Committee on Finance - Vote 46—Posts and Telegraphs. – Dáil Éireann (17th Dáil) – Thursday, 14 Mar 1963

Committee on Finance - Vote 46—Posts and Telegraphs.

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Hilliard)

I move:—

That a supplementary sum not exceeding £133,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1963, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and of certain other Services administered by that Office, and for payment of Grants-in-Aid.

This Supplementary Estimate is mainly required to meet the costs of— (a) increases in remuneration or improvements in conditions granted since the original Estimate was framed; (b) improvements in services; and (c) increased telephone development.

Taking the subheads in order and giving the main reasons for the excesses, the sum of £132,700 required under Subhead A is for additional costs arising out of certain increases in remuneration which were granted during the year and an Arbitration award, during the year, of a shorter working week to postmen. On Subhead B, £21,000 is required to meet the costs of additional travelling by engineering staff to deal with an expanded programme for telephone trunk line construction and of higher subsistence rates generally. On Subhead C, £16,700 is required to meet additional costs arising from the renting of transatlantic telecommunication circuits. On Subhead D, £40,700 is needed to provide for an additional night air mail service to Great Britain, for higher rail and road conveyance costs, and for increased payments for sea conveyance from Irish ports. On Subhead F, £116,600 is required to meet the cost of replenishing stocks of cables and related stores as a result of the expanded programme for telephone trunk line construction.

Subhead K is being restored to provide £1,300 for the cost of the salaries of certain civil servants whose formal transfer to the Broadcasting Authority was not completed, contrary to expectations, until this year. The amount has been recovered from the Authority.

The gross excess of £329,000 on the foregoing subheads is expected to be offset by additional appropriations in aid under Subhead T, amounting to £196,000. The main increase is in respect of an additional recovery of £175,000 from Telephone Capital funds as a consequence of the expanded development programme. Higher staff costs will result in greater recoveries for expenses incurred on work for the Savings Bank and Social Insurance Funds and there are also some repayments from Radio Éireann for staff on loan. These additional receipts will be partly offset by deficiencies in other appropriations in aid.

In all, the net excess is of the order of 1 per cent on the original net provision of almost £13 millions. The original Estimate was, as Deputies will appreciate, prepared at a time when many staff pay claims were in progress. In addition, the gross provisions under many subheads have been affected by the Telephone development programme, the provision for which this year is now £3,675,000 as compared with £2,500,000 last year.

Mr. Crotty

We have no objection to this Supplementary Estimate and I have only a few words to say on a couple of points. I notice the increase in the provision for Telephones from £2½ million to £3,675,000. I do not think it is sufficient. At the introduction of the Vote on Account it was stated that we were getting a very good return on capital invested in the telephone services. If that is so the people using the service are not getting reasonable satisfaction. Every Deputy is constantly writing to the Minister to get Telephones supplied to his constituents. The telephone is no longer a luxury but a necessity in business and agriculture. The more people who get telephones, the more use is made of them and the more people that are anxious to get them.

When the business is a paying proposition, the Minister should develop it further. I notice the item for increase in remuneration and reduction in working hours. I hope the telephone services have not been reduced by the shorter working week. I hope the strength of staff is being maintained. Recently, I rang the exchange and the operator said: "I will get it for you when I am able," giving the impression that she was in a rush but that if I would wait she would get the number. That is not the kind of service that should be given and I ask the Minister to look into that and try to develop the service as we would like to see it developed. I am sure there are at present 10,000 applicants and even at the present rate of installation the number will continue to increase.

I would ask the Minister to use his good offices to get the present dispute between the journalists and the Radio Éireann authorities ended as soon as possible. We are living in 1963, not 1913, and it is not nice to see a dispute between a Government Department and any section of its employees left in abeyance for a fortnight without a genuine effort being made to settle it. In former days that would be all right. Employers left workers out. Each side wanted a victory. That day has gone and we all realise that when people apply for an increase, rather than advertise the conditions and salaries applying to journalists in the city of Dublin and compare them with Radio Éireann, as against the BBC in Belfast, I think it is up to the Minister to use his good influence. I sincerely appeal to him to do so, so as to bring this dispute to a close. The people have paid licence fees for a radio and television. Therefore, I ask the Minister feel that the news service is one of the most valuable either on radio or television. Therefore, I ask the Minister to try to bring the matter to a solution as soon as possible.

