Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 12 Dec 1962

Vol. 198 No. 8

Committee on Finance. - Vote 45—Transport and Power (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:—

"That the Estimates be referred back for reconsideration." (Deputy D. Costello).

Mr. Dillon

When this debate was adjourned I was urging on the Minister for Transport and Power that, the euphemism which was now so widely employed by State companies of "an operating surplus" was inappropriate and was designed to cause confusion in the public mind. The Minister urged that that was not so and that nobody mistook the phrase "an operating surplus" for a profit in the generally accepted sense of the term. I think it is true that at least four or five Fianna Fáil Deputies, in the course of this debate, have in fact referred to an operating surplus as a profit. It is just that confusion of mind which I deem inappropriate, and I am not altogether certain that it is not part of a studied policy on the part of the Minister for Transport and Power to use this terminology in order to conceal the fact that, with the exception of the Electricity Supply Board, every public company for which he is answerable to this House is making heavy annual losses which it ought to be his duty to defend as such on social or other grounds, and for which he is prepared to justify the very heavy payments which have to be annually made from the Exchequer or taxation in order to meet the losses being incurred by those companies.

In connection with Aerlínte and Aer Rianta, the Minister interrupted at column 732, volume 198 of the Official Report to say: " `Operating surplus' is the term used by all the air companies. They try to get some uniformity." That may be true, but if you want to use it here and defend it on the ground that other companies use the term, then you ought to be able to demonstrate that that is not the only phrase in the accounts of other air companies that you have adopted. If you are quoting that phrase as used by Aerlínte and Aer Rianta, you ought to be in a position to show that the accounts of Aerlínte and Aer Rianta are in all particulars the same as those of other air companies, which I very much doubt.

I do not know whether the depreciation provisions and the liability for charges in respect of meteorological and airport facilities represent an identical charge in the accounts of Aerlínte and Aer Rianta, as they do in the other accounts to which the Minister referred. If we got a true and honest picture of the losses these various companies are generating each year, it ought then be possible for us to determine on the merits which of them we are prepared to continue and which of them we believe ought to be brought to an end.

Some of them, it may seem, are a necessary charge in order to maintain essential services. I would be prepared to argue that in regard to any losses sustained by Aer Lingus, because, in the day and generation in which we live, it is as necessary to have some outside contacts with the world by air transport over which we have control as it is to have access to the outside world by any other method of transport and as I do not believe that it is expedient that we should be wholly dependent on BEA or BOAC for that kind of communication, I think it is justifiable to maintain Aer Lingus, even at the cost of some annual charge to the Exchequer. I am not so convinced that that is the case in regard to Aerlínte and I am not satisfied that Aer Rianta is recovering from its customers a sufficient part of the total cost of maintaining their operations.

I should be glad to hear from the Minister his view on the consequences of establishing the services maintained by Aer Rianta. I understood that one of the reasons Aer Rianta was to be established was to make sure that other air services would continue to use Shannon. I know a variety of other representations were made by the present Taoiseach at the time the legislation was before the House but, as is customary with the present Taoiseach, he was bluffing and blabbing and very largely prevaricating when he made those speeches. He frequently is. He said on that occasion, at column 1304 of the debates of 15th July, 1959:

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 shrewed people who know this business thoroughly and who rarely have been wrong in similar estimates before. 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 subsequently transpired that the Board of Aer Lingus had never made any such representations to the Taoiseach and I constrained him by Parliamentary Question into admitting that that was a misstatement of fact and that in fact the board to which he referred was the Board of Aer Rianta, a very different body. But, observe that he was induced to embark upon this by "a confident anticipation of a cash profit." That has gone up the spout pretty effectively. I do not believe that many people believed the Taoiseach when he said that in this House.

He said that he hoped it would confer other benefits directly or indirectly on the country. As I understood it, the other benefits were these: that the Government apprehended that with the development of jet aircraft, SAS, Swissair, TWA, Pan-Am, and the other great international airlines might get into the habit of overflying Shannon. If the Irish trade were left in a position that they had no other carrier to turn to if these foreign firms combined to resolve not to use Shannon any more, it was, therefore, important that an Irish firm should intervene in the traffic and fix all and sundry with notice that they were going to land at Shannon and those who wanted to cater for the Irish trade had better realise that they either land at Shannon or the Irish trade would be lost to them.

That seemed a specious enough argument but what has happened in fact? Is it or is it not true that, contrary to expectations, the nationalistic feeling of our people has proved to be so strong that the Irish emigrants or persons with Irish affiliations coming on a trip to Ireland, even though they intend to go on subsequently to the continent, have all patronised Aerlínte, with the result that we have a relatively high seat occupancy on Aerlínte compared with the other lines on the transatlantic route but with the astonishing effect that we have emptied Pan-Am, emptied TWA, emptied Swissair, emptied SAS, and the other transatlantic operators of Irish custom, with the result that the tendency for these lines to overfly Shannon has been greatly intensified and we are now faced with the prospect of reducing the whole status of Shannon Airport owing to a lack of terminal and in transit traffic there and, where we used to maintain a 24-hour restaurant service which was fully utilised and urgently required and where we had a large transit trade in commodities at the Shannon shop, we now find that the prospect is that the catering facilities at Shannon will very materially dwindle, that already a considerable number of staff are being laid off and that it is quite possible that in the foreseeable future only very restricted catering facilities will be required at Shannon at all and that the custom for the Shannon shop will tend to dwindle away because the transient traffic that used circulate through the airport while the various international lines paused at Shannon to unload their Irish passengers or to take them on have ceased to appear there at all because they either overfly the port or, if they come down, do not leave the aeroplane but go straight on.

If this be true, then I apprehend that both of the brash and brazen kind of prophecies, which one would expect from the Taoiseach, of a cash profit and other benefits directly or indirectly for the country, have failed to materialise and that both calculations in that regard have proved to be wrong.

I understand we have sought to remedy that situation by an effort to generate freight traffic through the Shannon Industrial Estate. I always understood that one of the principal reasons for establishing the Shannon Estate on a site 15 miles removed from Ennis, and 20 miles removed from the city of Limerick, was that we wanted to put it close to the airport, in the belief that the bulk of the output would be carried on aircraft and, in some measure, substitute for the diminution of passengers traffic. We took that decision at a very considerable cost to the town of Ennis and to the city of Limerick.

