I notice from the Minister's statement which he made prior to the Budget that he records again a fall in telegraph traffic and indicates that during 1962/63 the decline was over five per cent as compared with a one per cent decline last year. The Minister stated, however, that the decline occurred mostly in traffic with Great Britain and, to a lesser extent, in internal traffic. I wonder if the Minister could give any idea as to what the percentage fall in traffic is in respect of traffic originating internally as compared with traffic originating externally. We cannot, of course, control the external traffic and we must put up with whatever recession there is from that source, but I should like to ascertain from the Minister whether even the home traffic is holding up or whether the decline is jointly over the internal traffic and the external traffic. If the Minister has any figures on the subject. I should like to get them from him when he is replying.
The Minister also said in the course of his statement that certain progress has been made in respect of the erection of the new sorting and central delivery office in Dublin. He said :
The foundation and steel erection works were somewhat delayed by unexpected water level difficulties and by bad weather but the work is now progressing satisfactorily.
While I know that the building operations are in their infancy could the Minister, now that we have started to erect the building, give any idea, even approximately, when is it likely to be available for the purpose for which it is being erected. I take it some targets in point of time have already been set and, while not being bound to these targets because of the magnitude of the task, perhaps the Minister could, nevertheless, give us a picture as to when the new office is likely to be available.
The Minister took pride in the fact that the Post Office, as one of the largest employers of labour in the country, was keenly conscious of the vital need for keeping abreast of developments in modern management techniques and that various members of the staff had done courses during the past year in management. The Minister is quite justified in taking pride in the excellent work which the Post Office have done in the field of management techniques and I personally would like to be associated with the congratulations to the Post Office on these developments. It took a long time to get the Post Office into the 20th century but now that they have come into it, they appear to enjoy the environment and the salubrious air and to realise that the Post Office is not run by one small section but that it takes the man in the field and on the bog road as well as the gentlemen in high administrative offices to make a service of that kind possible. I appreciate it.
However, I make one criticism, that this good idea is being distributed in a rather meagre fashion. There is still plenty of scope for the further development of these management techniques down through the staffs. I should like to see the ordinary staff of the offices brought within the ambit of these management techniques, with the idea that the co-operation between the administrative staff would be more widely spread and that the general idea should be imparted to the staff of all grades that this is a great public service, a great common co-operative endeavour to give the whole community the benefit of whatever service the Post Office can provide for them The aim should be to give the most efficient possible service and to make available to the staff the best possible conditions in return for administering an efficient and helpful service of that kind. I hope that, emboldened by the success of what has already been done, the Post Office will proceed further in the extension of these management techniques, which are not only good for the Post Office but could be spread through the public service generally because of the manifold advantages to be gained by promoting that kind of co-operation and goodwill.
I am sorry I have to complain again this year about the Post Office uniform. The Post Office uniform is distinctive in this respect, that it is probably the worst kind of uniform used in the entire public service. It is a shoddy and dust-gathering type of material. It is a raggy-looking uniform when worn for a short time. You cannot press it or crease it and if by the exercise of a lot of muscularity with the iron, you manage to get a temporary crease, then the first shower of rain disturbs completely the whole shape of the uniform.
I should imagine the Post Office would be more pleased and that rational people generally in any clime would be more pleased to see their staff clad in a proper uniform. The result of Post Office staff wearing this shoddy uniform is that the postman vis-á-vis the public is not presenting the tidy appearance he would present if he got a decent class of uniform. I am not referring to the design of the uniform. It cannot be said as an argument that the staff organisation accepted this uniform. They accepted the design. They have been complaining for years about the inferior quality of the cloth used, and the Post Office ought to make a serious effort to provide a much better cloth than is being used at the moment.
Similarly, in respect of caps. I understand it is not possible to get a supply of postmen's caps from the manufacturers and I understand the reason is that no cap manufacturer would make this cap for the Post Office at the very low price which the Post Office offer. The result is that the cap manufacturer who will take these orders for caps is a manufacturer who wants to keep his machinery going during a valley period, but if there is any other order in sight, he will take the other order and by-pass the Post Office order for caps because he regards the price he is given as altogether unsatisfactory.