Mr. Mullen

I support Deputy Crotty in his appeal to the Minister in respect of a better telephone service and I would ask him to give special attention to the outlying areas of Dublin where there is a marked absence in telephones and where they are badly needed particularly in the evening and at night. It often happens that residents who have no telephones in their houses must travel long distances before finding a telephone and perhaps their calls may be urgent if they require a doctor or something of that kind. There is a section of Finglas —I am talking in terms of the distance from a telephone—which is completely cut off. A case came to my notice recently of a male nurse who is dependent on receiving and answering calls and he finds it very difficult to cope with the demand on his services because of the absence of either a public telephone or a telephone in his house.

I join with Deputy Crotty in the appeal he made to the Minister to use his good offices in an attempt to bring this unfortunate dispute in Telefís Éireann to an end. It is unfortunate that it occurred. Perhaps if efforts had been made beforehand on the Ministerial level it would not have occurred. There is nothing wrong in any organisation seeking recognition in this modern age. It is not seeking too much. If it comes to a matter of having somebody intervene it is imperative that we do not appear to be taking sides. It is rather noticeable that while the Labour Court have intervened and are now considering their findings we have attacks being made —that is how you could describe them —on the journalists by Telefís Éireann. That could be regarded as intimidation and an encouragement to the Labour Court to give an unfavourable decision. I hope that the Minister will appeal to Radio Éireann to deal with the journalists' organisation in a modern way. Employers and employees have now reached the stage of sitting down and talking about the problems in dispute and the dispute in Telefís Éireann can only be settled by that means. It will certainly not be settled by one side continuing its attacks on the other.

Mr. Sweetman

We could go on for a few minutes and finish this business for the Minister?

Mr. Hilliard

Whatever you wish.

Mr. Sweetman

I shall only take three minutes. I want to raise only two points. Recently I was endeavouring to deal with certain business between Cork and London and I was amazed and appalled to find that there was no method of sending an express letter to London from Cork direct. It had to come up to Dublin and go from Dublin to London and in consequence the delay was quite what it must have been in the old coaching days. I was in London myself at the time. Endeavours were made to get the postal authority in Cork to send the letter by express by the Cork-London Aer Lingus plane, but that is apparently forbidden. It must be sent from Cork to Dublin and from Dublin to London. In consequence, the delay is not only unnecessary, but one of the advantages of having the direct air link is completely lost. I am surprised indeed that no Cork Deputy has raised this matter before a Kildare Deputy had to raise it on their behalf.

Mr. MacCarthy

The people in the chamber of commerce did not raise it.

Mr. Sweetman

The Deputies represent the whole of Cork; the chamber of commerce represent only their aspect of it. In my constituency, as the Minister knows, the telephone service is appalling at present. Frankly, I appreciate the difficulties of the Minister and his engineering staff. I appreciate that much of the trouble is technical trouble and that it is the worst sort of technical trouble—intermittent trouble. If you have a fault all the time, it is usually easy to find it; but when you have an intermittent fault, it has the nasty effect of being perfectly all right when you check it, but perfectly all wrong as soon as the checker has turned his back. Something must be done, and done radically, to mend the position. Whatever it is, I am not a technician and I do not know.

Apart from the technical hitches that regularly arise, I am bound to say that the service offered in the Kildare automatic exchanges on Sundays leaves everything to be desired. The Minister is aware it is my personal experience very often, if I want a number not on the automatic, I have to dial for up to 20 minutes before I can get the Dublin exchange to answer. On Sundays, dialling "10" does not ring in Naas, Droichead Nua or anywhere else but is routed through Dublin. As I say, I have frequently had to wait a long period or to abandon altogether any hope of getting "10" to answer on Sundays. I notice the same thing sometimes occurs at night. I do not know whether this is due to a mechanical fault in the installations in Kildare or whether the staffing of the switch boards for trunk lines when country areas are put through is insufficient. I am told that people in the Maynooth area have the same difficulty.

