Having disposed of the tomahawks, flick knives and daggers that we were called upon, with reluctance, to discuss prior to the appointment of the Minister to his present post, I think he must be the only unscarred member of the Government. I heard with dismay that he has entered his 60th year. I suppose it is his approach to venerableness that left him immune to assault. However, I congratulate him on his relatively unbloodied state. He seems to have been chosen for his dual post without much competition. In the peaceful atmosphere of his uninjured occupancy of this dual position, I think today we can placidly discuss certain matters for which he is now responsible.
The first of them is this: I concede to the Minister that he has always boasted that he has tried faithfully and honestly to tell the Dáil what the true financial circumstances are of all the semi-State bodies for which he has had the responsibility of answering to this House. Now I want to ask him a categorical question: will he go down through a list of the semi-State bodies for which he answers to his House and, applying ordinary commercial standards to each of them, will he tell the House with respect to each of them their annual profit or loss for the most recent accounting period available to him?
Now, I am not asking him for operational surpluses. I am not asking him for all the euphemistic phrases designed to conceal the true financial position of these establishments. I want to know, after you have applied to them the ordinary commercial canons of depreciation, interest on debenture or loan capital and other outgoings, what is the profit and loss in which the State is involved. I am prepared to say to him that I do not ask of a semi-State company that, to justify itself, it should be able to show an annual surrender to the Exchequer of a surplus. I would be quite content if a semi-State body providing employment and a service which could not be provided by any other means broke even having paid the annual expenses without which it could not survive in the absence of additional Exchequer subsidy.
If the Minister is to claim hereafter that he has recognised his obligation to be frank and honest with the House, he has a very special responsibility as a member of a new Government to begin by giving us as of this date the information I now bespeak.
I may have some critical things to say but I should like to say what people often forget to say that there are things deserving of praise as well. I know that the Minister for Justice must have been involved in any discussions that involved the control of traffic or the circulation thereof in the city of Dublin but I think it is fair to say of the Minister for Transport and Power and, in so far as it is relevant, of the Minister for Justice, that if the elaborate new arrangements for one-way traffic had failed, this House would have rung with denunciations of those who were responsible for it and it is equally fair to say, whether it is the Garda authorities or whoever may have been primarily responsible —doubtless the Minister was called into consultation about them—that, taking them by and large, they have been a success and those responsible for them are entitled to a word of praise and commendation because they certainly would have got the censure of the House if they had caused confusion and delay. I particularly commend them in that they have shown courageous readiness and flexibility in changing them where the original design of the one-way traffic seemed to impose unnecessary inconvenience on the ordinary traveller in the city.
On the whole, I think the signs requisite to control one-way streets are adequate although I think the Minister might do well to draw the attention of his colleagues to the necessity of reviewing them from time to time because while they are, I believe, reasonably adequate for those of us who are accustomed to transport in the city of Dublin, both to tourists and to country people it is not always easy to perceive on entry into a one-way street that it is a one-way street and I think that is a flaw which does call for some amendment if tourists and ordinary rural users of the streets are to be adequately catered for.
The second thing on which I want to commend a body for which the Minister is responsible is something that it astonishes me is not more frequently mentioned in this House, and that is, the publication of Bord Fáilte, Ireland of the Welcomes. That is a most beautifully produced publication. I have seen similar publications in many parts of the world. When one goes to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, it is not an uncommon thing to see all the tourist bodies in the world showing their literature there. I have not seen in any country in the world, and I do not exclude the United States, Germany and France, a publication superior to Ireland of the Welcomes. I do not know who is responsible for it within the organisation but it is, in my judgement, as fine a piece of publicity of its kind as is being produced in the world today.
But when I see the excellent pictures and read the text and then walk along some of our great Georgian squares and see the hideous, loathsome devastation being done, I wonder has the Minister responsible for Bord Fáilte and tourism not some duty to intervene here. The thing can be done, Sir. Every great capital city has its characteristic. Our capital city is a Georgian city. I want to mention to the Minister and the House and experience to which I now feel free to refer. When I was young. I read a novel of Charlotte Bronte called Villette. That novel describes Brussels in the eyes of a young girl as a sort of miniature Paris, with all the elegance and charm of that great capital. All my life I had hoped to go to see Brussels. In the course of my official duties about two or three years ago, I suddenly found I was summoned to Brussels. I went full of eager anticipation. I found myself in one of the most sordid capitals in Europe. It is the tragedy of Belgium that, while all its provincial cities are architectural gems, its capital city is a dreary, third-rate borough. I remember looking out of my hotel window the morning after my arrival. To my horror, I saw, straight in front of it, a skyscraper identical with one we have in this city, including the Chinese hat. It had obviously been taken out of the same plan. It suddenly dawned on me it was one of these universal plans which are disfiguring the great cities of the world today.