The Post Office ought to face up to the necessity for providing decent caps and providing them regularly for their staffs, instead of trying to induce manufacturers to accept orders for caps at a price which they do not regard as economically rewarding, with the result that the only cap that is available is a poor one and even that cannot be got with any regularity. The Post Office ought to get away from this miserly approach to the whole question of uniform, especially when so many members of the staff have to appear in public and would naturally like to take a pride in their appearance, the same as any other servant of the community.
I want to refer to Post Office buildings. The Board of Works circulates each year a list of the proposed works which it intends to carry out for the various Departments. The Post Office has the usual quota of building construction on its programme. What strikes one is that the amount of money spent in facing up to the problem of providing adequate accommodation for the ever-expanding Post Office is not nearly sufficient to undertake the work and that the small amounts allocated and the relatively small amount of work done each year results in the Post Office having to carry on their important public services in buildings which are inadequate, where there is insufficient staff accommodation and where the public endeavour to transact business under conditions far from congenial.
In his statement, the Minister referred to the fact that more administrative power would be given to the Post Office and that they would be entitled to exercise autonomy in fields where they were previously denied it. The Post Office should make a serious effort to get more authority than they have for their building programme. Even when the Post Office can be convinced—which is not easy without very cogent arguments—that there is need for very substantial extension of a post office premises they in turn must go to the Board of Works which, they find, are inadequately staffed for the job they have to do of looking after the affairs of all the Departments of State. The result is that the Post Office, although dealing virtually every hour of the day with the public—it is probably used by the public more than any other State building—have to fight their way to get their repairs and extensions carried out in competition with other Departments of State.
The Post Office should endeavour to secure more authority for building offices, repairing existing offices and carrying out painting and decoration when due instead of the present position of being absolutely dependent on the Board of Works. Everybody with experience of public life knows that if you rely on the Board of Works you will not get fire brigade service. Therefore, the Minister should try, in this case where it is so important to the Post Office organisation and development, to persuade the Department of Finance that the Post Office should be able to accelerate their building, their repair and renovation programme much more than at present. The process of going through the Board of Works, whatever may be said for it in theory, results in practice in much foot-dragging and the postponement of building and reconstruction jobs that could be done much quicker if the methods used were less circumlocutory.
Some head offices and salaried suboffices have residences attached. When a vacancy is advertised, the successful applicant is duly informed that he is being appointed to the vacant position. In most cases he does not belong to the town where the vacancy exists but his time for promotion has arrived and he may be selected for promotion to an office in a place of which he is not a native and where he has no roots. He sets out to find a house only to discover that he cannot get one or if there is one available the price is so outrageously high that he cannot think of buying it. Neither can he think of renting because of local competition which does not make it a proposition. He cannot buy it out of anything he would accumulate from his service in the Post Office. The result, in a number of cases, is that the person promoted to postmastership is compelled to decline the promotion even though he keenly desires it because there is no residence attached to the office.
A large number of offices have residences but some have none and where a person is appointed to an office of the latter kind unless he is miraculously lucky in getting a residence locally he must decline the appointment. He must then apply all over again when another vacancy arises.
The Department of Local Government have in a praiseworthy manner set up on organisation known as the Housing Agency and through it it is possible to have houses built for key employees in industries, for Gardai and other important persons of that kind. Surely the Post Office should take advantage of this housing agency by having residences erected in each town where there is no official Post Office residence at present so that when an officer is appointed on promotion to such a town it could be done in the knowledge that he could move into a residence there provided for him by the Post Office?
Being promoted to an office with a residence is a common feature of Post Office employment since the commencement of the Post Office as a State agency. In some cases, for one cause or another, residences were not provided but it seems to me that if the Post Office rightly promote people from one part of the country to another they should at least ensure that there is a residence available for the promoted officer. The Gardaí and private industries avail of this agency and seeing that the Post Office already know that people have been compelled to refuse promotion because of the lack of a residence, they ought to consider asking the agency to provide houses where necessary.