Am I correct in my belief that far from our anticipations in that regard having been realised, the situation now is that more than 60 per cent. of all the traffic generated by the Shannon Estate is going by rail and sea, that only about 30 per cent. of the incoming traffic in raw materials and outgoing traffic in finished products is using aircraft and that the trend appears to be away from air transport and toward rail and sea freight in growing degree? If that is true, all I can say is that the calculations made in regard to this matter are strangely unrealistic. It is more than high time for the Minister for Transport and Power, who is responsible to this House for these matters, to take the House into his confidence so that we can take decisions in the knowledge of the facts and not live in a kind of cloud-cuckooland, created by the perversion of language and the twisting of words to mean something far different from what people probably understand them to mean and what it is manifest, from the course of this debate, that the backbench members of Fianna Fáil have clearly understood them to be, because they have thought that operating surplus was synonymous with profits. It is now manifest that the two concepts are entirely different and that operating surplus of £29,000 very frequently means a real annual loss of £500,000 or more, which must be ultimately made good by the Irish Exchequer.

I have been looking at the references by the Minister in his introductory speech to the accounts of Irish Shipping. Here the company is declared to have shown an operating surplus of £279,000 for the 12 months ending 30th April, 1961 but, when the depreciation for the fleet over 11 months has been allowed for, the commercial loss is £409,000.

Mr. Childers

I did not hide that. I did not hide anything in that.

Mr. Dillon

I am pointing out that——

Mr. Childers

It is the same with all the other companies.

Mr. Dillon

What is the significance of this figure of operating surplus? It seems to be wholly unrealistic.

What is the purpose of giving a figure that has no significance at all? If we ask CIE "How much did you receive for freight or passenger transport at the stations of a particular branch line?" they will say: "We will not tell you, because if we told you, it would mislead you and addle you." These figures are not relevant to a true evaluation of the profit and loss of a rail system service; yet the Minister tells us, again and again, of this mysterious figure, the operating surplus, which appears to me to be a balance of the actual money paid out and the actual money paid in without any reference at all to the source of both items. It transpires when we come to examine it more closely that part of the payments out in regard to Irish Shipping are made not in coin of the realm but in rust and depreciation and all the other risks inevitably associated with the operation of transport by sea.

The Minister tells us in his review that, although we are adding to the fleet, he apprehends there may be more ships laid up this year than there were last year and that our losses this year may be heavier than they were before. At the same time, however, we appear to be building new ships in Holland to add to the fleet, part of which is already laid up and all of which is making heavy losses.

I think the Minister should tell us what programme the company has in mind. Are we going to go on building ships making more losses or does the Minister say to us—an attitude I can understand: "Now is the time; here is the day of deep depression when you can buy ships cheaply, and now is the time to invest in the confident anticipation that, in two or three years time, there will be a great boom in shipping"?

Mr. Childers

The policy is given in my statement. However, I do not want to interrupt the Deputy.

Mr. Dillon

I find the Minister's interruptions very helpful. He says in his statement:

With the establishment of the Verolme Cork Dockyard, the building at home of deep-sea vessels for the company is now also possible. The Irish Rowan, which is the first ship to have been built at the new dockyard, reflects great credit on the management and workers and marks, I hope, the beginning of a long and mutually beneficial relationship between the two companies.

At Column 265, Volume 198 of the Official Report, he referred to the bulkcarriers and said:

With the delivery of the second bulk-carrier, the company's dry-cargo fleet will total 153,500 tons deadweight so that only a further additional 47,000 will be required to meet the target of 200,000 tons which has been set.

Upon my word, it is all very well to set targets, but suppose you find you are losing heavily on less than the target, is there not a great deal to be said for postponing the filling of the 47,000 tons for a fleet which is already losing £500,000 a year?

My primary purpose in referring to these matters is to get away from the detestable system of living a lie and to induce the Minister, in terms that his own supporters understand, to state the facts clearly—what companies are making a profit and what companies are making a loss—and then to determine what we should do hereafter. In that context I do not want to re-cap what I said the previous day but I want to remind the Minister that I sought to apply this test of which I am speaking not only to the shipping company and to Aer Lingus, Aerlínte and Aer Rianta, but also to Bord na Móna and to their accounts especially in so far as their relationship with the ESB is concerned.

There is one last matter of a specific character to which I want to refer.

I have asked the Minister on more than one occasion during Question Time what plans are in hand to deal with the traffic at holiday times between this country and Great Britain and if sufficient precautions had been taken to ensure that reasonable accommodation will be provided for those who travel. The reason I pressed that question on him is that the descriptions I read of conditions, written by people travelling from Great Britain to here, compare most unfavourably with the conditions that appear to obtain at the peak periods of travel between Great Britain and the Continent. The distance to here is relatively short. There is the Fishguard-Rosslare line, the Fishguard-Cork line, the Dún Laoghaire-Holyhead line and the Dublin North Wall-Liverpool line.

With this number of lines available, it does seem we ought to be able by duplicating or, if needs be, triplicating services to these several ports to secure that people wishing to spend a holiday here during the summer tourist season or at Christmas will not be subjected to the astonishing discomforts that I have seen described in the public Press. I cannot give the Minister the date of this publication, because it is not on the extract I have cut out, but I shall be pleased to hand him the original for the purpose of checking.

Mr. Childers

We see all the complaints.

Mr. Dillon

"Anger at Holyhead Ship Crowding: Wakeful Passage to Eire." This refers, I think, to the summer traffic rather than to winter traffic, but it is equally relevant. It speaks of travelling on the motor vessels Leinster.

Mr. Childers

I know the letter.

Mr. Dillon

This is not a letter. This is an article written by a Sunday Telegraph reporter.

Mr. Childers

But it arose from a letter in the Guardian. I saw the letter. The Deputy does not need to give it any further publicity.

Mr. Dillon

This is an article, not a letter. It speaks of the privileged minority sleeping in comfortable berths or resting in armchairs in first-class lounges, while the 500 ordinary passengers "spent the night huddled on floors and stairways or wedged between mountains of luggage on the windy decks. Some abandoned all hope of sleep and spent the whole journey looking out for the first signs of land."

