
I wish to refer to the promotion of festivals all over the country. We have them in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Wexford and they have all been very successful. The value of notices about these festivals in papers in Britain and even in the United States is inestimable. That type of advertisement by far outweighs the value of ordinary advertisements inserted in the back pages of trade magazines. It is much better when you have pictures of what is going on at festivals, accompanied by comments from famous critics. People often complain about the amounts allocated by Bord Fáilte to such festivals. In Waterford, we do not get such a lot but we are grateful for it.
Bord Fáilte hold the reins very tightly and the people responsible for running the Waterford Festival have done well on the whole. During the first Waterford Festival, I asked an official of the board what he thought of it. His reply was: "I was delighted to hear all the strange accents in Waterford and Tramore hotels to-day." That was most satisfying to him as an official of a tourist organisation. I should like to impress on the Minister that a large proportion of the people who come to these festivals from abroad stay in boarding houses and guest houses and in recent years many of the people who came for festivals returned the following year for holidays.
We have had complaints about the difficulties encountered by people coming here during the peak period. I have already pointed out to the Minister that there is a way in which he can ease that difficulty. He should approach his counterpart in Great Britain with a view to putting extra steamers on the cross-Channel route during the peak period.
Summing up, I would say this to the Minister. He drew our attention to the fact that there is a decrease in the traffic at the airports and that losses on the airports are due to that decrease in traffic. The Minister did not say he intended to close down the airports and we do not want him to close them down. However, if the Minister were to follow the policy he has adopted for CIE, he would close down the airports. I would suggest that in regard to the railway sections of CIE he should carry out the airport policy.
As regards shipping the Minister should see to it that a fleet of small cargo boats is built. A good deal of money has been spent on ports right round our coasts. No boat ever goes into them; we like to do things the expensive way. There are loads sent by lorry away off to these small places may be across into the West of Ireland. If we had these small coastal boats, they could come alongside the big steamers in the ports that can take big steamers. I am not talking about 15,000 ton steamers but 8,000 to 9,000 ton steamers. The Minister could have boats of 2,000 to 3,000 tons built so that the people of Ireland could see their own flag on vessels which they have no chance of seeing while this policy of building 15,000 ton ships is continued.
The Minister said last night and also last week or the week before that he was reconsidering the matter of the Youghal-Cork line. I would say he should stay his hand and not take up any more railway lines. The day is coming when the Irish roads will be overcrowded; legislation will have to be passed here to divert the bulk of heavy traffic to the railways and we shall be glad to have the rails there.
The Minister would save himself much heartache and save our tempers if he would extend to us the courtesy of answering our Parliamentary Questions. If he had been doing that during the year, he would probably have his Estimate through now. I should like to see the Minister maybe when he is replying or some other time as the repentant sinner. The repentant sinner is the man who will openly confess: "I made a mistake; I should not have done that." That is what the Minister should say in regard to the destruction of the Waterford-Tramore railway. Lastly, I want the Minister to tell me whether this "adequate" CIE bus service between Waterford and Tramore is making a profit or losing money.
Deputy Lynch forgot only to add that "there is more joy in Heaven". That is about the only thing he left out. I move this motion.
There is no necessity to move the motion. It may be moved at the conclusion of the debate. Of course the motion may be discussed together with the Estimate.
I want to quote its terms:
That Dáil Éireann considers that the Annual Report of CIE for the year ended 31st March, 1962, clearly demonstrates that Dublin City and County bus-users are being made to pay exorbitant bus fares to meet losses incurred in other sections of the CIE system; and calls on the Government to require the Chairman and Board of CIE to institute reduced bus-fares for workers travelling to and from work, for school-going children and for old age pensioners.
It is not the first time, the House will note, that I have adverted to this aspect of the activities of CIE for which the Minister is responsible. In fact, within the terms of that motion is contained the kernel of the policy to which the Minister clings and which he intends, as indicated here on more than one occasion, to push down the throats of the Irish people, come weal or woe, that is, the laissez faire policy of judging everything by profit and loss accounts. The logical consequence of that policy is to go where the money can be found handiest and in what manner can it be found handier than by rifling the pockets of the workers of Ballyfermot and the other large working class districts in the suburbs of this city?
I do not come here to make any great plea for the continuance of the railways or branch lines, although listening to the debate I have been impressed by the case made by different Deputies who argued for the maintenance of branch lines in their constituencies. However, it is evident from a perusal of the report of CIE that in the last financial year and in any other year for that matter, the losses which that organisation incurs spring very largely from the working of the railways. It is also a fact that CIE are meeting those losses to a very great extent by a policy of increasing the fares of the travelling public in Dublin city and county. I know there are Deputies who think that anything that happens to the Dublin people is good enough for them, forgetful of the fact that almost 50 per cent of the population of this city is made up of people who have come from the provinces and who are more rural than urban in their outlook. It is a glaring injustice that this policy should be permitted to continue.
Members of this House who represent the constituencies of Dublin city and county sought to do something about this when there was an announcement by CIE earlier in the present year that they proposed to increase further the already exorbitant bus fares of the people of Dublin city and county. A representative group of Deputies, some 12 in number, representing all Parties except the Government Party and including Independents, came together and asked to see the Chairman of CIE in order to put before him arguments and reasons why there should not be any further imposition upon the workers in the city in the matter of bus fares. We were not even given the courtesy of an interview with that gentleman.
When I tried to raise this matter by means of Parliamentary Questions, I was met by the Minister with the usual curt indication that he did not consider it to be a matter for which he was officially responsible. I cannot remember the exact terms of the communication I received from the Office of the Ceann Comhairle but I have several of them. I want to refer during the course of my remarks to something which was referred to by other Deputies. This business of the Minister distinguishing himself by continually sheltering behind the device of saying that he has no Ministerial function in respect of Parliamentary Questions is frustrating the work of the House. I would say the Minister holds the record for having availed of the device of refusing to answer Questions by simply stating that he did not consider he had any official responsibility for the matter about which he was being questioned. The Minister with whom we are now dealing has distinguished himself in side-stepping all matters of importance by sheltering behind the device of saying that he has no function and that it is something about which he should not be asked.
The Ceann Comhairle makes these decisions, not I.
The Minister or his Department indicates to the Ceann Comhairle that he does not consider that the matter which is being raised is one in which he has any function——
The Ceann Comhairle has the decision, not I.
The Ceann Comhairle naturally follows along the decision the Minister may——
By no means.
The Ceann Comhairle will accept what the Minister——
Is the Deputy suggesting that the Ceann Comhairle does not exercise independent judgment?
I am not making that suggestion and the Minister will not make me suggest it.
If he is, perhaps the Leas-Cheann Comhairle would have some observation to make.
The Ceann Comhairle takes no dictation from Deputies or Ministers.
The Minister knows I am not suggesting that. I am quite certain that the Chair appreciates that the position as I understand it is that the Minister indicates that he has no responsibility for a Parliamentary Question which is put down, the Minister or the Department indicates that he does not consider that he is responsible for the matter because it is a matter of administration, and naturally the Ceann Comhairle must accept that. It is not a matter of accepting dictation but simply of procedure. Therefore, although he tried a moment ago to side-step the issue again, it is the Minister who makes use of this no function racket of his which has held members of Parliament up to public contempt and which is frustrating them and producing protests time and time again, but without effect.
I am quite certain, as Deputy Lynch said, that this line of action by the Minister resulted in the Labour Party motion to reduce his salary by £1,000 per year. I do not hold with that kind of motion myself. I would prefer a motion of censure of the Minister calling for his resignation. However, that motion is the business of the Labour Party. I think the Minister is deserving of the censure of this Dáil for his neglect of duty and for the actual contempt which he has displayed for members of the House in refusing to answer Questions relating to CIE and Bord Fáilte particularly. Several times I put down Questions relating to the increased bus fares being charged by CIE insofar as my constituents in Ballyfermot are concerned, and on each occasion they came back with the usual refusal.
In his speech, as reported at column 913 of the Official Report of 13th July, 1961, the Minister had this to say:
When companies raise their charges, it is the duty of the Minister, while ensuring that under the Acts of the Dáil concerned these companies should pay their way, to make sure that the charges are equitably distributed ...
The case I am making here is that the charges operated by CIE in respect of bus travellers are not equitably distributed and that the working people of this city have no alternative but to use the buses. They cannot afford cars, unlike the officials of CIE, who are imposing this policy and who can afford cars—and at least one chauffeur-driven car—which can be seen in the forecourt of Kingsbridge. They are imposing this policy upon people who must use the buses and cannot afford anything else, people living at the far end of Ballyfermot, half way out to Palmerstown; people who have to pay 10d for a single fare to O'Connell Bridge, 10d for a return fare, and perhaps another 6d to their place of employment in Rathmines, Donnybrook, Ringsend or some other part of the city. The principal wage earner, the father of a family, has to meet a weekly bill of anything up to a £1 for bus fares, out of a wage packet of something around an average of £9 a week. That applies also to each member of the family who goes to work, to the children who may have to travel to school, and to the wife who may have to travel to a shopping centre in the city, or near the city centre.
That policy is being imposed upon these people to meet losses which are being incurred by the CIE system in other parts of the country. I want to make this point for the benefit of Deputies who represent the farming community: whatever transport the farmers are getting, they are getting at relatively cheap rates, and at the cost of the people living in the working class areas of this city. As I say, the people in the working class areas have no alternative but to use buses. I suppose that a few days unpopularity and a few days of protests in the papers are reckoned to be the cost by the Chairman of CIE and then it is all over, and they get the extra thousands of pounds they need for this, that or the other expenditure in different parts of the country. That is wrong.