May I suggest that some effort should be made to accelerate the payments to retiring officers? The Post Office has records to tell them the day every officer reaches 65 years of age and in 98 per cent of the cases the man retires automatically on reaching that age. Therefore, there is no reason why his pension and lump sum could not be dealt with by the Post Office. On the day the officer retires, he could get his weekly pension and his lump sum automatically without having the case sent to the Department of Finance where it is one case in a number of others affecting other Government Departments. The person who retires does not emigrate. He is here in the country. He can always be sent for if there is any short payment of his pension and lump sum. If he is overpaid, it can be explained to him that there was an overpayment. But you can be sure that the prospects of fallibility on that side, as far as the administrative machine is concerned, are exceedingly small.
The Post Office ought to get authority to pay the pension and lump sum and then tell the Department of Finance: "Here is what we have paid" and get Finance to OK it subsequently. Instead of that, the pensioner has to wait or make an application for a payment on account, which may take a couple of weeks. In any case, people feel if they have served the State for 40 or 45 years, that they ought to get the pension on the day or the week after they go out, instead of being put in the position of applying for a payment on account of the lump sum due to them.
In some cases, the delay has been quite unjustified. You may even discover that when it came to Finance, the officers dealing with it were on sick leave or something else. The person still has to wait for his pension. The Post Office do all the calculation about the pension. It is merely checked by the Department of Finance. The checking does not reveal the most microscopic proportion of irregularity. Why cannot the Post Office get the authority to make the calculation, which they make at present, and, instead of sending the case to Finance for approval, pay themselves and let Finance give approval afterwards whenever they get time to do so?
I should like to ask the Minister what is the position in the Carlow post office. For many years, representations have been made to have a new building provided in Carlow. I do not know whether there are any difficulties between the local authority and the Post Office over a site, but certainly this is one of the smallest offices in Ireland for the volume of business transacted in it. It is located in the worst possible place. Although the Post Office have been hearing this complaint for years, all the inconveniences associated with the present office continue. I should like the Minister to say, first, when he hopes the building of the automatic exchange in Carlow will be completed; secondly, when he hopes the building of the new post office will commence; and thirdly, what is the approximate target date for completing the building. Certainly the matter ought to be taken in hands speedily, because everybody who has any experience of the present office knows it is absolutely unsuitable for the transaction of the volume of business which has to be dealt with there.
I want to come now to this question of telephone operating. I want to say at the outset it is the experience of everybody who has any experience whatever of telephone operating that the situation in the telephone exchanges today is more chaotic than it has ever been in their experience. If the Minister went to see retired officers in the telephone exchange and goes in with them to any of the exchanges in Dublin, they would tell him in their service they never saw anything like what is happening at present.
I do not know what sort of reports the Minister gets, but the viewpoint of everybody, whether they use the telephone from outside or operate it from inside, is that the Post Office telephone service is in a parlous condition. I want to give some evidence in support of this. I invite the Minister to accept a few challenges on this. Go in with somebody who knows what is happening. If a stranger goes into a post office, he might as well go into a nuclear station unless he knows what the meaning of the building is and what the significance of certain things are.
I shall start off by giving my own experience recently. I wanted to get a number in Kildare. I dialled the number. I could not get any answer from the number, although I knew there were people in the house at the time. I then dialled "10" and it pipped away 80 times, that is, 160 pips. When you remember that ten pips are supposed to be the normal speed for an answer, you can get a picture of the type of service run when I was trying to use the telephone—180 times, each pip twice. At the end of all this, I had not got any answer at all. I then dialled "31" to get the supervisor. I dialled and it called 20 times, but I got no answer from the supervisor. I thought perhaps I would be more lucky if I went back to "10". I went back to "10" and I called again—40 times it called—but there was no answer. I put it down. I waited for a while, took it up again and dialled "10". It pipped away for 32 times, 64 pips in all, and then I got an answer.
That is what you get in war conditions. It represents complete and absolute chaos. I do not know whether the Minister would attempt to give an answer to this kind of thing. You remember the Post Office say that normally you should get an answer after five calls, that is, ten pips. My marathon performance did not yield a single answer whatever. What is the reason for that? No soft talk from officials or smooth answers from the Minister in the House is going to explain what the situation is. There is chaos there. The whole objective in some cases seems to have been to put in more and more telephones, which meant, as the man said, a "worser" service for those who had telephones.