The article continues:

I was as thankful as any when I left the ship after sharing their discomforts in the second class quarters of the ship. I quickly discovered that some of the recent complaints about conditions in the night boats to Dublin had not been exaggerated.

The plight of second-class passengers on these trips, run six nights a week by the British and Irish Steam Packet Company, is not new. For some years regular travellers to Ireland have seen samples of this, especially at peak holiday periods...

Apart from the "victims" themselves, port officials and others who watch them leave the ship regularly at Dublin believe the problem is getting much worse. They wonder when the company, which also runs a sister ship the Munster... will be urged to improve the facilities.

Some passengers told me they felt they were being treated no better than cattle. Many presented a depressing spectacle as the night voyage wore on.

I had to step over people stretched out on the floors, in corridors and on stairways leading to the levatories. Men, women and children were trying to get sleep anywhere they could.

Every available seat was occupied long before the boat left Liverpool. The rest then indulged in a kind of treasure hunt to find corners where they could sleep.

The situation was aggravated when the bar closed an hour after we sailed. The customers poured into "makeshift" dormitories and added to the congestion...

A woman lying on the floor with a two-year-old baby, said "I can't afford to travel first class. It is only £1 more, but I would rather save that for my holiday, even though it means this sort of thing".

Mr. Childers

The only complaint that came to my notice about that service in two years.

Mr. Dillon

Really? I am delighted to hear it. I would not read that article out in the House except that I believe the Sunday Telegraph is a responsible paper. If I had read that in some of the yellow press in Britain, I should not have bothered drawing the attention of the House to it because I would assume it was merely such a scare-mongering paragraph as might appear in papers with which we are quite familiar but which have not got the standing or reputation of the Sunday Telegraph. The lesson to be learned from what I have just read out is, I think, that the first-class passengers are relatively well off; apparently there is some attempt to measure the accommodation to the number of persons travelling first-class.

Mr. Childers

The second-class passengers are put into first-class accommodation on those occasions.

Mr. Dillon

Now I want to be fair.

Mr. Childers

The Deputy is being very unfair.

Mr. Dillon

I want to draw the attention of the House to one aspect. Let us be fair. Suppose 500 second-class passengers turn up at Liverpool and they have only a four or five days holiday before them, which is it better for the shipping company to do? Is it better for the company to say to 150 of them: "We will not take you. We have not got the room" and leave them on the quay at Liverpool or to say: "They have only got four or five days. Push them on. We will do the best we can for them". I can understand the point of view of the shipping company finding itself faced with a crowd far in excess of the boat's scheduled capacity, but still within the limits of marine safety.

Mr. Corish

These are Board of Trade regulations. Are they being observed?

Mr. Childers

Absolutely.

Mr. Dillon

You may have Board of Trade minimum regulations and you may have accommodation programmes of the shipping company, but the shipping company finds it is in the position that there are 150 men and women who want to get over to Ireland for a short holiday. The company could either say to them: "We will not take you and you will be writing letters to the papers," or to the crew: "Look, the Board of Trade regulations permit us to take them. Shove them on. We will do the best we can. They will be there in the morning in any case." If that were an isolated case in which there was a supreme effort made by the shipping company to get them home for a few days' holiday rather than send them back to Birmingham or Manchester, then I can imagine the story I have here described being a matter for praise. But suppose this is a regular occurrence, then I think we are in duty bound to ask the Minister why this company does not provide a second boat.

Mr. Corish

Take the ordinary buses here in the city of Dublin; there are regulations that prevent them overcrowding.

Mr. Dillon

It is not the same thing because the boat may be drawn up at the quay in Liverpool in anticipation of a crowd no greater than the boat is able to carry in comfort. Extra numbers turn up. The company could put up the barrier and say: "We do not give a damn what happens to you. We are not going to have letters written to the Sunday Telegraph about us.” I think the shipping company is to be praised if, on a very odd occasion, it says: “We have been caught short but we are not going to send the people home. We will do the best we can.” But suppose that is happening regularly.

Mr. Corish

When they decide to do that, it provokes letters and criticisms such as we have heard.

Mr. Dillon

I want to defend the shipping company against that criticism, if it is an isolated case. If it is an isolated case, in the circumstances, I think the shipping company are right to put them anywhere they can rather than send them back to Birmingham or Manchester, or whence ever they have come, and say: "We do not give a damn. Do without your holiday." I want to be fair. But suppose the Minister says we are obliged to confess that that is happening pretty regularly on the Liverpool-Dublin route during the holiday season, then I think he has a duty on him to say: "This is not good enough. This should not happen. If it is tending to happen repeatedly, you have on you a duty to provide a second boat. It is part of your job as a transport company to do it and if you will not, we will have to consider ways and means to provide additional transport, if needs be, by a national service."

I know there are a number of people who will look down their noses and say: "He does not know what he is talking about. We have not the ships to do it." That gives rise to justifiable and violent indignation. The people who look down their noses and say: "What nonsense he is talking: how can we spend money to provide ships to bring people home on holiday?" are the same people who demand that we spend £½ million to provide facilities for people to fly across the Atlantic Ocean.

I have much more sympathy for the people struggling to get back to have a holiday in the homes from which they were driven by hunger and want than I have for the people who want to fly to New York or San Francisco. I think it is much more important to spend money to see that the second-class passengers on the Liverpool-Dublin route are reasonably catered for than to spend money in order to maintain Boeing jets flying across the Atlantic. Here is the place and this is the occasion for a detached appraisal of the whole problem and the requirements to be met.

What the Minister must keep in mind is that while technical advice is very valuable and should be fully weighed, it is not technocrats who are running the country. We prefer, and I think the vast bulk of Deputies would prefer to see money spent on facilitating our people to come home on holidays from Great Britain than to see it spent to maintain other services which are of relatively little value to the ordinary people, who on the whole, we are sent here to represent, and whose interests it is our prime duty to protect.

I hope that the Minister will have time, in dealing with the many matters he will be called upon to deal with, to consider the matter I have raised as to the desirability of reviewing the question of whether the transport monopoly, especially in regard to the freight services, should be maintained in the new situation in which we find ourselves. That, and the other topics to which I referred when speaking on the last occasion on this Estimate, are deserving of attention. I shall be glad if the Minister can deal with them when he comes to close the discussion on the Estimate.