If Dublin had a municipal bus service the fares would be 50 per cent less, or half what they are now in this city, and it could be said that the wages paid to the drivers and conductors would be much more than they are now. Dublin has not a municipal bus service. It is integrated into this hybrid form of semi-nationalised but not nationalised transport system which we have, this kind of cross-breed or half-breed transport system which is neither all capitalist nor all socialist. It is neither one thing nor the other, and it is producing nothing but trouble and discontent.
This House should take serious notice of the inequity and unfairness of that position. If no one else will raise the issue, I at least will continue to raise my voice here on behalf of the many thousands of bus users who are represented by all Parties here, the many thousands of bus users who are keeping CIE going.
There is something which I mentioned here before called work study —time and motion study—going on in CIE. It is a very expensive operation. It is supposed to be designed for the purpose of reducing costs, and all that kind of thing. It was suggested, I think, here recently that the trade unions had agreed with CIE that it should be brought into operation in CIE. Now there is work study and work study. I understand that the thing to which the unions agreed and the thing which now operates within the environs of CIE are very dissimilar. As I indicated before, the sight of these individuals would put anybody off. These work study merchants! You can visualise them standing with their stop watches, timing a man working. Would you not think they would be ashamed of looking at men working? But not they, and it does not produce any result whatsoever, so far as one can see. Up to the present time, no results have been produced by this operation. It has been going on for a couple of years now. It is an expensive thing. Of the 48 pages of typescript presented to us by the Minister for our consideration, in which he has covered many aspects of his Department, only four lines are given to an explanation of what his so-called work study means.
Now that I have the opportunity on this Estimate, I should like also to refer to the ESB. The ESB is another of these semi-State bodies which adopts towards the public an attitude of absolute authoritarianism. The greatest evidence of that is found in those cases where unfortunate people happen to become unable to meet the charges for current and fall into arrears and into debt with the ESB. Without any compunction whatsoever, the ESB send out their agents to cut off the current. This matter has been raised several times. It is a cause of tremendous discontent throughout the length and breadth of this city. I have known cases where, even after a bill had been paid, the agents of the ESB came out and cut off the current because they had not been informed by the office at the particular time the bill had been paid; they came out and cut off the current regardless, and no power on earth could stop them. They informed the particular householder that, if they were not allowed inside to cut off the current, they would bring along a van and cut it off from the outside.
That sort of thing invariably happens when this authoritarian mentality is applied to what is a human problem. The problem of meeting bills is a difficult one, especially for people who have to live on a bare subsistence wage. With costs as they are today, the working-class family is finding it difficult to get along and working-class families are found by all sections of the community to be the people most anxious to pay and most anxious to meet their bills. They have a morality in this matter superior to that of any other section of the community. Despite that, they are the people who suffer most by the operations of the ESB.
I take it the Minister has some function in relation to the ESB proposals with regard to the Fitzwilliam Street houses. I cannot understand how this body of semi-civil servants—I do not know how you describe them; I suppose they are civil servants—should arrogate to themselves, or should even consider that they have, the right to demolish a whole street of Dublin houses, houses which are regarded by most of the citizens as part of the municipal heritage, adding to the charms and attractions of the city. I cannot understand why this body should arrogate to themselves the right to demolish this street—I cannot understand why the Minister should permit this to happen—and to replace it with a box-like structure such as we have at Baggot Street Bridge. I understand the latter is the headquarters of Bord Fáilte now. It is a horrible monstrosity. If it is an example of modern architecture, then it is one of the most appalling and unimaginative edifices anybody could wish to see. It is proposed to replace the houses in Fitzwilliam Street by something similar.
Why cannot the ESB be directed to go out to Santry and build their new headquarters there? Why cannot the ESB be directed to go out to Clondalkin and build their new headquarters there? There is plenty of space on the fringes of Ballyfermot where they could build a new headquarters. Is it because they think it is too inconvenient? Would it be too far and therefore too inconvenient for these gentry to have to travel? They have been going so long to this ultra-respectable part of the city that they would be reluctant now to leave it. But they are not reluctant to knock it down. I hope that the Minister or, if not this Minister, at least his successor, or somebody in authority in the Government, will take steps to see that this piece of vandalism is not permitted, because that is all it is. There is nothing to recommend it.
It has been suggested these houses are beyond their best days. I suggest to anybody who thinks along those lines that he should take a little stroll a few yards further on, go down Cuffe Street, and look at the Georgian houses there, almost falling to pieces. Nobody wants to knock them down, and there are families living in them. I suggest that the people living in Cuffe Street should have their Georgian houses levelled before they fall in on the unfortunate people who have to live in them. I suggest these unfortunate people should be shifted into Fitzwilliam Street. Let the ESB go to some site on the outskirts of the city, and let them build there. If the new building is to be like the construction in Baggot Street, please have it out of sight, in the middle of a wood, or something, where citizens' eyes will not be affronted by it. I think the majority of the citizens feel very much as I do in this matter. I urge the Minister to interest himself in it, in so far as he has power to do so.
The Minister referred in his speech to tourism. He had this to say:
"... comparisons recently made by OECD"—whatever that is; one would want a dictionary to follow all these international and European abbreviations—"showed this country's net earnings from tourism as greater than those of Denmark and higher than the combined net tourist earnings of Greece, Portugal and Norway. Of this over £25 million can be attributed to tourists as distinct from Irish people returning home for holidays."
How does the Minister or how does his Department know, or how does Bord Fáilte determine, that £25,000,000 can be attributed to tourists as distinct from Irish people returning home for holiday? How is that determined? Is it, as I suspect it is, pure guesswork? Hopeful guesswork. I think this whole business of tourism and the Tourist Board, much lauded here by certain Deputies, is based upon a lie to a large extent. The bulk of the money comes in, as far as my observations go, not from tourists but from our own people coming back from England and spending whatever wages they have been paid. We maintain a huge apparatus on the pretence that we are promoting tourism. These people would come home, if we never had Bord Fáilte. I want the Minister to explain how that figure of £25,000,000 was arrived at and what is OECD that it can tell us that our net earnings from tourism are higher than the combined earnings of Portugal, Norway and Greece. Greece was a centre of tourism long before we went into the business.
The House has already been informed.
My principal concern is over the scandal of the exploitation of the Dublin bus users. I want to concentrate on that to the exclusion of other considerations. It is on that bit of calculated robbery that CIE exist. It is high time that some steps were taken to enable members of this House to get satisfaction so that when they put questions to the Minister on the matter of bus fares, they will not be brushed aside on the ground of the Minister having no function. Some machinery should be brought into existence whereby the elected representatives of this city could make felt the feelings of those people.
I have but a few observations to make on the very detailed memorandum with which the Minister has provided us. It deals with every facet of his Estimate and there is a substantial amount of important information contained in it. I should like to say that I am pleased with the Minister's report on tourism. There is an increase in the Estimate for that important arm of our economy and most of the money will go towards encouraging the smaller hoteliers and guest house proprietors to provide the accommodation necessary for that particular type of tourist who comes to the country—who is not over wealthy and who is willing to accept that type of decent accommodation which can be provided for him without excessive expenditure and which is within his holiday budget.
That is a substantial advance as far as the tourist industry is concerned. Where you have rich people coming to this country, they are people who, even in their own countries, are not too fond of spending money. That is one of the reasons why they are rich. The wealthier tourists have been catered for by the provision of luxurious hotels and bedrooms and it is now time we concentrated on the working-class people who are willing to come here from other countries for their holidays.
We in Ireland have important advantages where the catering for tourists is concerned. Nature has endowed us with a very agreeable climate, no matter what many of our own people may think. It is not always raining in this country as some would like us to believe. The climate is mild and agreeable and we have lakes, rivers and beautiful scenery. In recent years, our forestry has added to the beauty of our countryside. Our people have long had the name of being kindly and courteous to strangers and we ourselves have retained that very desirable trait attributed to our ancestors.
We should do everything possible to cash in on these national assets and we should extend a hearty céad míle fáilte to all who are willing to come here and spend their money. Much has been done in the matter of the tidying of towns. There have been tremendous improvements in our houses and roads and in the other ordinary amenities. All this helps to attract the type of tourist who will come here, not for one year only but for years in succession. The experiment carried out in a southern county this year, where we had a whole Irish town of Mainistir na Féile could be used very effectively to attract visitors from abroad. I think that foreign visitors coming in here like to see our Irish way of life and to know that we have a language, traditions and customs which are peculiar to us and which stamp on us our individuality as a nation. These are things on which we should concentrate even to the extent of having the names on our hotels and road signs in Irish, not to confuse our visitors, but to interest them.
So far as books on tourism are concerned, I am not aware that the Irish language is used at all even in a small way in the advertisements shown abroad. I think we should have distributed in foreign countries a brochure which would contain particulars, not so much of the old places now so well known to tourists, but the new places inland which people are inclined to visit in recent years.
It is a far cry from the day when An Tostal was laughed at to the tremendous advance we have now made in the promoting of this valuable asset to our economy. This is something which all Irishmen should be proud of, despite the fact that people say that some of our tourists are our emigrants returning. We are delighted that that is so. They are quite welcome and we could use them to great effect in advertising our tourist potential abroad.