This city of ours was built approximately in the same period as the city of Bath. We have some of the most beautiful Georgian architecture in the world. I do not want to be unreasonable. I was born and reared in one of the loveliest Georgian houses in this city in North Great George's Street. But I know the difficulty of preserving the fabric of such a house. I know the ridiculous impracticality of running such a house as a private residence in these modern times of scarcity of domestic help. But, to me, to see a great Georgian square like Mountjoy Square swept away is unrelieved tragedy. When we know it is not necessary, the tragedy becomes all the greater. Cement Limited—this tribute should be paid to them—purchased a corner site on Fitzwilliam Square. They deliberately made the choice of selecting an architect familiar with the Georgian character of this city and instructing him that, although they required a modern up-to-date office building, he was to be circumspect to preserve the facade of the Square on which the new premises abutted. He has done it with extraordinary skill and distinction. So, a great architectural treasure has been preserved.
Merrion Square is threatened but is not yet in danger. Stephen's Green is destroyed, and I hear with horror that the Government themselves, through the Board of Works, are about to participate in another desecration of three beautiful houses between Hume Street and the headquarters of the Board of Works itself. Surely the Minister, who is responsible for tourism, should concern himself to get certain parts of this city declared to be intangible national monuments, as is done in every other city in the world, so that the character of these parts of the city may be preserved for posterity?
The Minister himself must have a guilty conscience. It is he who sanctioned the outrage on Lower Fitzwilliam Street. Here, I think, the Dáil is entitled to a piece of information which only recently came to my hand. I was the Leader of the Opposition when that matter was in argument. I refer to the destruction of Lower Fitzwilliam Street by the Electricity Supply Board. I made the best inquiries I could of the architectural advisers. There was so strong a volume of opinion amongst a number of responsible architects that it was economically unthinkable to preserve the facade of Lower Fitzwilliam Street that I—I now admit wrongly—forbore to raise this question as energetically as I should in Dáil Éireann. But I did not have the information that since came to me, and, therefore, the blame is not wholly mine. I am told now, and reliably told, that the ESB were offered a fair capital sum for those buildings by a developer who was prepared to say: "I will preserve the facade and convert those houses into residential flats and let the ESB with the capital which I will be prepared to pay for the property transfer their headquarters to some other locale." If that information were available to the Minister, then he was guilty of a vandalistic decision in permitting the ESB to do what has been done in Lower Fitzwilliam Street. If he has that on his conscience, let him clear his conscience as best he can by redoubling his vigilance to see that this can never happen again.
It is part of tourism in this country to exploit to its maximum the unique things we have to offer to those who come to visit this country. I do not know if the Minister knows—I have tried to tell his colleague, the Minister for Finance—that this island in which we live is the richest archaeological treasure-house in Europe. In Northern Ireland the Tourist Board have four archaeological officers on their staff, who are surveying, describing and marking the great archaeological features of Northern Ireland. So far as I am aware, the Tourist Board of Ireland has no archaeological expert on the staff.
In the second place, in Northern Ireland a complete aerial survey of the whole territory has been done which has been reconciled with the peripatetic survey so that every archaeological site is marked and those that have not yet been examined are listed, catalogued and ready for examination. Yet we read in our own newspapers last week that one of the great prehistoric burial sites of Ireland was in the process of being removed to make a road when, fortunately, the farmer who was actually in the process of carving it away to incorporate it in a road communicated with the Museum. Officers of the Museum staff went down and at least conducted some kind of preliminary survey. I believe they have not got at their disposal the means to investigate that site adequately. Unless the farmer is prepared to leave it in the condition in which it was, until such means are available, it may perish forever unrecorded in detail.
Surely these are matters for which the Minister for Tourism, as we shall call him at the moment, must feel some responsibility? He may well ask me: "What do you want me to do?" I will tell him. All I want the Minister for Tourism to do is to bring pressure to bear on the Minister for Finance, who has responsibility for the Office of Public Works, in collaboration with the Minister for Industry and Commerce, in collaboration with the Minister for Agriculture and in collaboration with the Minister for Local Government, all of whom share in this with the Minister for Transport and Power, the desirability of having an aerial survey made of the country. I believe that, at the present moment, there are partial surveys going on, conducted by a whole variety of Ministers, which, in the long run, will cost more than one comprehensive survey which would provide the means of marking, identifying, cataloguing, and, in due course, investigating the archaeological treasures of this country which, it is hard to believe but is certainly true, is the greatest archaeological treasure-house in the whole of Europe. The secret of this fact is that the Romans never got here.