Deputy Tully and Deputy S. Collins rose

Acting Chairman (Mr. P. O'Donnell)

The Minister.

Mr. Corish

Oh, no.

Acting Chairman

I called the Minister because I thought he wanted to make a point of explanation.

Mr. Childers

We shall be sitting until after Christmas.

Mr. S. Collins

Until we have our say—do not have the least worry about that.

Mr. Childers

I am not worrying about myself, but about the business of the House, and how it is to be concluded.

Mr. T. Lynch

The Minister has backing now in his own Party.

Mr. Tully

It would be most unusual if the guillotine were to be applied to a debate by the Minister or anyone else.

Acting Chairman

I would not have called the Minister, were it not for the fact that I thought there was some personal point of explanation he wished to offer.

Mr. Tully

I shall be very brief. I want to refer particularly to ESB services and charges. To-day I addressed a question to the Minister for Defence and he referred me to a debate which would be taking place later on, and suggested that perhaps the Minister for Transport and Power might be in a position to answer the question better than he could.

When the ESB make a connection in a newly built-up area, they very often seem to forget that the extra houses will be using extra current, and that extra transformers should be erected. We very often find that with the additional houses, the strength of the current seems to drop, and the result is that people are literally unable to boil and egg on Sunday mornings or at peak periods. The Minister should endeavour to get the ESB to do something about that sort of thing.

I drew the attention of the Minister recently to the fact that despite the recent changes in legislation as a result of the Electricity Supply (Amendment) Bill, 1962, which became law on 7th August, 1962, and despite the fact that that Act provided subsidies of 75 per cent. on the capital cost up to a maximum of £75 per house, there were a number of people not only being charged exorbitant prices but that in some cases the charges were doubled over a period of 12 months. I wrote to the Minister and pointed out two cases in particular.

One was a case of five dairy farmers who did not live on the side of a mountain but in the middle of a populated area which had been, for a long period, receiving electric current. They lived on a farm which had been divided by the Land Commission, so, when the area was serviced originally, the houses where those people are now living were not in existence. They asked for current. The main reason they wanted it was that they were dairy farmers and the people to whom they supplied the milk instructed them that if they did not get coolers installed, it might not be possible to continue taking milk from them. That is quite reasonable, and it happens pretty often in rural Ireland.

I wrote to the Minister and explained the position to him. I asked him, in view of the fact that the charge which they had been asked to pay was extraordinarily high, he could do something about it. He did something about it. Within a reasonable time, he sent me a reply which no one could say was a brief one. He certainly went into great detail pointing out how these people could get current at a reduced charge. He finished up with a gem which I should like him to explain when he is replying to the debate. I quote from his letter:

Enclosed is a copy of a Press Announcement made when it was decided to embark on further subsidisation of rural electrification. As can be seen from paragraph 6, the Government were aware that a number of premises are so situated that the cost of connecting them would be extremely high and that the maximum subsidy of £75 for each premises would not be sufficient, in their case, to eliminate the necessity for substantial special service charges. The Government decided that, as an alternative, in these cases a subsidy of £10 per house should be offered to enable the householder concerned to install bottled gas. A leaflet giving particulars of this scheme is also enclosed.

I wonder would the Minister explain to me how they could cool milk with bottled gas? That was the main reason they wanted the current installed. They wanted to cool the milk because they were in the dairying business. I believe that is possible. I believe there is a very complicated and expensive system by which it can be done, but a £10 bottled gas grant is not the answer to it.

What amazes me is that the ESB continue to use this argument that they can only supply people living in a certain area. The Minister's letter states:

This Act provides for a subsidy of 75 per cent of the capital cost up to a maximum of £75 per house. As a result of this subsidy it is expected that about 100,000 additional houses can be offered connection at either the normal rates of charge related to the size of the premises or at rates less than 50 per cent above the normal rates. The capital cost of connecting these houses would, on average, be less than £50 each. There remain, however, an estimated 12,000 houses, the average cost of connecting which would be very high.

Will the Minister say how it can be stated it is not possible to give current at a reasonable charge to houses, not miles away, but in the middle of a thickly-populated area?

There are one or two other cases I wish to deal with. The gem of them concerns the people living beside Gormanston military camp. This camp is in my constituency, a few miles from Balbriggan. Even when Deputy Collins and I were there, the camp had electric light; but the people who lived outside it had not the privilege of having electric light. They were not given that previlege mainly because of the fact that there was a military airfield attached to the camp. I agree with the Department of Defence that the question of hazard should be taken into account. But the people outside the gates, who lived in houses which had been there for many years before the camp was established as such, felt they should be entitled to some facilities. They asked the ESB to quote them. The ESB quoted them but pointed out that underground work would have to be done. These people felt the charges were a bit high. Eventually, when this new Act was passed, they decided they would take a chance and ask the ESB for a quotation again.

I have the particulars of one case here. It concerns a man who lives within 20 yards of the front gates of the camp. He lives in a vested county council cottage, consisting of three rooms and a kitchen. That man got a quotation at the normal fixed charge of 15/3 per two months, plus a special service charge of £9 15 11d., making a total charge of £10 11 2d. before he gets any current. Apparently, the Department of Defence are the niggers in the woodpile here. The ESB wrote to this man:

We have now heard from the Department of Defence in regard to the extension to your house. To make supply available and comply with the requirements of the Department, we are obliged to erect approximately 100 yards of overhead lines and to lay approximately 240 yards of underground cable.

On account of the large cost involved, we are obliged to fix a by-mensal charge on your premises of £10 11 2d. which is made up of a special service charge of £9 15 11d. and a normal fixed charge of 15/3d. The standard unit charge also applies.

They add, of course, the tailpiece, which was hardly necessary:

If you wish to have supply on the above terms, please complete the attached application form.

The fact that I have it here proves whether or not it is being completed.