Deputies who have been fortunate enough to visit Shannon Airport during the year must have been highly impressed by the magnificent development which has taken place there since the establishment of the airport. It is one of the profitable showpieces of this modern age and of this country. We have made tremendous advances at the airport and we were one of the first countries to enter into the important field of a free airport. We are now sending out many commodities through Shannon and flying them quickly and efficiently to their destinations. The number of factories which have sprung up there and the number of people who have been placed in remunerative employment is encouraging. Other aspects of that development have not been neglected and people coming into Shannon, seeing these factories, and buying goods there will be greatly impressed by the goods we have turned out and with the skill and efficiency of Irish workers.
In regard to the rural electrification programme, almost all the areas, with the exception of roughly 30, have been completed. That is a great advance and were it not for the fact that the rural electrification subsidy was cut out some years ago, we might have completed the programme now. It will be necessary to erect more power stations to cope with the ever-increasing demand but I am quite sure the Minister is alive to that fact. I should like, however, to direct his attention to the many areas which contain deposits of coal which have not been worked for years. With the use which has been made, especially in the Arigna mines of semi-bituminous coal to fuel ESB power stations, I feel there are many other areas, my own constituency included, in which this type of coal could be used. A practice has grown up, however, in many of these areas and interested people find that prospecting licences have been granted to an individual or to a group and the area lies dormant to the detriment of others who might work these mines. I should like the Minister to inquire into that position which from my information appears to be true.
The Minister referred to the new aircraft factory which has been established here. That is a tremendous step forward. We are proud of the fact that we have been air-minded for many years. Even an Irishman was one of the first to fly the Atlantic from this side. It is only fitting, therefore, that the country should not alone be afforded the opportunity of building airports but also of manufacturing the aircraft for flying into and out of the airports. I am glad that the French are setting up this factory. I am also glad to note that the Minister referred to the training of pilots here. This will be of great help to Irish boys and they will be able to secure employment on these planes.
Reference was also made to the cross-Channel services, the boats which ply between here and the British ports, especially in the holiday season. Some effort has been made to relieve the congestion which occurred on these boats during peak holiday periods, but, to my mind, it has not solved the problem. It is a very difficult problem and I know that it is controlled right into Dublin by British Railways, but it is unfortunate that people living in England who come home occasionally should have to put up with the treatment which is meted out to them not only on the cross-Channel services but even on the railway from Euston to Holyhead. It is deplorable that people who are tired from journeying to London find, when they arrive at Euston, that practically all the passengers' seats have reserved tickets on them for the sole purpose of getting an extra few shillings from the passengers. The same thing happens when they get to Holyhead. They find there is no accommodation, especially for women and children. Everybody knows that if you attempted to herd sheep in lorries in the same fashion, you would immediately find yourself in court. There must be some solution to this problem and if the people operating these boats do not appreciate the good business they are getting and give a better service, some steps should be taken to relieve them of the very fine financial spinner which they have, getting money from these people and providing an inefficient service.
I will conclude by saying that I have listened on a few occasions to debates here on railways and the closing down of railway lines. Many railways over Ireland have been closed down but I do not feel that any railways which were paying or which could be made into a paying proposition were closed down. In many areas, people would like to have seen the railways remain but those people, especially business people, were not over anxious to transport their goods on those railways. Many of them have provided themselves with their own lorries. We all know that when the railways services were first introduced, they did not as a rule enter the town. Stations were provided on the outskirts of towns and it was necessary to re-load goods and take them into the cities and towns. We also know that that would not be very practical in these days. It is only natural that long distance services such as the Dublin-Cork and Dublin-Belfast should remain. I think a storm in a teacup has been made about small, inefficient branch lines and people in those areas have been trying to make a case for them. One cannot, I suppose, blame them but when it is a matter of the general public having to subsidise them, it is something which no Minister could concede to the detriment of the public.
Some city Deputies seem to make much capital out of the increased bus fares and that the worker is asked to subsidise CIE in the country. Let me say that they in the cities have the added advantage of having employment full-time, also first-class educational facilities from the national school right up to the university, good roads, and streets, public lighting and cut-price shops, entertainments and many other amenities which in the main are highly subsidised by their less fortunate rural taxpayers in my, and indeed in the other country constituencies.
I am reluctant to say this but having listened to a Deputy on the opposite Front Bench and although I know the Minister is well able to defend himself, I was perturbed to know that Deputy was making a personal attack on the Minister. I welcome fair criticism and I would also dole it out but I think the Minister, apart from what criticism may be levelled at him so far as his work is concerned, should not have this personal abuse levelled at him. He is a man who like his father has given outstanding service to the country.
Having read the Minister's speech and listened to the controversy on various aspects of policy for which the Minister is responsible, it is hard to contain oneself in quietude, even though one might not have intended to speak in this debate. What concerns me most of all as a new Deputy is the manner in which the Minister has declined, is unwilling or is unable to give this House essential information in relation to the working of the many State and semi-State bodies under his control.
I contend that CIE, the ESB, Bord na Móna, Irish Shipping, and so on, are in every sense of the word nationalised industries. Call them State bodies, State monopolies, what you will, they were set up by an Irish Government because private enterprise was unable or unwilling to provide these essential services for the Irish public. Being State industries, nationalised industries, one would expect that public representatives speaking on behalf of the people of the nation would be able to get the facts and the figures and would have some say in the control, direction and policy of these nationalised industries. But, lo and behold, that is not the position. The position would seem to be that, in the Act of 1948, this House allocated to CIE, in particular, and its board of directors, the right to administer the affairs of that body, the right to carry out any undertakings they thought fit in the interests of efficiency and the Minister was mainly guided by that.
When questions were posed to him here time and time again, all the Minister could say was that he was not responsible for the policy of that body. He could hide behind the cloak of the Ceann Comhairle and refuse to give Deputies the facts and figures necessary to enable them to make up their minds as to whether they thought the right thing was being done in relation to these State bodies. That is very disconcerting.
The Minister is very unwise that he has not sensed the mood of this House in recent months in relation, in particular, to the policy of CIE. He now has ranged about him a formidable opposition of Parties in this House who have expressed their utter disapproval of the policy of this board, this junta of Kingsbridge who are a virtual law unto themselves and who are seemingly responsible to nobody. We seem to have given this junta, under the chairmanship of Dr. Andrews, a carte blanche to do what they virtually like, to dismiss indiscriminately employees of that company.
Lines are torn up. Hundreds of miles of railway tracks here, there and elsewhere throughout the country have been put into disuse irrespective of the social consequences.
It may seem economically desirable as far as this junta in Kingsbridge is concerned to do all these things but we are contending that it is socially unwise. There are more important factors than economy in this very important picture. It is significant, reading the sum of almost 50 pages of the Minister's speech, that he covers almost all facets of these State and semi-State bodies under his control but there is not one mention of the ramifications of CIE. It is discreetly omitted from the speech.
I spoke for several hours on the Transport Bill.
I am speaking about the Minister's speech on the Estimate.
There are eight lines about CIE in this speech.
I had already spoken for two days about CIE.
What did the Minister say about it?
It is a different matter if the Deputy did not like what I said about it.
It seems a clear indication of the contempt in which the Minister holds this House in relation to CIE.
The Deputy is desperately unfair.
Many questions were addressed to the Minister, which the Ceann Comhairle was obliged to turn down as not coming within the scope of the Minister's influence, in relation to the conduct of these boards. We all wanted an opportunity of seeing the Minister's policy in this connection and hearing from him some of the answers to the questions we were posing down the months.
The Deputy should not address the Minister but the Chair.
The Minister has interjected and I am replying to him.
It is quite undesirable to direct questions across the floor of the House.
The Minister has only about eight lines in his speech in relation to CIE.
The explanation is there. I made the principal remarks on the Transport Bill.
If the Minister had seen fit to refer to CIE, his speech would have consisted of 90 pages instead of 48 pages.
As public representatives, we are entitled to information for guidance and advice and to satisfy ourselves that the right things are being done at all times. If the Minister will insist on creating a wall of silence about any of these bodies—in particular, CIE—if he refuses to answer questions and to give essential facts he is causing suspicion in the minds of the public. He is causing dissension. He is angering Deputies.
The Minister has brought down upon his head a lot of abuse of which I personally should not like to be guilty: I want to be fair to everyone concerned. However, in relation to a nationalised industry in this country, whatever was in the 1948 Act, it was never the spirit that information of an important and essential kind should be concealed. Apart from that, it makes for very bad relations between Deputies, the general public and CIE that this kind of thing should happen. If CIE are to prosper, as we would all wish and desire, they need an enlightened public, a competent Dáil and the enthusiastic support of the man in the street. I appeal to the Minister to cast away this cloak of silence and secrecy and assist the House to assist CIE to do their job effectively.
One of the real difficulties with which we have to contend is the Transport Act of 1958 which ordained that, by 1964, CIE must pay their way. Here was a direction to the board of that company that their job was to get down to work and within six years balance their budget and pay their way. I am sure the Chairman and his Board are making an all-out drive, irrespective of consequences, to reach that target. They want to show the Minister that they are capable of doing that and they will do it in a ruthless and indiscriminate fashion. They are answerable to nobody. What then of the essential train services to be provided for the public? What then of the conditions of employment and security for the workers in the charge of these men? Both are in a very dubious position.
We have had the problem of redundancy in CIE. We had the humiliating and demoralising experience of having young men in the prime of life being retired as redundant by CIE and given pensions. This is very demoralising—that we should tell a man in the prime of life he is no longer required and give him a pension. Seemingly he can pack his bag and go to England. I maintain there is a responsibility on the State body to find alternative work as far as possible for these men. It is socially unwise that we should dismiss people indiscriminately.
