When speaking on this motion last week, I was referring to the speech of Deputy Seán Dunne, which appeared to me to have strayed very far from the details of the actual motion before the House. This whole motion appears to me to be rather typical of present Labour Party thinking, if such it can be called at all. The best they can put before the House is a suggestion that whatever extra charges have to be paid they have always got to be paid by somebody else—this mythical person who just does not exist. We have got to face the hard fact of life, that is, we must pay for what we get. There is no doubt that over the years the Electricity Supply Board has supplied electricity to a rapidly increasing number of homes at what, by European standards, is a very low rate of charge. Granted, there have been increases, but we have got to remember that the cost of generating electricity has been steadily increasing throughout the years and, with the increasing number of users of electricity, the capital expenditure by the Board has had to be almost astronomical in order to keep pace with increasing demand. Admittedly, some of the capital costs have been covered by borrowing rather than by revenue but nobody can borrow without servicing that loan; that loan must not only be serviced by way of payment and interest but there must also be a sinking fund for the eventual repayment of the loan.
I know homes where electricity is a very valuable commodity indeed, where the income is very low and where every conceivable economy has to be used to keep the bill within the scope of the income. This is the case with, for instance, single old age pensioners living in a room or a flat. I have come across cases where the electric light is scarcely used at all and where an old person may use it just for a period of having tea and then sit in the dark for the rest of the evening. But these cases are very rare and, in the greater number of homes—even in those homes which we describe as being in the lower income group—I have never seen any evidence of any effort to economise on the use of electricity. It is far more common to see electric lights burning in the house quite unnecessarily.
I do not believe that the ESB bill is anything like the ghastly burden which some of the speakers have made it out to be. I think we can get confused, too, by the reference to a seven per cent increase. Let us get that down to hard facts and figures—that is 7/- in each 100/-, 7/- in each unit of £5.
Now, I wonder how many homes have a monthly bill of £5? If they have a two-monthly bill of £10, that probably is unusually high. More often, of course, they may be working on a weekly basis, but seven per cent means only an increase of 7/- in each £5 or 14/- in each unit of £10. Put that way, I think to say that this, in itself, would create undue hardship on the average home is a gross exaggeration; similarly, to say it would create an inflationary situation is also exaggeration. These are not arguments. They are not reasoned statements of fact. They are mere explosions of emotion with no basis at all.
Reference is made also to the ESB special charges; they should be abolished and everybody should be connected without any additional charge. Here again is the mythical somebody else who will pay the cost of running electricity mains across the country, for the whole question of negotiation, the right to erect poles across somebody else's land and for the maintenance—sometimes in very exposed positions—of the ESB lines. It is, unfortunately, necessary that these things have got to be paid for by somebody but I cannot believe the Labour Party really mean that the ESB special charges should be abolished and that the ordinary rate to domestic consumers should be increased by something more than seven per cent in order to keep ESB operations on a normal economic basis. I know it does sound, possibly, popular for people to keep on saying prices should be kept down; nobody should be charged for this, that or the other. My experience is that the Irish people are not as easily fooled as the Labour Party would like to believe. Our people are becoming increasingly realistic——