I asked the Minister for Defence today was it not possible for his Department to accept the responsibility, because it is their fault that this has happened. He politely told me it was a matter for Transport and Power, for the ESB. I should like to have the Minister's comments on this. It looks as if this man and a number of his neighbours are being treated very shabbily by this Department of State. They are just being made fools of. If it is the position that this extravagant charge is being insisted on, then the Department of Defence should pay for the cost of the extra work. If they do not, the Minister should see to it that the ESB give the current to those people at the normal fixed charge.

I should like the Minister to indicate whether or not the people living quite close to where the current is running can have the current at the normal charge. I know of one instance where somebody who applied for current was told he could not have it off that line, because that line was not being used for that purpose at all. He accepted the excuse he got, and he was told he would have to pay £5 or £6 to have an extension from another line further down the road. The funny thing was, however, that a very well-to-do person bought a house further up the road and decided that he would like electric light. The strange thing was that in his case the current could, and did, come off this line. There was no difficulty about it and he got it at the normal charge. Yet the very much poorer man was told he could not have it and has not got it yet.

Those are things the Minister should try to eliminate. He may say these are the day-to-day activities of the ESB and are no function of his, but I can tell him that the responsibility is being laid at the door of the Minister for Transport and Power by the people concerned. The ESB say: "This is what the law lays down and we can do nothing about it."

I have two further questions. One concerns people living in areas which, because of the peculiar system adopted by the ESB of leaving pockets, were not serviced when the areas were being developed. Even in thickly-populated areas, you will find these pockets left. They should be eliminated as quickly as possible.

My second question deals with people who accepted current, before the new system was introduced, at the charge then laid down. The fact that they accepted it then should not be held against them now and they should not be asked to pay until the cows come home a charge which normally they would not have had to pay. It is unfair and it is something the Minister might take account of.

Mr. Childers

They are being reduced.

Mr. Tully

No. I am afraid if they are being reduced, there are quite a number of people they have not yet got around to. I have had complaints from all over the place of people still being charged as if they were not affected by this new arrangement.

Mr. Childers

I daresay it will take time.

Mr. Tully

I assume they will get credit for whatever they paid over and above.

Mr. S. Collins

I regret to inform the Minister that the likelihood of his immediately concluding this debate is somewhat remote. My hands are not tied now in the way they were on the last occasion we had an opportunity of discussing Transport and Power. At that time the question of the West Cork Railway was sub judice and it was not right or proper for me to discuss it. I now propose to deal with what might be more honestly and graphically referred to as the rape of West Cork.

At no time did CIE produce any facts or figures about that line that would justify its closing. Even at the penultimate stage of the decision, the Minister himself only wakened up to the fact that there was an immense revenue from beet haulage there but no consideration was at any time given to the future of the line in that regard or to the possibility of the development of the tourist industry in West Cork. This is another stupid blunder of bureaucracy which I have no hesitation in saying, is tantamount to deliberate dishonesty. I am laying at the Minister's door a deliberate charge of complicity and responsibility for this disastrous decision.

The Minister has only to go down to visit some of his friends in West Cork, and he has some friends in West Cork, to find out the devastation and the havoc that have taken place on the roads of West Cork since this stupid, unnecessary and unjustified decision to close the railways for the purpose of having a quick sale of rails to bolster up the capital losses of CIE. That is all it was. I am not going to be charitable about the codology put up by CIE that the figures might mislead us. The only people who would have been misled by the figures were the people who did not get them and all the poppy-cock and nonsense about having to spread the revenue from the beet freight throughout a whole length of line is rubbish and nobody knows that better than this statistically-minded, figure-tortured Minister. I am saying on behalf of the people of West Cork that the Government are responsible for aiding CIE in the unjustifiable destruction of 30 odd miles of worthwhile railway line.

I am satisfied from investigations made from time to time of the use of this railway line that there were nothing like the losses in its operation which have been suggested by CIE. If the Minister saw the havoc the heavy beet trailers are doing to the West Cork roads, he would see what a burden the use of these trailers has thrown on to the ratepayers, a burden that would have been infinitely lighter if it had been met by a contribution from the Cork County Council to the upkeep of the railway. The contribution to be made by CIE will fall short by hundreds of thousands of pounds of what is necessary to put those roads right now after having to meet the initial destruction caused by the CIE freight blunderbusses inefficiently run and inadequately serviced.

The Minister allowed this line to go in the light of an industrial development that has since arisen and in the light of an immense impetus by the people of West Cork in the development of tourism. The initiative that was going to make possible a type of package holiday which would bring families in the city out into the fresh air and into an air of conviviality has been destroyed because if it was one thing to bring a family on a holiday in the inefficient trains which were run by CIE, it is infinitely worse to try to bring such a family on a long journey in a CIE bus.

I am again saying that every reason given by CIE and supported by the Minister for the abolition of the West Cork railway line is codology and rubbish and I am asking Providence to preserve us from the alleged transport experts. We have had nothing from CIE but a sorry record of glorious inefficiency. I am going to take up in this matter where Deputy Dillon left off because it is time that somebody stopped the monopoly and the codology that is going on in the CIE road freight department. Things were bad enough when we had the West Cork railway and we had CIE showing their administrative capacity by running the trains, buses, lorries and vans into the same area within 30 minutes of each other, creating fresh competition amongst themselves and completely ignoring the needs, wishes and comfort of the business people and passengers. As a result of that, we now have the development where more and more business people have to buy their own lorries and transport facilities because of two things, the inefficiency of CIE and the extravagant cost.

It is an amazing thing that the type of carrier the Minister will not allow to operate outside 15 miles can, within the 15 miles limit, always beat the tar out of CIE and give efficient service at the present time. Has the time not come to stop the rubbish of saying to these people that they must have a plate in order to join the select vested interest group when we know that people who are not inflicted by the type of administrative monster created by CIE can carry goods more cheaply, more safely, more quickly and more efficiently? Surely we have to face up to the fact that if we have to maintain a rail system in this country at a loss, instead of calling in foreign experts, the Minister should sit down and consider what is a simple solution to the whole problem.