The Minister in order to do his job thoroughly has permitted the use of time and motion experts in CIE and wherever these men rear up their ugly heads in industry, they have always found that the economies they sought to effect were not at the top but at the bottom.
The trade union movement have approved of them. This is the Deputy's private view?
I am entitled to give my views in this House and to express my opinion of the attitude of time and motion experts. They have always sought to eliminate alleged inefficiency at the bottom. Their policy is to dismiss men, to get five men to do the work of ten. We have rarely seen them recommend that economies be effected among the top-ranking officials costing £5,000 or £2,000 a year. Rarely do they suggest one of those must go: no, it is always the poor working man who takes the rap in these economies.
That direction which was given to CIE to balance their books in two years' time should be eased. The Board must not be given the impression that they must balance at any cost. It is reasonable to suggest that a transport service of this kind in most other countries is not a paying proposition. It was taken over here because it was not a paying proposition to a large extent but also because it was an essential public service which must be maintained. That is the proper approach to it. We are not suggesting that waste or inefficiency should be permitted but we say it is in the public interest to maintain a service, even though it may be showing a loss. Such a railway line should be permitted to remain.
The Minister has to his credit the uprooting of 396 miles of branchline closed in the past three years and he is considering the substitution of road services for railway services on 23 additional branchlines which are likely to be closed by CIE. I understand that the line from my native town of Clonmel to Thurles is likely to be one of these. I appeal to the Minister to stay his hand in that regard, to be conscious of the deep anxiety and unrest which exist in my town and in the neighbouring towns from Clonmel to Thurles about this proposal.
The Mayor of Clonmel thought fit to convene a public meeting which was attended by all classes, business, industrial, commercial, working-class people and members of the farming community. They were unanimous in regarding it as a great tragedy if this line were closed. It passes through the Golden Vale from Clonmel to Thurles through very many important towns, Fethard, Farranaleen, Laffansbridge, Horse and Jockey and the rich hinterland of these areas. It is essentially fertile land for wheat and wheat growing, root crops of all kinds. The area has mineral deposits, such as anthracite in particular, and the line is used for the transport of these goods. The owner of the mine to which I refer was present at the public meeting I mentioned and said he used the line to transport anthracite almost all the time. He gave facts and figures of what he paid CIE for this service and said he wanted the service maintained.
I appeal to the Minister, before a decision is reached by CIE, to consult with Clonmel Corporation, South Tipperary County Council and the people of all the villages and towns concerned and satisfy himself and the people, so far as he can, that he is doing the right thing. If I ask for the figures in order that we may be satisfied, I do hope the Minister will have the courtesy to give all the relevant facts in relation to income, expenditure, losses or gains as the case may be.
Apart from the essential service it provides for the transport of passengers, goods and commodities, I am vitally concerned about what will happen to those engaged on this branchline, the workers in Fethard, Farranaleen, Laffansbridge, Horse and Jockey. It would be a great tragedy if these men were added to the long list of redundant operatives now out on pension or cast on the unemployed scrap-heap by CIE. I hope the Minister will have regard to them.
It is gratifying that CIE is an industry which employs some 14,000 to 15,000 persons. We want to see that number grow, not diminish. I would say to the Minister also that those employees of CIE who are fortunate enough to finish their life's term with that company should be given far greater pensions and recompense than they now enjoy. I am sure the Minister is aware that very many ex-employees of CIE, particularly those who have retired for a long number of years, are trying to exist on a miserable pittance from that Board. I would ask the Minister to have regard to present-day costs, the steep increase in the cost of living, the fall in the value of the money on which these people are obliged to live and to increase these pensions considerably. If the Minister can find the millions for jet planes, the boulevards, the lavish, luxury hotels which he is building, surely he can find a few extra shillings for these people who gave the best years of their lives building up CIE, to maintain them in frugal comfort in the twilight of their lives?
I mentioned earlier the question of time and motion study experts in CIE. The Minister took me to task for a moment as if I were not interpreting the view of the trade unions. I do not claim to be interpreting the view of any trade union. I am speaking for myself in that regard. These people can adopt a very overbearing, distressing and exacting attitude in relation to the work they carry out. I wonder is the Minister aware that the actions of these time and motion experts, many of them getting £50 a day, who go about with stop watches, and stand over people, can be a very galling experience for a worker to endure. Would the Minister be surprised if I told him that the overbearing attitude of one of these supervisors was such that the young man whom he was timing broke down mentally and physically and went berserk? That is an inhuman attitude that I personally deplore in relation to time and motion study. These experts forget that they are dealing with human beings and not with a number in a CIE book or a cog in Dr. Andrews' machine.
I was glad to learn from the Minister's speech that it is proposed to provide more houses at Shannon Free Airport for the employees and staffs there. It is a very desirable thing that our workers should be rehoused as convenient to the job as is possible, to obviate the hardship of travelling a long distance to work.
I would direct the Minister's attention to the fact that many employees of CIE live in extremely bad, very old, dilapidated, cold houses, which in many instances are mere tin huts. One can see as one travels along the main arteries of the rail system the tin huts in which CIE employees and their wives and families are still obliged to live—old tin huts that were erected in the days of the Great Southern Railways Company. It would be interesting to know the number of CIE houses which local authorities have been obliged to condemn or to prevail upon the Minister's Department to put in a state of adequate repair. I do not think this position is good enough. The Minister should see to it that these employees are properly housed. Local authorities find great difficulty in getting CIE to co-operate in relation to important public amenities such as road-widening, the erection of bridges, the elimination of bad bends where, perhaps, there might be a railway crossing and a caretaker's house. I know of instances where a local authority have been negotiating with CIE for years and have as yet not been able to get them to agree to reasonable proposals for compensation for such works as I have mentioned. I would ask the Minister to consider this aspect and to assist his colleague, the Minister for Local Government, in having these problems resolved. This big, ponderous Board of CIE is autocratic with almost everyone that has contact with it. It is dictatorial and autocratic in every sense of the term.
In relation to Shannon Free Airport, we are very proud of the upsurge of industry in that area. We approve and applaud the Minister and his colleague, the Minister for Industry and Commerce, for their efforts to bring more industries to this country but I would admonish the Minister that he has an obligation to ensure that in these industries he will insist, in the first instance, as a first requisite, that there shall be decent conditions of work observed and fair wages paid. It shocked the conscience of this country when not so long ago it was brought to notice by a reputable trade union leader that all was not well in relation to the treatment meted out to workers at Shannon Free Airport, that there was there evidence of exploitation, of juvenile labour, of bad wages and rotten conditions of work. We had memories of the early part of this century, 1913, when sweated labour was predominant. We had thought those days had gone but there is evidence that people are entering into industry who, unless we watch carefully, would carry out the same exploitation as was carried out here 40 years ago and which the trade union movement fought bitterly, at great sacrifice, to eliminate.
I do not want to traverse through the Minister's speech in anything like detail but I should like to refer briefly to Irish Shipping and to associate myself with and support the plea made to the Minister that he should improve the cross-Channel service and bring his influence to bear on the people responsible for the antiquated conditions of travel between here and Britain. If we are to export people at the rate of 40,000 a year, we should ensure that they be given reasonable comfort on the journey to the foreign parts where they must find a new life.
Deputy Kyne gave the Minister a graphic description of the appalling circumstances which prevail, especially at peak periods, on cross-Channel services. I would ask the Minister to take all possible steps to ensure that a minimum standard of comfort is provided for our passengers on this service and I would support the plea made that if the British authorities are not good enough to mend their hand in this respect, the Minister, with Irish Shipping at his back, should provide a service on his own. If these people are unwilling to co-operate with us in providing a modern service, we should do that job ourselves. We have the ships, we have the shipyards to build them and the men to man the ships, and I do not think we should be beholden to any British company or to British Railways for the provision of this kind of essential service.
The Minister will recollect my having made representations to him some time ago in relation to the redundancies which took place on the bogs of Bord na Móna in many parts of the country, particularly in my constituency in Tipperary. The Minister refers to the many representations made to him and says in his opening statement:
During July and the earlier part of August this year there were representations, both in this House and direct to my office in regard to the fact that Bord na Móna were using machines where formerly manual labour was employed. People who had been expecting a prolonged spell of employment on the Board's machine turf bogs found that they were not required because additional machines were being used for the work they used to do. I explained in reply to these representations that the recruitment and employment of workers on their bogs is a matter solely for Bord na Móna and that the Board, which must sell machine turf in competition with other fuels, must take all possible steps to remain competitive in a highly competitive market.
On principle, that is a very desirable thing but I maintain that before workers are declared redundant or indeed before machinery of a high-powered kind, such as is used here, is utilised, the Minister and the board should have the responsibility of seeing that alternative work is available for these men. The indiscriminate use of machinery which disemploys men to that extent cannot and should not be condoned by an Irish Minister for Transport and Power. We know, of no good reason why an extension of the work on the bogs was not carried out in order to give employment to these men. It seems to be part of the policy of the economic experts in Bord na Móna, as much as in CIE, to promote efficiency by the mere dismissal of men. That is to be deplored. It may seem economical and wise to do that kind of thing but it is not justified from the social point of view.