It makes me sick to think that this treasure-house has survived more than 20 centuries and, at a time when we have learned more in the past 50 years of the science of archaeology than was known in the previous nineteen centuries, the mayhem and destruction are proceeding because nobody seems to care. I would urge on the Minister that, where the Office of Public Works has taken in charge ancient monuments, more comprehensive information should be provided for passers-by, by way of notice. Now, they have done it on many such sites. I was recently passing a castle down in south Kilkenny that I often passed before and did not know what it was. I stopped my car and got out and read the Office of Public Works notice which contained the kind of information which was of great interest. However, unless I had known that the Office of Public Works, in some cases, put up such notices, I would not have known where to look for it. Without putting up an unbecoming and disfiguring placard, I think it would be possible to provide some more clear indication that there is an historical summary of the significance of these castles, old abbeys, and so on, available to those who are interested to stop and look at them.
I wonder if it is possible to get the Minister to speak openly and frankly about a matter which I think is of great interest, economically, to this country? I want to say a word about Aer Lingus. I think that Aer Lingus is the best air service probably in the world and when I say "the best", I mean that it measures up to the best: I suppose there are others as good. However, I think that, by and large, the service provided by Aer Lingus is superb. I wonder if we have reached the stage of calm, dispassionate interest in which we can examine one matter with detachment? I remember that, when we came into office—I think it was in 1948—the then Government had recently purchased two Constellation propeller aircraft that took 14 hours to cross the Atlantic and that they were launching out into the transatlantic service. We determined, at the time, that the capital requirements of housing were so urgent that all the available capital we had should be marshalled both for the social purpose of providing housing and for the productive purpose of developing agriculture. I think we were right. It has often struck me since then, incidentally, we did the transatlantic air service an incomparable economic service.
If in those fatal years from 1948 to about 1954. Aerlinte had been burdened with the maintenance and replacement of the obsolescent propeller aircraft which they were then trying to operate, I think they would have ended on the transatlantic transport business with a load of uneconomic, obsolescent debt around their necks from which they would never have escaped. The decision we took was primarily because we felt that the capital priorities were wrong. We felt we had to build houses and rehabilitate the productive capacity of agriculture and industry before we undertook transatlantic air traffic which, as the House will remember, was at the time pretty exiguous: there was not then the great flow to and fro across the Atlantic which subsequently developed.
If we had not taken that decision at that time, Aerlinte, to keep in business, would have had to buy two, three or four more propeller aircraft of the Constellation type. I think they cost about £2 million apiece, allowing for their spare parts, and so on. They became obsolete almost immediately with the opening of the jet age and they would have had to be jettisoned. At the particular time we sold them, we recovered the entire capital cost. The result of our decision was that, when it was determined to reopen the transatlantic air service, it was done on the basis of jet planes. I think it is true to say that Aerlinte never served the Atlantic air trade except with jets. They began to equip themselves with jet aircraft and appeared to do so ever since and they never lost a penny through obsolescence, except through the ordinary obsolescence any transport company meets in the appropriate annual depreciation of aircraft.
It is an interesting thing to remember because it is a lesson for the years that lie ahead. I want to warn the House of this. So certainly as we passed from the propeller aircraft, which took 14 weary hours to cross the Atlantic— I have travelled in one and I know—as compared with the 5½ to 6 hours they take now, so certainly as they change over—within the next ten years—we will have to change to supersonic aircraft.
The economics of operating supersonic aircraft from Shannon on transatlantic routes is a very complicated and difficult matter. If you continue the policy of bringing them into Dublin and bringing them down in Shannon, you have to fly at the uneconomic heights until you get to Shannon and you can only gain the supersonic speeds when you get out of Shannon. You will not be able to avoid the supersonic bang and this is a problem for the future. I would be glad to hear something from the Minister for Transport and Power on this but perhaps it is not possible for him to give a projected evaluation on the position at this time. Perhaps he would in his own mind try to look at the matter objectively, particularly in view of the lessons we may have gained in the past which could be applied in the years that lie ahead in the future development that will become inevitable.
In that connection I want to draw the Minister's attention to the fact that I raised this problem at the Economic Committee of the Council of Europe at which I could get no satisfactory answer. It will be a matter which the Minister will be called upon to deal with in the very near future. I do not know when the Concorde plane is likely to be in service or when the American supersonic plane is likely to be in service but that they are going to be in service is certain. These planes will operate from continental origins, that is to say, from Paris, Rome, Bonn or Brussels.
It is universally agreed in Europe, by all the authorities with whom I have had the opportunity to discuss this, that there must be an international convention so that these planes will proceed below the supersonic speed until they pass over continental Europe. If you look at the traffic maps prepared by the international airlines, 90 per cent of them cross our territory on their way to New York. If that comes to pass without some satisfactory agreement being made on our behalf with continental countries, there will not be a pane of glass left in this country. We will live in a practically permanent supersonic bang. It is an alarming prospect.