It is so simple that the Government will not have it and the experts will not understand it. Would the Minister think of taking it on himself to allow the free operation of road transport again and make the people operating the road freight service as private enterprise pay a carrier's fee of so much a ton on the lorries they use? If he did this, he would be able to make the necessary subvention to maintain the CIE rail system and give the Irish industrialist, business man and farmer an efficient, speedy and effective service. It is so simple, and I have said it so often, that I know the Minister will succeed in getting Sir somebody from God-knows-where, or possibly some gentleman now described as an expert but who probably has no more credentials than the man in the moon, but he will succeed——

Mr. Childers

The Beddy Report was totally honest.

Mr. S. Collins

The Minister will not shout me down.

Mr. Childers

The Deputy is talking arrant nonsense.

Mr. S. Collins

I have never heard anybody who can really talk arrant nonsense as well as the Minister but he is going to listen to me and I have a lot to say. Of course the only reason the Minister is getting cross is that he is stung when we tell him the truth about West Cork. The Minister did betray the people of West Cork——

(Interruptions.)

Mr. Childers

Insufferable nonsense.

Acting Chairman

Deputy Collins should be allowed to make his speech.

Mr. S. Collins

All that is wrong with the Minister is his egotistical vanity and stupidity. There is no doubt that one of the Minister's functions is tourism. Possibly because his environment is different, or because his outlook may be continental, the outlook of Bord Fáilte is as unbalanced and unreal as can be. I have never yet believed, and I never shall believe, that the person who provides money for the Irish people through tourism is the fellow who flies across the Atlantic and stays at plush-lined, subsidised hotels. I know—and the Minister knows, if he applies his mind to it—that our own people coming back for holidays and the workingclass and middleclass English tourists who bring their cars and fishing gear and their families to this country are the type of people that Bord Fáilte do not cater for.

If you try to get facilities from Bord Fáilte for the little man who wants to put in a few wash-hand basins in his house, to make things a little better so that he can give better facilities to the people who are coming, the amount he wants is too small for the lordly Bord Fáilte to consider. The little contribution he wishes to make is insignificant compared with the "posh" hotels which we shall have in the near future and for which the Irish people, in the main, are going to pay. Have no doubt about it, the amount of the contribution that will be made by the outsiders will be microscopic compared with the contribution to be made by Bord Fáilte towards building these hotels.

There is no doubt that most of the nice tourist places, such as those the Minister discovered in his rambles through West Cork or Donegal or the West of Ireland or in the unknown parts of Kerry, have a value and an intrinsic beauty that is apparently lost on Bord Fáilte, its directors and administration, lost in the tinsel and plateglass, the luxurious colour, the luxurious openings and in the stupid cocktail parties and idle chatter. A wonderful new conception seems to be growing up that unless you have the sort of place, either a hotel or an industry, in which all the senior Civil Service officials and all the Ministers and all the minions are asked to drink the multitudinous variety of cocktails available, partake of the various delightful savouries and talk utter nonsense, you are of no consequence.

Is it not time we got down to reality and faced the fact that it is not in the top stratum that Irish tourism is to develop? It is through the improvement of amenities for the ordinary people, because, whether the Minister and Bord Fáilte realise it or not, the greatest number of people in the world are ordinary people and the fly-by-nights, the fops or the illusory millionaires are a very small section of any community. The sooner we realise this the better, because we must realise that we are spending the money of the Irish people and we must get down to dealing with the biggest possible section of the Irish people in distributing that money by way of reinvestment and development. It is time the Minister ceased the codology by which one must do a £500 job before one gets a grant from Bord Fáilte. There are some places in my constituency where, if they got a reasonable loan of £80 to £150, they could do a worthwhile job for themselves and it would be done quickly and efficiently and they could make their contribution in the coming season by having an extra five or six visitors or an extra family kept in reasonable comfort in areas where, thank God, there is much hospitality and kindliness.

Bord Fáilte has been rightly, in my opinion, much criticised because it is time its whole direction was changed. The Minister is responsible for policy. According to some speeches he has made, the Minister is keenly interested in the development of tourism, in the co-ordination of deep-sea fishing, coarse angling and river fishing. Surely he has learned by now that the most numerous followers of Walton and his theory of the comfort and relaxation of fishing are not among the cigar-smoking, whiskey-swilling transcontinental flying type but among the ordinary, decent middleclass and workingclass people who can afford to take a little holiday and who seek, not the luxuriously-appointed bedroom with separate toilet and shower accommodation but who are perfectly satisfied if they get a comfortable bed, a reasonable meal and the use of an ordinary bath. They want to get these facilities near the river or lake or sea area in which they want to enjoy their sport. If the Minister is in earnest, it is time he told Bord Fáilte to direct its mind to that and not to what I might describe as oftentimes increasing the strain on hotel accommodation in the cities.

It is out on the hillsides, the lake-sides and the sea coast of Ireland that you will find the abundant variety and the tremendous kindliness that have made us famous as a nation, and it is the people of these areas who deserve the best possible financial help that we can afford to give them. People who want to improve the accommodation in their guesthouses, their private houses or their small hotels should be given every encouragement to do so.

I can proudly boast, representing South-West Cork, that there is no area in Ireland in which the people make such an all-out effort in their homes, guesthouses and small hotels to improve standards and to give good, expert service, excellent food, with cleanliness and kindliness, at reasonable prices. I like to think it was our efforts there in drawing the alleged experts from Bord Fáilte down among us to learn how to do things which played one of the big parts in raising our standards generally. Now, in times of depreciating money values and our alleged entry into the Common Market, we must establish ourselves as people prepared to give comfortable, worthwhile holidays to ordinary people at reasonable prices. That is the best sales talk we could give if we are to attract tourists. The amazing thing about the decent people of Ireland is that if the hand of bureaucracy is kept away from them the festivities will go much more merrily among them and among the tourists when they arrive.

Like Deputy Tully, I have seen many difficulties arising from the pockets that have been left behind in the development of rural electrification. One of the main complaints is that many of these pockets were left because the canvass was not satisfactory. Some of the people who were pioneers in helping the ESB in such areas now find themselves the victims of new savage charges which the ESB, for reasons I cannot fathom— I suppose the Minister will say they are economic reasons—are imposing on them. These charges are sometimes double and even treble what they would have been some years ago. It is nonsense that the ESB at this stage should appeal to the Minister and the Government for subsidies towards the installation of gas in certain areas to replace the responsibilities and the undertakings given by the ESB to complete the electrification of this country.

