I am sorry. Then I am mistaken. It was Deputy Childers and it is the Deputy who is mistaken. He was also Minister for Transport and Power at that period. The confidence expressed on that occasion proved unfortunately not to be justified and now the accumulation of arrears of development work plus the task of meeting a demand considerably higher than it was five years ago presents a problem of exceptional physical and financial magnitude.
The present position is that the capacity of the system needs to be greatly enlarged. Many exchanges in Dublin and throughout the country have insufficient equipment to take on all the applicants for service until extra equipment can be installed. Likewise many exchanges, particularly in Dublin, are overloaded to some degree in the busy hours. This means that at busy hours some attempted calls either get engaged tone during dialling or no tone at all. In such circumstances repeated attempts tend to jam the equipment and add to the difficulties. The shortage of subscribers' equipment already mentioned also contributes to congestion inasmuch as subscribers whose traffic requires more lines cannot be given them readily and their incoming calls frequently encounter engaged tone. The callers then either make ineffective repeat attempts or call the operator for assistance.
The trunk system is also short of lines and equipment causing an abnormal failure rate in the busy hours on calls made over the STD system, particularly to exchanges in the Dublin area which are subject to internal congestion.
Since capital restrictions were relaxed in the latter part of 1971 efforts to expand the capacity of the system have been pressed ahead as rapidly as possible. The value of the plant and equipment being installed or on order is at present over £40 million. Many other schemes are in various planning stages. I shall refer to the major ones later. Additional equipment has been brought into service in a number of exchanges this year, the most recent being the opening on 24th November last at Rathmines of a 10,000 line instalment of a 15,000 exchange.
A number of other new exchanges will be brought into service next year. Capital expenditure in the current financial year is now estimated to reach £25 million as compared with £17 million last year. However, much more needs to be done. While many large contracts for equipment have been placed to date, quantities ordered have been limited by the availability of accommodation. This problem is receiving urgent attention.
Before I go on to deal with the new programme, I should like to make some general comments on the telephone service.
The first is that if we wish to have a high quality telephone service—and this means a fully automatic service with a sufficiency of lines and equipment for all normal purposes—we must be prepared to invest heavily in it. The exchange equipment required is sophisticated and costly. It is designed not only for internal traffic but to be integrated into a world dialling system. International and intercontinental dialling is already a reality. Equipment must be provided in advance of demand and in sufficient quantity. As the number of subscribers grows, the complexity as well as the size of the system increases. It is essential to ensure that the plant installed is kept ahead of public demand for telephone facilities. The amount of capital required for this kind of investment in modern telecommunications systems is massive. Our nearest neighbour, for instance, has approved a five-year programme estimated to cost some £4,000 million. This is more than the provision for any of the other big nationalised industries in Britain. The system there is already practically 100 per cent automatic and telephone density is much higher than here.
Our telephone density is in fact the lowest in the EEC: 12 per 100 of the population as compared with over 19 in France, which is next lowest.
Once a programme of telephone development is approved and launched, it should normally be expected to follow its planned course. Experience has shown clearly that even a relatively short period of financial restrictions can affect the programme for many years ahead. I have good reason to hope that the programme now proposed will not be cut back. It is now increasingly widely recognised that any cutbacks in the growth of the telephone service would endanger the continued economic growth of this nation. There is a very obvious relationship between the speed of industrial and commercial development and the ease of communications available to the business community.
I note that the Confederation of Irish Industry, in its recent "Newsletter," said that we needed to spend £150 million over the next five years on our telephone system. That is to say the same order of magnitude as we are looking for here though, in fact, we are providing for a somewhat larger sum than they thought necessary.
They drew particular attention to the effect on regional policy saying:
A regional development policy that aims at the dispersal of industry throughout the country is doomed to failure if communications facilities are not developed simultaneously.
The public are in any event demanding telephones, they are prepared to pay a full economic price for them and there is no good reason why they should not get them.
It is in this context that I am glad to have the agreement of the Minister for Finance to the sum of £175 million provided for in the Bill representing the estimated cost of the programme, at 1973-74 price and wage levels, which it is anticipated that the Department will be able to carry out before mid-1978.