I would ask the Minister to be slow in introducing any further mechanisation without, first of all, taking into account the number of men who are likely to be dislodged as a result and to take adequate measures to ensure that these men are absorbed in some other work in his Department. Arising from that, I would ask the Minister to take into account the desirability of erecting power stations in my constituency. We have the natural ingredients that go to the making of hydro-electric power and I would ask the Minister to consider the desirability of erecting a hydro-electric power station in the vicinity of the Comeragh Mountains near Mount Melleray which many of my colleagues know fairly well. I speak only as a layman in that regard but many people feel that there you have the natural layout for a power station and I suggest that the ESB be asked to look into it with a little more energy.
There is also the possibility of utilising the turf resources in the area for the generation of power. There are sufficient bogs for the purpose from Killenaule to Littleton. I suggest the Minister should also consider the desirability of providing power from the abundant supplies of anthracite in the area.
It is not my intention to say much more on this Estimate but to put to the Minister the views expressed by my Party in their motion on the Order Paper which is as follows:
That Dáil Éireann is of opinion that Section 8 of the Oireachtas (Allowances to Members) and Ministerial and Parliamentary Offices (Amendment) Act, 1960 be amended so as to provide for the reduction of the salary of the Minister for Transport and Power by £1,000 per annum, in order to mark the disapproval of the House for the Minister's Transport policy and, in particular, his failure to safeguard the railways.
That is the feeling of my Party and I think there is a growing volume of opinion on all sides of the House that, unless there is a re-awakening of awareness on the part of the Minister to his duty to assist the House to come to proper decisions, at the very first opportunity, a united Opposition in this House will undo what was done in the 1958 Act and will insist that the Ministry for Transport and Power be abolished altogether until such time as we are given that courtesy, co-operation and consideration which we feel we are entitled to in this House.
We ask nothing more than that the Minister should not attempt to put a gag on Deputies when they mention the name of Dr. Andrews by telling us that we are attacking private persons who cannot defend themselves. That is something none of us in this House would be guilty of but we are entitled to criticise any policy, method, manner or outlook of men in a State body which we think is detrimental to the public interest. If the Minister construes that as an attack—an ugly word which should not be used anywhere—he is wrong. If we cannot get the information we require, if we cannot have a say in the formulation of policy, then we have no alternative but to undo that policy in its entirety. The Minister should become more aware of the mood of the House, the severe criticism being levelled against his Department, and assist Deputies to discuss these matters, in connection with CIE in particular, in a more harmonious and realistic fashion on future occasions.
I shall not keep the House very long with what I have to say. I have listened to the Minister's speech and his enumeration of the various facets of his job. From the attacks made on him in this House, one would think he is a blundering idiot and would wonder whether there are any facts at all contained in the figures he has presented to us. Fortunately, words alone do not condemn a man because the evidence of the Minister's actions are obvious throughout the country.
This country has developed, and continues to develop, and the Department of Transport and Power are jointly responsible for that development. Each section of that Department reports progress in increasing efficiency and gearing up of production, an awareness of responsibilities in face of increasing demands on the Exchequer. This is good planning and good policy. I have listened here to political speeches and I would ask all members of the House to take them with the proverbial pinch of salt. They are purely political speeches which do not convince anyone.
The development of our airports and civil aviation has kept us in the forefront of world events. It has kept our name before the nations of the world so that this little island is not unknown. It is known primarily because our airlines now travel through Europe and the United States. To develop our airlines, it was necessary and continues to be necessary to develop our airports. This country now has three fine airports. One, Dublin Airport, is fast approaching international standards, and Shannon Airport also; recently Cork Airport was added.
Airports generally are not known to make any profit and no country makes any substantial profit or indeed remunerates its capital from airports. In every country, while there is a desire to keep down landing charges and other charges to facilitate airlines using these airports, they are endeavouring to render them more efficient and so reduce their cost on the exchequer. Shannon Airport, Dublin Airport and Cork Airport, I gather, are fast approaching the completion of the immediate development that was planned, and I hope no major additional development will be necessary within the next decade.
Any Irishman or tourist who approaches this country either through Cork Airport or Shannon Airport, must sense that this country is not falling behind the times, that this country, within its economic capacity, is keeping up with other countries. If that is the position, then I am all for prestige. Just as any humble household will put on its best finery for a wedding or when going to Mass on Sunday, so this country is determined to keep up to world standards in the matter of air services.
It is unfair to challenge figures to airport services, we find they are not the great impost on the Exchequer that one would imagine, having listened to criticism here from time to time. It is encouraging to see our two air lines, Aer Lingus and Aerlínte, show a small operating surplus although it is regrettable it is not sufficient to remunerate the capital invested. Despite the fact that many airlines in the world are losing considerably, Aerlínte inaugurated four short years ago, continues to make an operating surplus. This must be regarded with satisfaction and those responsible for the management of our airlines and also the Minister and his Department are to be congratulated.
I was pleased to read recently that even in the field of cargo, Aer Lingus are not falling behind the times. I read that recently they bought two cargo-carrying planes. This is the type of progress we desire and the type of vision we like to see. It is comforting to know that the management of these affairs is in capable and progressive hands. The Shannon Airport Development Company project will prove to be one of the great visionary efforts of our time. We have heard criticism that Shannon Airport might one day be overflown and become a white elephant. I think that planning and policy make provision for any falling off there might be in traffic. The plan for the transportation of manufactured goods from that area again clearly emphasises the vision of all concerned in this field.
Industrially this country continues to make progress and this calls for a modern and up-to-date service in every part of the country. I ask the Minister not to forget that we in Sligo and Leitrim are also in this industrial race and to note very carefully the need for an airport in the north-west. While today there may not be a case for it, I think we shall continue to develop so that there will be the necessity to have an airport there one day.
The development of small airports, small landing strips, throughout the country could be profitable in the future. We are living in an air-minded age and we daily see our cross-Channel air services overloaded. More and more people travel daily by air. This may bring with it the innovation of the private plane. This can be encouraged if private strips are laid down in order to facilitate business, tourism and other aspects of our economy. I think that in Denmark a hotel development company developed an airport near their own hotel. That is the world trend and Ireland should be ready and have her plans made to take her share in that type of development.
Before I pass from the airlines, let us consider how far we might have advanced if instead of inaugurating our air line to America in 1958, the inaugural flight plan had not been scrapped in 1948. We would be ten years ahead and ten years more experienced. I am quite sure we would have a firmer grip on that traffic, despite the fact that we have made remarkable progress in the four years since it was developed.
Yesterday and today, the railways took up a lot of the time of Deputies and the 1958 Act came in for a lot of criticism. Again, I say that is nothing more than simple sectional politics and a craving for the few votes which might be got by saying: "We want the railways." Very few Deputies ever use the railway. They travel to this House in their private cars. Very few of the Irish people use them, but we are told they want to redeem and save them.
The 1958 Act removed from everyone's mind the idea that this State would continue, at an ever-increasing rate, to subsidise the inefficiency in method by which they were run up to this. Since the development of the railways started in Ireland, something like 100 years ago, I think, it can be safely said they never were a profitable undertaking. In the 40 years this nation has had control of its own railroads, they have made no progress. I listened to the Deputy from Waterford haranguing the House for hours about the tearing up, as he called it, of the Waterford-Tramore railway line. He said the people of Waterford trundled to the railway station in the summer time and bundled into the train. He failed to say that happened only at weekends and for a few short months in summer.
It is unfair to challenge figures which are issued, as if all our civil servants were crooks who have nothing better to do than to fix figures, and give out erroneous figures. That reflects no credit on the State and it does the nation no good. I would ask public representatives to have regard for the good name our Civil Service has enjoyed all through the years. There should not be accusations that figures were put out deliberately to suit, as it were, the notion of the Minister and that he has a policy of destroying the railways. No one but a fool would believe that anyone wants to destroy them. It is up to the Irish people to indicate by their support that they want the railways. It is high time they indicated their willingness so to use them.
We are moving into an era of industrial development, an era in which we must have an up-to-date, economical transport service. If that is to be done by subsidisation, I wonder whether, when we sit down to negotiate our part in the Common Market, that might not have to go then. The 1958 Act was a challenge to the people, and it was a challenge to the Chairman and the Board to bring about ways and means whereby by 1963, I think, the railways would pay. I think the Chairman deserves every credit for his examination of, and his recommendation to shut down lines that are losing money and continuing to lose money. No case has yet been made for the retention of those lines except sentimental mush in various towns and villages.
Let us be practical about the whole thing. Let us think of the impost on our taxes and rates rather than on continued subsidisation. The re-equipment of CIE indicates fully that the Board are serious in their efforts, and that they are doing everything they can to give the country an efficient service. It is always regrettable when the curtailment or shutting down of branch lines causes unemployment, but we are all mature enough to know that in these days of social thinking, work is there for all, so far as is practically and humanly possible, and that capital sums have been paid out to compensate in some measure for the dislocation in a person's planned way of living.
We are all aware that those who sought employment with CIE on the railways felt that they were there for life. We are aware that a certain section of the employees of CIE, through group action, are not doing the volume of work they could do. There is very little the Board can do to alter that position. I know a case here in the city where a man got a job with CIE after waiting for six months. He stuck it for three weeks and he told me he left because he did not want to become demoralised, that all he had done was play cards and drink tea in a shed. That type of thing must be eradicated if we want to save the railroads.
If we have 14,000 employees, we should have 14,000 productive employees. We must cut out the feather bedding and other things which are strangling the railway system and shoving up transport costs to an exorbitantly high level. I would suggest to the Minister that he might consider letting all the feed services out to private contractors and letting them feed in the local and rural population into certain railway lines so that at least our main lines could be maintained.