It may involve losses to the ESB at this stage but they will recoup those losses in futuro. They would certainly never amount to the losses I shall deal with later on in reference to some of our much vaunted State companies who are losing at the rate of £500,000, £750,000 or so annually. I do not see how anyone could object to the ESB sustaining losses in ensuring the comfort of our own people. The Minister should be strong enough to go back to the Government and say: “God knows, if Jim McCarthy or Michael Donovan or somebody else has the courage and the heart to live on his rocky mountain holding, on his harsh, rugged farm, and keep his family there by sheep raising or mixed husbandry, surely he deserves more sympathy and support than anybody else and surely it should be our bounden duty to give him, in his courage and isolation, every possible comfort this country can afford.”

There is so much codology, so much stark nonsense in the type of cheap bureaucracy that is growing up that we do not seem to be able to look at first things first. I do not care what rubbish may be talked about some of the State companies. I can tell the Minister here and now that he will always have my full support for any measures he may take to enable the ESB to complete their rural electrification network and to bring light and power to these isolated pockets as quickly as possible. I know that expenditure will be involved, that there will be difficulties, but I feel sure the Minister would be flabbergasted by the support he would command if he were to come into the House with proposals of such a nature.

Like other Deputies, I, too, have complaints from people whose supply has been disconnected. I know it is not easy, sometimes, for a big unwieldy company to consider each small item of complaint.

The ESB are in a unique position where debts are concerned. They have a sanction and a method of collection denied to any other type of trader or business. Where ESB charges are due, and where a large portion of them may be hire purchase charges, the ESB should not disconnect a consumer who may be in a temporary difficulty due to unemployment, illness, and so on, if he pays the account in respect of the current used. Some element of humanity should enter into the privileged hire purchase position in which the ESB find themselves.

It has been my experience as a lawyer that, when hardship occurs in a family, most of the maligned hire purchase companies sympathetically receive representations and always extend the period where the circumstances warrant it, so as to enable the person to catch up on whatever temporary difficulties he was in. When dealing with the powers of the ESB to cut off current for non-payment of accounts, where circumstances of unemployment or difficulty arise, once the commitment in respect of the amount of current used is met, the Minister should consider favourably a continuation of the supply and some method of adjustment between the consumer and the ESB in relation to the other charges that may come under the heading of articles acquired on the hire purchase system.

From the point of view of tremendous value to tourism, and indeed considerable improvement in the type of programme Telefís Éireann are producing, Bord Fáilte might make a series of worthwhile films of certain not so publicised tourist centres in Ireland of extreme beauty and variety. They would be of immense educational value to our people and would help them to choose places for their holidays. I have in mind films about certain parts of counties such as Donegal, Kerry, West Cork, Wicklow, some of the inland counties where lake fishing and wood areas abound. Our people would be able to enjoy an occasional programme consisting of such films rather than some of the canned international rubbish and some of the "hill-billy" cowboys shooting so many men dead. They would see some of the beautiful parts of their own country. They would be encouraged to overcome the blasé rubbish of continental trips and, rather, to see a bit of Ireland first.

I come now to Irish Shipping. Nobody is more conscious than I am that at a certain stage of our history Irish Shipping, with very ancient and decrepit ships, did a very worthwhile job. I have no doubt that in certain ways the company—in its personnel and in its ships—has an extremely high record. I do not know how the Minister can defend the policy of expansion in the company when even the dogs in the streets are barking the fact that shipping is being laid up and piled up all over the world. Charter has become very difficult and freight for ships is becoming equally difficult.

I want the Minister to face the problem of whether there is any reality in Irish Shipping wanting to achieve a target of 200,000 tons. Would we not be much better off with half of that target, and have it working? We are not in the difficult position in Irish Shipping that we want replacement. Most of our ships are among the most modern in the world. Most of them for a considerable time have been on charter. If they had not been on charter, the disaster in Irish Shipping would have been a débâcle.

Has the time not come for us to stop thinking that we are the pivotal point of an empire, or something? We want an empire in the air and an empire on the sea and all the playboys of the world in plush hotels. Has the time not come for us to assess the fact that we are a progressive, small, sturdy nation and that we should be able to assess our potential and our needs? Unless we are to start something like an international shipping line, to compete with our transatlantic air line, I cannot see why reality and reason, practicability and commonsense cannot limit the needs of Irish Shipping to some practical figure in the potential of its trade. That is particularly so when we know that shipping of first-class condition, of most recent and modern type, can either be bought infinitely cheaper than the price we are now paying for ships being completed or can be chartered very readily, if any necessity arises for Irish Shipping to do some extraordinary type of trade in a hurry.

I want to see preserved a good Irish Shipping Company but I want to see it as a practical reality, not the frothy imaging or the megalomaniac concept of a money-spending mad Government. I want to see it as something that will endure and inure to the benefit of the Irish people as a practical working proposition, paying its way. I urge the Minister to have a moratorium on the investment of the State in Irish Shipping. I urge him to say to the Directors of Irish Shipping: "From now on, it is not an operating service that we want but a practically-run business showing some profit to service the continued use of the company and something to put into reserve against further replacements."

I am sick and tired of these State companies—whether they be Aer Rianta, Aer Lingus, Irish Shipping, and so on—which carry a tremendous wealth of Irish investment, with a token promise to repay which is as idle and as vain as would be our sending somebody from this island to the moon. I would far rather see the Irish people and the Irish Parliament amortise all these investments and say: "They were good investments; they did develop the type of company we wanted in certain ways. Now that their growing pains are over and they are established, let us wipe out their debt to the nation; let them become competent companies and not be coming back to us year after year for further dips into the public purse."

Companies like Bord na Móna, Irish Shipping and indeed Aer Lingus were well worth establishing and subsidising to the present stage. However, we shall have to make a very serious appraisal as to whether or not it is wise to continue to delude the Irish people and ourselves by producing what I might describe as ornate but spurious accounts to show operating surpluses. These investments may have paid off in the social value and the employment they gave and to that extent any investment by an Irish Government in them has been justified. I am prepared to say that is so, but has the time not come when the people who will reap the benefit of these amenities should pay for them? I can assure the Minister that it is not the McCarthys, the O'Donovans and the other people in the far-flung fastnesses of my constituency who will get the benefit of transatlantic air travel or indeed of the limited berth accommodation for travel across the ocean in Irish shipping.

