This Estimate apparently is one of some interest to Deputies judging by the number of Members of the Fianna Fáil Party who have spoken on it. For a Department of such recent birth the expenditure is now very considerable, and I do not agree with a number of Deputies, among whom Deputy O'Donnell was pre-eminent, who say there should be a great deal more expenditure on tourism. The expenditure in the Estimate is £13 million for the year. This is a sizeable amount of money and I am sure the Minister agrees. The Department is a peculiar one. When it was first established only ten years ago the then Minister said he was demoted in being appointed to it, but he made a fair go of it and showed considerable activity, and in a territory in which some activity by politicians is required, that is, in relation to the semi-State bodies—although, indeed, he did not have all that many of them but he did have some of the largest and did pay great attention to the work of those bodies for which he was responsible.
It is a great pity that this Ministry has not complete charge of transport. This is a very serious problem from the point of view of this country: what exactly is to be done about internal transport? This is split among a number of Ministers and Local Government has a good deal to do with it. Then there is a suggestion that there should be a new Act providing for the main roads to be looked after entirely by the State. It would be very much better if, in fact, the Minister's Department had complete control of transport, not to have it split over a number of Departments as it is at present. This particularly applies to the Dublin area.
Some years ago the late Deputy Teddy Lynch asked me: "John, do you pay any motor taxation in Dublin?"—the roads at the time were in such a desperate condition. Now they are not in such a desperate condition but the roads around Dublin city are full of potholes. It will save me having to raise it on the Estimate for Local Government if I say it on this Estimate: it is deplorable—and I appeal to every Deputy—that you hit a pothole every so often on every one of the roads out of Dublin. All that would be required would be one lorry going around with the necessary material, and a number of men on it, constantly looking after these potholes. That is the kind of thing that could be looked after without difficulty if transport were dealt with by one Department rather than by a number of Departments and partly by local authorities. It is a serious matter. There must be many a broken axle, judging by the size of some of these potholes around the city.
Like some of the other speakers, I should like to express my appreciation of the material the Minister provided for us. I propose to go through some of the departments covered in the Estimate. First of all, like the last Deputy who spoke, I appreciate very much the work that has been done by Bord na Móna. I saw this work years ago, in 1946 and I was down again in 1959 and have been down there since then and noticed an extraordinary improvement in the applied scientific work of the board in that period of 12 years. For example, they have a machine called a bagger. In the late '40s, six men on these machines were laying out the sod turf very badly. When I went back afterwards one man had charge of the machine and if he ran into serious difficulties he could 'phone for help from the central office. This was a remarkable effort by the engineers and the scientific personnel attached to Bord na Móna.
I notice in their last report that in 1968-69 there were exports of £1 million worth of stuff. Of course, this would be in the main the peat moss. This is an admirable export. This is the kind of export that has some style about it. Ladies across the Irish Sea like to handle it in growing their roses. It is useful in horticulture of various sorts. I was delighted to see that this excellent organisation had doubled their exports in the past five years.
The financial position of Bord na Móna has been extremely difficult but the Government in the year before last made an effort to fix it up. In 1958, Bord na Móna lost £900,000 but, 1959 being an exceptional year like 1969 was, they got back £800,000 of it and then for a year or two were on an even keel. Then came the six very bad years and, really, Bord na Móna got right up to its tonsils in financial trouble and the deficit at the end of the financial year ended 31st March, 1968, was nearly £5 million. Then the Bill was passed that wrote off £1.8 million and there was a revenue excess in the 1968 production year of £1¼ million. There was an increase in the output of milled peat of £1 million. This was a great achievement, largely due to the weather. The year 1969 must have been even better. So that, I presume Bord na Móna is now once more out of the red. What will happen in future depends again on the weather. Total production last year was £9 million and that, having regard to the total staff that they employ, is a very fine result.
If, in fact, Bord na Móna does not get good weather, no matter how excellent it is, it will not succeed in balancing its accounts. I would say that as of now, as a result of last year's exceptionally fine weather following the previous year, Bord na Móna, which was in the red, £1.7 million down, at 31st March, 1969, has cleared off the bulk of that by now.
The total capital of the organisation is about £25 million. Unlike some of the extremely boastful semi-State bodies that we have, Bord na Móna has paid considerable amounts from time to time in interest and has, in fact, reduced its original advances from the State by £4 million. I should like to see some of the bodies that like to talk about what they do, emulating Bord na Móna in that regard.
Deputy Foley raised a point which, of course, everybody who ever had anything to do with the ESB would be well aware of, this is, that some of the ESB engineers have been extremely critical of the price at which fuel consisting of turf is supplied to the ESB. I agree with Deputy Foley that this is a natural asset, one of the few we have and that if it does cost a little extra, we who from time to time have so much difficulty in balancing our external payments, should not regard it as a serious matter to have to pay that little bit extra cost for raw material, like fuel, in the production of electricity and that it will not affect us. Therefore, I am all in favour of the successful efforts that have been made by Bord na Móna down the years to increase their production and to insist on selling part of it to the ESB.
I now come to the ESB. The first thing that any person who has any concern about this community immediately notices about the ESB is its enormous size financially. The Central Bank of Ireland, a completely different kind of organisation which really just takes in assets and deals in money, is the only semi-State body that compares in size with the ESB which has a total capital involvement of £250 million. As is the case with other bodies, this is all real capital, that is to say, there are physical assets throughout the country in various forms for this £250 million and, apart from that side of it, there is the other side, that the ESB has always paid its way. Therefore, we may take it that these assets as of today are probably worth a great deal more than £250 million. On an occasion when I had work to do with the ESB I was astonished to learn that it was financing the Government as well as financing its own development.
The increases which the ESB workers have received are only a fair reflection of their interests in the firm; very often they are life-long interests. I cannot see why, when the roast joint is carved up, the workers should not get their fair share, if the business has been extremely successful. It is sometimes said that when a business is unsuccessful the workers can only be paid less, but if the business is, in fact, unsuccessful the workers are paid less anyway because the money is not there to pay them.
The idea has emerged, unfortunately, from our Civil Service, that everybody doing the same kind of work should be paid the same amount of money, but this system cannot work. When Guinness were the only company in the city paying high wages, workers in other industries did not complain. All they said was: "Lucky fellows, those men working in Guinness." The men who drive the big lorries for the ESB are paid more than the bus drivers in CIE and there is no way of interfering with that kind of situation. The Quinn Report recommended the bringing down of wages for clerks in the ESB to the same level as clerks in other State bodies. A situation was then created where the ESB, having looked after itself from 1927 to 1958 — nearly 30 years — was no longer allowed to look after its own affairs. I do not see why the workers in an organisation such as Cement Limited, which makes an enormous profit, should not get a 10 per cent rise.
It has been found in Great Britain that the 500 megawatt generators are much less expensive than the smaller generators which we have in this country. It has also been found out that these huge generators can run into serious trouble. I am glad to say that the largest generators we have at the present time are 60 megawatts. One is to be installed at the Pigeon House and another at Great Island. I have no reason to think that these will cause any trouble but it has been found in other countries that the technological approach can be over-done and one can easily run into serious difficulties. When a 500 megawatt generator breaks down it is very difficult to get the kind of power which it has been producing from another part of the system.
Provision is made in this vote for rural electrification. There are certain aspects of rural electrification with which I have never agreed. One is the proposition that everybody in the community must have everything. This means, very often, that five miles of wire has to be run up a hillside to provide three farms with electricity when, in fact, the job could be done very much cheaper by using Calor gas or Kosangas and batteries for the television. I have lived in a house with Kosangas and the truth of the matter is that it provides nicer light to read by than electricity.