I was impressed—I do not think— by the Deputy from Dublin who, for his political advantage, wanted to carve the Dublin city traffic out of the CIE system. That man, representing as he does a section of the Labour Party, dealt with a sectional interest only, his own constituency. If we are to have each section saying: "Our little bit is paying; we will run it on our own," how are we to have a proper service throughout the country? It is easily understood that if transport charges have to be increased, they must be increased all over, short of increasing them in an area where one might lose business altogether. If one has to increase revenue by increasing charges, the bold policy would be to increase charges overall, although of course in the long run forcing charges up too high would militate against the company. I am afraid the Deputy from Dublin was not thinking of CIE on a national basis but merely of his own constituency.
It is deplorable that the Chairman and members of the Board of CIE should be sought to be shown as monsters, and I must compliment the Minister on doing the only thing he could do—defend vigorously the honour, reputation and integrity of those men who are doing the job entrusted to them to the best of their ability. I say this not alone of the Chairman and Board of CIE but of all civil servants. This practice which is creeping in of attacking public officials is undesirable and should be deplored in this House. They cannot protect themselves and they cannot answer back.
Over the years, another alleged "white elephant"—the development of our bogs—continues to go ahead. Except for years in which weather conditions are unfavourable. Bord na Móna continue to show increased production. It is encouraging to see that the export of briquettes to Northern Ireland has shown a trend in the right direction and this development can be followed up. Bord na Móna are doing everything to create markets for their products abroad but I would ask them to bend their backs to even better efforts in this field. I understand that as a provision against bad years, they are building up a surplus of milled peat in case the ESB stations should run short of fuel. This shows the thoroughness with which the management of this board is being carried out. Their work is one of national importance. It results in a cutting down on fuel imports and makes possible the conversion of our boglands, up to now only vast wildernesses, into a valuable asset. In addition, when the turf supplies have been exhausted, these lands can be used for forestry, grass or some other suitable agricultural production.
Charging these boards with the responsibility of efficient management and then criticising them for redundancy brought about by the introduction of more efficient methods of production does not always make sense. If we give a board a job to do, surely we should allow them do it? It is negative thinking when the results are positive to say: "You should not have done that." In this day of changing methods, we will always have redundancy from time to time. In our economic set-up here, it is not easy to find suitable alternative employment immediately in the locality. I would ask Deputies to desist from such criticism and attacks. These attacks are often made because, unfortunately and regrettably, men sometimes cannot be absorbed by a company into practicable employment if the company wants to become more efficient. There are jobs that the machine can do better. No amount of floor planning will cause men to do more, and I give every word of praise and credit to our Irish workers. Wherever I have come across them, they have always given of their best. When production is falling, it is not always the fault of the worker but is sometimes the fault of careless and haphazard management. Nobody regrets redundancy or the upsetting of homes more than I do, but we must be practical about it. We must at times face up to the inevitable.
The Minister has provided a further sum of £69,210 for rural electrification. The size of this sum and other recent enactments indicate that rural electrification is fast approaching completion. The ESB are to be complimented. Because of their far-seeing action many years ago, as much of the country as it is possible economically to connect to the national network is now almost connected. I want to compliment the Minister on the position in my own constituency. Work on the last area in Sligo, Cloonacoole, is about to start. In Leitrim, three areas remain to be done. Glenade is about to be commenced and in the other two, development work is about to start. I am glad that within 12 months rural electrification in the Sligo-Leitrim constituency will be completed. It is a most commendable thing because electricity will be of tremendous benefit to the people of that countryside.
Electricity is continuing to bring increased comfort and amenities to the people by providing for such things as the pumping of water, cleaning and heating and it is contributing in no small way to an improvement in standards of hygiene. This is important for our future development. Without electricity, it would take much longer to educate our people to be conscious of the high standards of hygiene demanded by people visiting this country.
With regard to harbours, one can see in the Minister's speech that these are coming to a pitch of development when only the major harbours will be developed. The estimate for harbours is down by £90,000. I would ask the Minister to bear in mind that many of our ports could be usefully developed to accommodate coastal shipping and other small shipping to the continent of Europe. If all our areas are to share in the development which I believe will follow, the Minister should not draw a line across that development entirely. He should keep his mind open on the matter.
I know that a lot of development work can still be done on Sligo harbour. Sligo town, County Sligo and County Leitrim are industrially minded and are planning towards that end. A real boost to Sligo town would be to improve its harbour and berthing facilities. I would ask the Minister not to forget Sligo harbour in his plans. I can assure the Minister that I will give him any help he needs.
I now want to deal with the very important industry of tourism and the work done by Bord Fáilte. The Minister has indicated to the House the progress that has been made and continues to be made. It is indeed, a very commendable state of affairs. He makes a comparison with other countries and indicates that we are making somewhat more rapid progress than other countries. He indicates that the development of first-class hotels is probably reaching saturation point. He also points out that the Hotels Board are being asked to investigate the necessity for the development of Class B hotels in certain suitable areas.
The extension of grants to Class B hotels is, again, a commendable scheme but I would ask the Minister especially to bear in mind those people who contribute enormous facilities to our tourist industry, the small boarding-house keepers. I see those people every day at all our seaside resorts, including Enniscrone. Strand Hill and Rosses Point, making efforts to improve their facilities. They come to me and say: "The work we did did not measure up to the standards set by Bord Fáilte." While Bord Fáilte are right to maintain a high standard, I say that where improvements have been made, he should consider a pro rata rate of grant for those people. For instance, where £100 had been expended at these seaside resorts on the provision of amenities by those people, the Minister might consider giving them £20. This is the type of thing that encourages people to do a little each year.
I know a great number of tourists who really delight in spending a holiday, not so much in a high class hotel as in one of these small guesthouses where there is more of the family spirit and where they can enjoy in greater measure Irish hospitality. I realise that there is no person associated with tourism, outside those in Bord Fáilte, more interested than the Minister himself in the development of this industry. He has, in my hearing, admonished us for not organising enough locally. I would still ask him to co-ordinate area advertising of tourist resorts.
I regret to say that Sligo and Leitrim are not as well advertised as, say, the adjoining counties of Donegal and Galway. If an integrated advertising programme for that area could be got under way, I would welcome it and I ask the Minister to consider that suggestion. I also ask him to consider the giving of aid in relation to advertising in respect of those people who benefit from the tourist traffic and development in line with what has been done in some other countries. Might not some form of tax be levied? That probably has its difficulties. We all know there are tourist areas which it is impossible to get into any kind of association. They adopt a laissez faire attitude and leave it to other bodies to do so. If something on the lines of what I suggest were adopted, it would benefit all. I would ask the Minister to consider that.
I was intrigued to hear Deputy Treacy mention that he wanted to improve cross-Channel shipping services to export our emigrants in greater luxury. Did Deputy Treacy feel that he was making a contribution towards the welfare and development of this nation? Perhaps he was having a little bit of fun but at whose expense I do not know. I want to say this about cross-Channel shipping services. The explanation given yesterday by the Minister was, to my mind, very understandable and I would commend it most strongly to the country as a whole. The Minister recommended an extension of the holiday period. I believe that this more than anything else will relieve the severe congestion on the cross-Channel services and also the big influx during peak periods to holiday resorts where people are liable not to get the service normally provided. If we can extend the tourist season, and here, I think, the Minister is thinking along the right lines, then the tourist industry will be one of the really great industries in the country.
The Deputy who has just finished speaking appeared very incensed in the early part of his speech about what he described as "attacks," by way of criticism, launched on public servants. I gathered from that that he was referring to the Board of CIE. He himself, however, launched the biggest attack on that Board during the course of his speech. Here, I should remind the House of what he said: he said that he had a friend who became an employee of CIE, and that friend left after three weeks, afraid of becoming demoralised because all he had to do was—I think the actual phrase used was "He spent his time drinking tea and playing cards in a hut". I suppose the Deputy, as a public representative, had enough conscience to report that to the Board of CIE. If they employ overseers in their premises, the overseeing staff ought to be paraded and censured, if there is any truth, or a particle of truth, in what Deputy Gallagher said here.
The Deputy's friend was afraid of getting demoralised by the malpractices amongst the employees of CIE; he did nothing all day except play cards and drink tea in a hut. I have not heard anything in the way of criticism of CIE to equal that. I am sure the Deputy gave warning to the Board of CIE, and I should imagine there must have been a great weeding-out process, if the Deputy's remarks in this House have any resemblance whatever to truth. It came very ill from the Deputy, who was objecting to criticism, that he should then engage himself in such mass defamation as he did in a few phrases of a group of workers.
I do not suppose the Minister will accept what he says, but the Minister has certainly got warning, in any event, that a person who is entitled to speak as a representative of the public in this House has said here openly that these are the things that are going on in CIE. I should imagine the Minister will have a few busy days ahead of him, explaining to the Board how he complacently accepted what the Deputy said; and, if he has accepted it to any degree, how he proposes to get the management of CIE sharpened to do a job that a businessman in a small street would have taken care of long ago.
Last year, I described this Estimate as the Estimate of a "phoney" Department. I see no reason to change the phrase this year. The Minister last night gave us a lecture; it runs to 48 pages of typescript. I applied a few moments of the time he took to read it to trying to calculate how many thousands of words there are in the document; there are roughly 14,000 words. It covers the main projects for which he has responsibility—all the various air services, the airports, Aer Rianta, which is now subscribing to a hotel out in Ballsbridge. He has that now to be responsible for. His Department have responsibility for Irish Shipping; they are responsible to some degree for tourism, for the electricity supplies of the country, for turf production. He gave us about one thousand words about coal and, as was pointed out this morning, he left out CIE. But not entirely. He has eight lines at the end in which he says that, of course, he is not attending to CIE because he has said so much about it already.