It has come as a salutary shock to many people that these concerns about which so much has been sung in their praise have never repaid any of the capital invested or even the interest on it. It is time these concerns stood on their own feet. If prices have to go up for air freight or air passengers, if prices have to go up to meet the trading deficits of Irish Shipping, let them go up and let the people who use these companies use them in the normal commercial way, and let these companies go into competition on a businesslike basis.

Mr. Childers

Have Aer Lingus fares higher than those of BEA? The Deputy is not worth listening to.

Mr. S. Collins

The Minister would rather the poor unfortunate farmer in West Cork paid for them. I do not believe in that rubbish. I believe the farmer in West Cork, working his patch of ground and making his contribution to the Irish people, is far more worth a subsidy than the passengers we want to carry in Aer Lingus planes and who are off-shipped to BEA or BOAC when Aer Lingus cannot carry them. The Minister may say: "You are not worth listening to," because he has a concept of the more sophisticated or naíve or personable person using the airline, but it does not get away from the fact that it is the unfortunate taxpayers of Ireland who are paying for them and also paying for Irish Shipping and Bord na Móna.

I saw the Minister as usual disgorging himself of wisdom, allegedly basic commonsense and statistics, at the recent IATA Conference in Dublin. An examination of the situation by international airway people on that occasion certainly did not leave any hope, unless somebody injected some reality into the situation, that these State-sponsored air companies at home and abroad were ever going to be other than the grandiose playthings of the unwary taxpayer.

If we do not face reality in relation to this company we shall be in the impossible situation we are already in with regard to the Minister's primary problem, CIE, and we shall eventually get to the stage where we shall have to pour more and more money down the drain to meet competition, to pour more and more money by way of subsidy into Shannon to keep it open, to say nothing of the industrial area around it.

Is it not time a halt was called to these schemes and attention drawn to the fact that there must be a bottom to the well? I know the Minister does not like reality. If he did, he would direct his ability to a ministry with some function in it. If you ask the Minister a question about CIE, the Minister has no function in the matter; about the ESB, the Minister has no function in the matter; and Irish Shipping, the Minister has no function in the matter; about anything in his Department, he suddenly becomes one of these vacillating people who just stand up to say: "I am Minister for Transport and Power but do not ask me anything about either transport or power because I have no function in the matter."

I do not believe that that is right. I do not believe the Minister's interpretation of his function is right. He is charged with responsibility to this House for the control of policy in all these companies, and, what is more, he is charged with their administration to the extent that he must ensure that their administrations carry out the policy directed. Is it the policy of this Government to continue allowing these companies to operate on an operating surplus that would not service their running accounts, never mind their debt accounts, never mind contribute a farthing to their interest accounts?

I am not going to be misrepresented or to allow myself to be misinterpreted. I do not want it to be said that I do not conscientiously believe that these projects were worth bringing into being, but we have now to assess the continued cost of supporting them as uneconomic entities in the light of the responsibility we have to vast sections of the community to help them. We have to ask ourselves the realistic question as to whether it would not be better to see very substantially extra grass grown in Ireland than more Irish Shipping ships laid up at enormous expense in cost and maintenance, or whether it would not be better to see increased production of first-class Landrace pigs as a better prospect than some of the loud-voiced, cigar-smoking international travellers in the very efficient Irish service across the Atlantic.

In fairness to that service, it must be said that they have succeeded in wresting an immense amount of transatlantic traffic from other companies, because fortunately we are not yet overtainted with some of the stilted customs of other airlines and fortunately the natural charm and courtesy of the Irish girls and crews, flying these planes, has come to the top and enables a transatlantic Aer Lingus flight to be a comfortable, homely, pleasing journey as distinct from many of the irritating rules, regulations and indeed mass directions we find at some continental airports. But after all that, we must equate the ultimate cost of keeping this type of service against what better could be done with the money.

I believe that in, particular, in connection with tourism the Minister is at last a convert to the idea of directing our main impetus to the not so wealthy but very pleasant type of tourist that we get from the English middleclass or the good class English workingclasses, and that he is prepared to concede that the people coming back from far flung parts of England and, indeed, even further distances returning to their homes on visits, contribute a very substantial part of our tourist revenue. It is essential that Bord Fáilte revises and reorientates itself on the problem of the amenities to encourage. It is well to know that we have come to the end of the large luxurious hotel building bubble, and that, whatever luxurious hotel is to come in the future, will be that of private enterprise, and developed by sources of money other than a virtual building grant from the State.

I am glad to see that at last some of the concepts of the Lord Bishop of Cork, Dr. Lucey, have been recognised, that it is the duty and the purpose of Bord Fáilte to preserve and where necessary contribute to the enhancement of the beauties of those small places. Deputy MacCarthy opposite and I could enumerate them on our hands and toes within a very few short miles of where we live, whether it be the beauties of Kinsale, Glandore, Baltimore or down to the rugged fastnesses of the Beara Peninsula or back into the pleasant beauty and entrancing sights of Gouganebarra and Inchigeela with its mountainside, lakes and rivers. All of this is something that we do not have to sell. We have only to get the people to see it. Anybody who has come there has come there again and again, and it is into these places that we must put the extra bit of money and effort.

The Minister knows personally of the tremendous effort the village of Inchigeela has made to put itself on the map, what the people of Ballingeary are doing, and the work of the West Cork Development Association to create a bed bureau and to co-ordinate and deal with the problems of people who wanted to come in. Knowing that, I am pressing upon him to direct the minds of the Board, and the money available to it, into those areas where the decent, simple honest man and his family are met in their own environment with their immense intrinsic charm, displaying that incalculable hospitality that is so typical of the Irish. Let him face the fact that that type of investment is going to increase enormously the arrivals of the type of tourist we want, the touring Britisher we find in his maybe aged Rover, or, indeed, aged Rolls, often stopping on the roadside and appealing to you above all other things in the development of Irish tourism to preserve this wonder of simple courtesy and this charm of people in their own areas that is so completely strange to them and such an extraordinarily attractive thing to them.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.