asked the Minister for Transport and Power if, in view of the very inadequate service being provided by CIE for the haulage of livestock, he will be prepared to consider opening this type of haulage up to private enterprise.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Haulage of Livestock.
3.
I informed the House when introducing the Estimate for my Department last month that the concession extending the scope of operation of certain merchandise licences for the carriage of livestock was under review in the light of a complaint that it did not fully meet the situation. I expect the review to be completed shortly.
Could the Minister not see his way to open up this completely? Would it not mean a very small loss indeed to CIE to throw this livestock trade completely open to private enterprise or anybody who comes along?
The Deputy, I hope, knows that we have made tremendous efforts to satisfy the needs of the livestock trade in the past two years. We have made many changes—I suppose the Deputy knows them all—in regard to CIE plating lorries whether they were licensed carries or others, extending licences, authorising livestock haulage by persons resident in five of the western counties, and in Longford and Westmeath. These measures seemed to give satisfaction for a long time. Now we have had this report from the store cattle group. We shall study that, take everything into consideration and I think the Deputy can be assured that the result will be satisfactory when a final decision is made.
Is the Minister not aware that there was a lot of public criticism in the trade recently about the inadequate service provided by CIE?
Yes, and I am rather surprised about this because there were very few complaints since we extended the carriage of livestock through the licensing of all these people in a great many counties and instructed CIE to plate very generously hauliers and non-hauliers. We had only very few complaints and we thought that things were going very well since we had practically no complaints at all in the office. Now this new group of complaints has emerged and we are going to study these and see what can be done.