I have beside me here a copy of the debate of 14th November of this year in which the Minister intervened on the Transport Bill. He read a brief, as he said himself, which occupies 22 columns of the debate, practically all about CIE. I think the first six or seven columns are his own remarks, and the others are what he described as his "brief, a brief which had been prepared for him." He is lucky, at least, in that he has not to accept the contrast that is bound to be made between the groups for which he spoke in this 48-page lecture and CIE.
I take it he now accepts that, judging by any business standard, all the air lines are in the red; the airports are in the red; shipping is definitely in the red; the Electricity Supply Board is not. Turf has a deficit this year—maybe that is a temporary thing. CIE are permanently in the red. We got all these subsidised services, services we keep going, even though we have to pay taxpayers' money for them, and the Minister had the advantage of segregating into his speech on 14th November his attitude towards CIE.
It was remarkable what the Minister said with regard to CIE. I quote from the debate of 14th November, volume 197, column 1229, of the Official Report. The Minister said :—
We have had to subsidise CIE very substantially over a period in the hope of getting the undertaking properly on its feet. At no stage, however, has the Government or the Dáil ever contemplated a situation in which the undertaking would be permanently in receipt of subsidies. I know of no reason why, in principle, transport should be subsidised. It is no more essential to the public than many other commodities or services which no one would dream of subsidising. It remains firmly the Government's policy, therefore, that CIE, like other State bodies whose task it is to provide productive services, should pay their way. Deficit financing of the kind envisaged by the authors of this Bill would be as bad for CIE as for the public.
He then turned generally to subsidies:
Subsidy inevitably breeds inefficiency and encourages excessive staffing and feather-bedding and the whispering voice of "It doesn't matter; the Government will pay" is destructive of the morale of the staff, high and low. Subsidies deprive the taxpayer of capital, of purchasing power and of savings which he could otherwise put to better use. It is "robbing Peter to pay Paul" and while operating subsidies might maintain staff in uneconomic and non-productive services in CIE, they would deprive people of employment elsewhere...
He goes on further in that vein. At a later stage, column 1242, he warns that, whatever a man might have thought of subsidies in a different era, now that we are faced with the European Community, we have got to take another view. He says:
It is clear that the Common Market is going to offer the same challenge to CIE as it does to our other industries. The same drastic pruning, reorganisation and scrapping of obsolete and restrictive practices will have to be implemented. It is all the more important, therefore, that the Board of CIE continue with renewed energy their policy of reorganisation and reshaping of the undertaking, so that it will be in the best possible shape when we do enter the Common Market. The Board may not, thereafter, have the same opportunity to put their house in order.
That was an amazing speech for a Minister, a member of a Government who have built a whole series of ramshackle industries in this country on subsidies. Industries survive on tariffs and tariffs are a subsidy to the high-cost producer. The Minister himself takes pride in the Shannon Industrial Estate. It is subsidised; it has exports incentives, remissions of taxes and freights, and all the rest of it. These are all clearly subsidies. Yet the Minister says, speaking of CIE, that he sees "no reason why, in principle, transport should be subsidised. It is no more essential to the public than many other commodities or services which no one would dream of subsidising." We are subsidising Aerlínte; we are subsidising Aer Lingus; we are subsidising the three airports; and, as far as Aer Rianta has any substance except in handing over money to the other two companies, we are subsidising Aer Rianta also.
CIE serves mainly the natives of this country. I have asked questions here designed to find out what is the number of passengers who travel by CIE road and rail services. In the last answer I got, I was told that the use of the national transport had gone up and that the number of people who use the services of CIE by road or rail is a few hundred million. That does not mean that all these people used them separately but they travelled by them so often that they are counted as representing a few hundred million passengers. They are the natives of this country. Some small proportion of the people who use the national transport will not be natives of the country, but, in the main, the services are used by the nationals of this country and we have come to the conclusion that any part of that service which does not pay its way must be closed down.
We have not got the exact information in the Minister's memorandum about those who use the air services. They have not yet reached the million mark. I think the number quoted as passengers is about 800,000. They are mainly not natives of this country— the great majority of them would not be. The vast majority of the people who use the Aerlínte services are not natives but we subsidise them. I notice that the Minister says he will use every effort to have the subsidies dropped.
We have a shipping line in this country. That is in deficit, judged by the ordinary standard of business where capital, if it is not redeemed, must be remunerated or else a dividend declared. Irish Shipping is in the red and we are going to subsidise it. The Irish Independent publishes every week a table of the movements of Irish ships and the headline to that column on 10th November was “Irish Shipping Vessels Kept Busy”. I thought it worth while looking at the ports to which those ships which we subsidise call. The “Irish Alder”, one of the ships, was laid up in Dublin and the others were trading all over the world. They were calling at ports like Chicago, Montreal, Hamburg, Hong Kong, East Nigeria, Genoa and New Orleans.
The taxpayer of this country is asked to subsidise vessels which are plying all over the world but rarely serving the Irish national in the whole course of their travels. I look at the Minister's statement with regard to CIE where he says that CIE is no more essential to the public than many other services which can be run without subsidy and then I look at the shipping column of the Irish Independent on 23rd November which is the latest one to hand. I see the heading “Irish Ships Keep Busy in Many Ports” and I find that the “Irish Pine” was due to dock in Chicago the previous day and to be in Montreal in five days' time. The “Irish Oak” was also in Chicago and was due in Montreal on Sunday. The “Irish Elm” sailed from New York on Wednesday, and was due to dock in Norfolk the previous day. The “Irish Poplar” was on her way home from Norfolk on an 11-day voyage across the Atlantic and due in Dublin next Tuesday. The Minister ought to go down to the docks to welcome her as she is one of the very few of our boats that call in here. The “Irish Maple” sailed from Hamburg the previous Sunday and is expected to make Norfolk on 1st December.
The "Irish Larch" had sailed from Sorel in the St. Lawrence River for Britain where she was due that day. The "Irish Spruce" was also due at Greenock that day from Montreal. The "Irish Ash" was in the Far East and arrived at Bangkok on Wednesday, being due to leave for Hong Kong on the following day and to arrive there in five days' time. The "Irish Sycamore" put into Avonmouth on Thursday and would spend two weeks there discharging cargo. The "Irish Hawthorn" sailed from Mersey the previous Tuesday for Bonny River in Eastern Nigeria where she is expected on the 2nd December.
The "Irish Blackthorn" sailed from the Persian Gulf the previous Tuesday for Suez where she is due to enter on 30th November. The "Irish Rose" left Waterford the previous Tuesday for New York where she is expected on 2nd December. She was another of the vessels that called to this country. Another of them, the "Irish Willow," left Waterford on 14th November and was due in Baltimore within 14 days. The "Irish Fir" was in the Mediterranean and left Genoa on Wednesday for Nemours where she was expected that day. The "Irish Heather" docked at Swansea the previous day from Brest.
The "Irish Fern" was expected at Brussels that day from Newport and the "Irish Holly" left Dublin the previous day for Faslane, in the Clyde. The "Irish Rowan" was on her way to Britain from New Orleans and was expected to make her first port there the following Thursday. The "Irish Cedar" arrived in Glasgow on 14th November but would remain there for a month before leaving for United States and Gulf of Mexico ports. She is expected to make her first port in the United States on 29th December.
Those are the services we are subsidising. Why? CIE at least serves the natives and nationals of this country. It is to be cut down and branch lines closed because they do not pay. Deputy Gallagher made great play on the principle that subsidies should be cut down. Obviously he does not realise that if we adopted his suggestion, we would close down our air services and airports, we would close down Irish Shipping, we would possible give Bord no Móna another year to get out of the red and we would close down practically every other State service that there is. I cannot find out why the distinction should be made so adverse to the Irish trader and the Irish national in regard to services which are used by him and why we should continue to give subsidies to aircraft and this group that calls itself Irish Shipping.
Deputy Gallagher said that he was all for prestige if these things make for prestige. This matter of prestige was discussed at length in 1959 when a piece of legislation known as the Air Navigation and Transport (No. 2) Bill was going through the House. The present Taoiseach spoke on the second Stage of that Bill. He was asked about the transatlantic air services and various people had said they would lend great prestige to this country. I am quoting from the debate of 15th July, column 1304. The Taoiseach intervened to say:—
We are going into the development of the transatlantic air service in the confident expectation of making a cash profit as well as conferring other benefits directly or indirectly on the country. Our expectations are based upon estimates prepared by very shrewd people who know this business thoroughly and who rarely have been wrong in similar estimates before.
He then referred to me and said:
Deputy McGilligan said I had justified this development on grounds of prestige. I never mentioned the word "prestige." I have no interest in prestige in this regard. The decision to proceed with this transatlantic air development, which had been pressed on me by the Board of Aer Lingus, was taken on hard, cold, commercial facts and nothing else.
It is my memory that at a later stage he corrected that and said that it was the Board of Aer Rianta, but, however, in this debate he said it was the Board of Aer Lingus which had pressed it on him and it was taken on hard, cold, commercial facts and nothing else. He continues at column 1305:
The expectation that, after the initial development period has passed, a substantial cash profit will be realised is based upon a conservative calculation of the traffic available. It is a very satisfactory thing that we can visualise a development which can confer indirectly very substantial benefits on the national economy, which will provide not inconsiderable employment of a very high calibre for a number of our people and, at the same time make a profit in doing so. The indirect benefits are not to be ignored. Deputy McGilligan, and I think Deputy Dillon, were inclined to speak disparagingly of the American tourist trade.