The Minister will appreciate, and I think he will accept, that this is most aggravating and prevents the proper use of the system. The machines—if that is the correct word to use—that have been obtained for the automatic exchanges in Kildare have been submitted by first-class firms. Whether they are not suited to the Irish temperament or the Irish climate, or whatever it is, they do not seem to work at present. I sincerely hope the Minister will be able to assure us in my constituency that we may expect a better telephone service in the future than we have been obtained recently.

Mr. Hilliard

Deputy Crotty, Deputy Sweetman and Deputy Mullen raised the question of improving the telephone service. There is so much to be done in telephone development that when I came into this office, I found it very difficult to know where to start. I made a decision, which I conveyed to the Engineering Branch, that it was absolutely necessary to strengthen the network generally so far as trunk cabling is concerned before we could seriously attempt to deal with the number of applications coming in. Otherwise, we would not have an efficient service at all. We would have an overburdened network incapable of dealing with the calls put upon it.

Last year, I dealt with the financial provisions we undertook in 1960 for the further development and extension of the telephone service by the provision of £10 million. We expected to spend it at the rate of £2 million a year. By the end of 1960-61, it was found the amount of money would have to be increased yearly. That £10 million is now exhausted. I shall have to come soon to the House with a new Telephone Capital Bill to provide further moneys for the next five years.

Money is not the only problem, either. You have to provide engineers and a properly trained working force to deal with the technical task of installing telephones and doing the necessary line work. We have been increasing the staff since 1960 and we will increase it further in future to deal with this problem of providing the country with an efficient and adequate telephone service.

Deputy Crotty mentioned the number of people who are waiting for telephones. I know there are people waiting. I listened to Deputy Sherwin to-day talking about the waiting list for houses in the Dublin Corporation area. This is much the same class of business. As soon as an application comes in, the person's name is entered on the waiting list. The only people we cannot supply with a telephone within a reasonable time are those people who are a long distance from the exchange, because of the capital involved in giving such a person a phone and the delay it would cause to the Engineering Branch. I decided that it would be better for the Engineering Branch, when they are clearing an area, to clear even the recent applications, provided the applicants lived within a reasonable distance from the exchange, that it would not be reasonable to exclude such people, and that they should be included rather than have them wait longer for the second clearance when we would come to deal with what are known as "long lines".

Every effort is made by the Department to give an efficient service and there is a constant watch in exchanges especially in Dublin, in relation to the length of time it takes to answer a call when the exchange is called on 10 or any other call. It is impossible in an organisation such as this to deal with all the individual complaints that come in. It is almost an impossibility to make certain that every instrument in the telephone service is in perfect order on any particular day. Generally speaking, people who work in the exchange are courteous and give an efficient service. They do everything they possibly can to assist a subscriber. However, instances do occur, though infrequently of discourtesy by operators towards telephone callers. In any case brought to my notice where persons are discourteous, or not giving an efficient service, or will not help the subscriber asking for facilities in a phone connection or otherwise, I shall have no hesitation in taking appropriate disciplinary action against the offenders. I can do no more than that.

Deputy Mullen raised the question of the city of Dublin. It is a fact that there are areas in the city, especially on the perimeter, where cables are not laid to provide a telephone service in new areas. The areas mainly affected are Ballsbridge, Clontarf, Dún Laoghaire, Crumlin, Terenure, Dolphin's Barn, Templeogue and Whitehall.

Mr. Sweetman

Whitehall will get early attention—it is in the Dublin North-East constituency.

Mr. Hilliard

I have been pressing for this to be attended to since I became Minister. We are taking steps with additional staff and an effort is being made to permit large-scale clearance of these centres. There are also deferred applications in Finglas and the north city and new exchanges are planned for these areas. Until that is done, we will not be in a position to do anything with the waiting applicants. We will see that the matter is put in hands as soon as we possibly can.

Committee on Finance - Vote 46—Posts and Telegraphs.

Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 14 Mar 1963