He went on to praise that and to say that it was growing.
Later at column 1307, talking about the number of people who wanted to travel to Ireland and the calculation of those we would get, he said:
Is not that a reasonably conservative basis of estimation and, on it, the experts available to the board of management of this company have calculated that they will make a substantial cash profit?
At column 1308, he said:
The experience of every airline shows that it takes three years to get a new service "out of the red". A substantial loss in the first year, with heavy development expenditure inevitably arising, a much smaller loss in the second year and practically level in the third year is the established pattern, and into profits then in the fourth year. That has been the experience of Aer Lingus. It is the experience of most airlines. It is assumed it will be the experience of Aerlínte.
Then again the Taoiseach got very good, hard, shrewd calculations and he continued:
As I have said, the accountants and experts of the company sat down in advance to calculate what the receipts and outlay would be. Up to the present they have been shown to be extraordinarily accurate. I was at one time disposed to contest the reliability of their estimation. I have certainly withdrawn from that position. They have shown themselves to be able to forecast these matters with considerable skill and accuracy.
And this is his conclusion:
It is these same experts who, projecting their calculations into the future upon the assumptions I have given the Dáil, have given us this expectation of a cash profit which will enable them, over some period, to repay these initial deficits and then commerce to earn profits. These calculations assume the complete writing-off of the investment in the aircraft in a period of ten years.
On that statement, a piece of legislation was passed. We entered into the transatlantic air service and remember these profits were to be shown, if not immediately, quite soon, three years at the outside and we were to get to the point where we would wipe off the investment in a period of ten years.
I personally think that a very efficient air company, Aer Lingus, have been done a great disservice by the people who present their accounts in a confused and, I think, dishonest way. On every occasion that an official of the Board of Aer Lingus speaks to the public, we have talk about the expectations of profits, how revenue is running and how expenditure is going and the finale is always that the company will make an operational profit this year.
What is the use of talking about operational profits? That is not the way to find out whether the company is doing well or ill. Nobody would consider that a businessman was behaving in a business-like way if he simply said at the end of the year that the amount of goods yielded enough profits to enable him to pay his employees and buy his goods. He would surely have to make provision for the building he occupied and for equipment for the building; if he borrowed money in order to start business, he would not be behaving in a business-like way unless he showed some chance of repaying the money he had borrowed and on which he was running his business, and while any money which was borrowed was still outstanding, he would be paying interest. The businessman knows well that if he does not meet these requirements, his business is a failing one and that those who have lent the money will notice it sooner or later and he will be closed down.
We were told that not merely Aer Lingus but Aerlínte are going to write off capital investment in ten years. Let it now be honestly said that we are going to subsidise air service but the person who says that can hardly be the person who said we will not subsidise the internal transport system. It seems to me it would allow Aer Lingus to present itself in a better light and a light in which most people would prefer to see it. I am speaking only of Aer Lingus now. At the moment, all the stress is laid on the operational profits which the company make. Nowhere in this 48-page document do we get the sort of information which the chairman and directors of a company would have to give to a meeting of their shareholders. I take it that is the position the Minister is supposed to occupy when speaking as Minister for Transport and Power. I cannot find out what is the capital invested in Aer Lingus separately from Aerlínte. We have got the revelation here, and it comes as a shock, that the three airports this year show a loss of £600,000 odd. The Minister says he hopes to rectify that but we have heard that for too many years for us to have any confidence that it is the Minister's wish that it will be fulfilled.
The three airports are "in the red" to the extent of £622,000 this year. There is an area of the airport which is used in the main by our own nationals, the restaurant and the bar, places where people can congregate when they go in to see the planes arriving or departing, and anywhere they go for refreshments. I understand that the catering side of the airport pays and shows a profit so that it is the other side, which allows for keeping the tarmac in condition, the buildings and all the rest, as far as the three airports are concerned, where there is a loss of £622,000. I am trying to find out what other proper charges have been met. The Minister has the figures. He should be able to give them in a clear way. They should be presented as if the Minister were a board of directors facing the shareholders.
The airport figures were all given.
I am going away from the airports. I am taking it for granted that the catering services do and that the rest do not—and they are what have landed the airports into the loss of £600,000 which they have sustained this year. The Minister mentioned that figure. He said it once for the three airports and he has repeated it in connection with the two airports, Shannon and Dublin.
What is the capital investment in Aer Lingus and Aerlínte? I know that Aer Rianta in its accounts says there is a capital investment of about £10,000,000. The Minister in a particular Act says that that £10,000,000 may be increased to £13,000,000. That is the now over-riding limit. Let us say we have £10,000,000 in these two air companies.
Would the Deputy like to know the figure while he is speaking?
Yes.
Very roughly, Aer Lingus capital is £3,000,000 and therefore to remunerate that at the rate of five per cent would cost £150,000. The Aerlínte capital is £7,000,000 and, at five per cent that would require £350,000.
I notice that when the Minister says: "that would require", it means it has not been met.
No.
You have £10,000,000 between the two.
That is right.
Again, a dishonest argument is used by people speaking on behalf of Aer Lingus. They say: "We are not living on borrowed capital. Therefore, we have not to make arrangements to repay capital or to remunerate such capital as is outstanding." They take refuge in this, that they are built on what is called share capital, they say you do not pay interest—but you pay a dividend. A company with £10,000,000 of share capital which has not declared a dividend in its existence will not find it easy to get new money.
I come back to what the Taoiseach said about the writing off of the investment in aircraft in a period of ten years. That has not started yet. I do not know what is the life of the three aeroplanes that serve the transatlantic route but they are three years old by this time. I have heard a variation established with regard to the actual life of these craft—as low as five years and as high as ten years. I imagine the truth is somewhere in between. There has always to be considered that some new type of aircraft may come along which will necessitate the jettisoning of whatever we have at a particular time.
I think each of these aircraft, with the spare parts required for them, cost £2,000,000. We have three such aircraft. When these aircraft come to the end of their useful life, we shall require three more. The cost of these things is rising. Let us assume we have to pay only £2,000,000 each for three more— another £6,000,000. Where is the £6,000,000 to be got? The Minister will grant it to them if he is in control of things at that time. Therefore, the capital investment will rise from £10,000,000 to £16,000,000. There will will be aircraft for Aer Lingus as well.
In the meantime, this company issues its glossy reports year by year. The one thing that stands out is that they have declared no dividend over the years and they have not started to repay the investment in the aircraft that they have. If that is true or if it is anything approaching the truth, it is a completely different picture from that which is given from time to time at Press interviews as to how Irish International Lines are going.
I hope I shall not be faced with it as if it is an argument but there is an item of interest in the accounts. It is something very small. It is £10,000 or £12,000. It is bank interest. It is only, so to speak, repaying money charged by the bank when the revenue was not equal to the outgoings.
The depreciation is another misleading matter. It is in the accounts stated that these aircraft are being depreciated—they say, according to a proper rate. I do not know what it means. No explanation is given of it. However, I know that if any depreciation is being taken into the accounts, it is only what is called historical cost, that is, it is only an effort to clear out the accounts over a number of years the original investment. However, it is not making provision for the future.
I do not know how £10,000,000 has crept up—certainly, the capital of the company a few years ago was not anything like £10,000,000—unless it is the addition of these three Boeings. When these come to the end of their useful life and others have to be purchased, they will be added on and will be part of the capital. I do not say that that will happen immediately but in the course of another few years, another £6,000,000 will be added on to a particular period. It would be far better to be honest with the public and to say, as was said in this House: "We do not intend the airlines to pay; we are not going to impose upon them the necessity of paying."
It is rather awkward for a Minister for Transport and Power to make such a statement with regard to transatlantic passengers and then to turn to this House and to say: "With regard to the unfortunate natives in the country who try to use bus and rail services, there will be no subsidy. We shall close down any part of the transport system that does not pay." I cannot understand the principle, if there is any, that operates in that type of conclusion.
It is worse when we have so many Irish ships tramps across the seas of the world, hardly ever putting into an Irish port and I do not suppose carrying a ton of cargo to this country for every 10,000 tons consigned by the nationals of another country to a country other than our own. Nobody can say that Irish Shipping are a national service. They are being subsidised.
Again, when it comes to the unfortunate native of this country who wants a service, he will be treated according to the most rigid financial canons and there will be a closing down of anything that is just not paying its way. On page 12 of this memorandum read by the Minister yesterday he said in connection with airlines:
Apart from the efforts which have been made to increase the revenue at the airports it is my policy to ensure that the airports are run as economically as possible, consistent with the provision of adequate and efficient services both to the travelling public and to the air companies.
Will the Minister take that as his line in respect of CIE? Let him urge all the economies he can find it his way to make but at least let him see they are consistent with the provision of an adequate and efficient service for the travelling public.
It is not right to have a Minister in charge of air services taking that standard and the Minister having charge of internal transport services in the country taking an entirely different one. I have played with the suggestion myself as to what would happen if you inaugurated a sort of game of musical chairs and put Dr. Andrews and the merry men of his board in charge of Aerlínte and put the promoters of Aerlínte in charge of CIE. Would Dr. Andrews proceed to close down Aerlínte and would the people who succeeded him on the Board of CIE proceed to open up new areas even though they had to be subsidised?