Telephone development at a satisfactory rate is dependent not only on finance but on expansion of skilled manpower resources, acquisition of sites, provision of new buildings, time required to instal equipment. There are practical limits to the speed with which progress can be made under these heads.
Coming now to the broad lines of the proposed programme, overall priority is being given to raising the quality of service of existing subscribers to a satisfactory standard by clearing local congestion and providing larger capacity links between the principal exchanges. These links will in effect constitute the clear ways for the heavy traffic. Special emphasis is being placed on alternative routing of traffic to provide safeguards against serious disruption due to interruption to any one link.
The second general objective is, of course, to reduce and eventually eliminate the waiting list for new telephones.
The conversion of manual exchanges to automatic working must also be pressed ahead as rapidly as possible. Apart from the need to do so to give a better quality of service, it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide a satisfactory service at the larger manual exchanges because of accommodation and other problems, and their conversion to automatic working is, therefore, an urgent need.
The programme which it is proposed to carry out before mid-1978, may be considered under the following main headings.
Provision is being made for a net increase of 190,000 subscribers' lines —from 270,000 to 460,000. This would represent an increase over the period of 70 per cent or an annual increase of 11.3 per cent as compared with 6.9 per cent over the past five years. It would give an increase of 250,000 telephones and a density of 19 telephones per 100 population in 1978.
Applications for connection of lines, including removals, are at present running at about 41,000 a year and will, no doubt, be higher in the years ahead. The Department's capability to make connections, which is about 30,000 this year, has been below the demand rate for several years past. Consequently, there is now a waiting list of about 34,000 applications. Clearly the Department's capability to overtake demand must be expanded rapidly. It is planned to at least treble the present connection rate over the period of the programme.
Expenditure under this head includes the costs of local distribution of lines in underground ducts and cables in the cities and towns and on overhead routes in rural areas. These networks connect each subscriber's premises to the local exchange. Their cost is one of the heaviest items in the programme. If telephones are to be provided promptly on application it is essential that there should be spare wires already available in cables near the applicants' premises running all the way to the nearest exchange— which may be several miles away. The need for an independent pair of wires to the exchange and of equipment exclusive to the subscriber at the exchange is one of the features that distinguish the telephone system from other services such as gas or electricity, which require only a connection to the nearest source of main supply.
The programme provides for 24 new exchanges in the `01' (greater Dublin) area, replacing smaller exchanges in 13 places. Work is at present in progress on the following new exchanges: Beggars Bush (Ballsbridge)—20,000 lines of which 12,000 are due in February next; Tallaght— 20,000 lines of which 4,000 are due in June, 1974; GPO—16,000 lines of which 4,000 are due in August, 1974; Santry—10,000 lines of which 5,000 are due in early 1975.
A new 20,000 lines exchange is expected at Crown Alley early in 1976.
In addition, the programme provides for new exchanges at Blanchardstown, Belcamp, Palmerstown, Malahide, Summerhill, Dolphin's Barn, Murphystown, Shankill, Ballyboden, Clondalkin, Dunboyne, Lucan, Maynooth, Ashbourne, Rush, Ballyboughal, Celbridge, Skerries and Balbriggan. The exchanges at Dundrum, Phibsboro', Lucan and Clontarf are at present being extended and extensions are on order or planned for almost all the remaining exchanges.
In Cork a new 20,000 line automatic exchange will be provided at Quaker Road and a major trunk and automanual exchange building will be erected at Churchfield.
Two new automatic exchanges— Cahirdavin and Dooradoyle—will be provided at Limerick and a major extension of the existing automanual exchange will be carried out.
In Galway, new exchanges are planned at Shantalla and Mervue and the automanual exchange at Eglinton Street will be considerably extended. The automanual exchanges at Athlone, Drogheda, Dundalk, Mullingar, Naas, Portlaoise, Sligo, Tralee, Waterford and Wicklow will also be expanded. The exchanges at Ennis, Navan and Kilkenny will be increased in capacity as will very many other smaller exchanges throughout the country.
Major extensions of trunk traffic equipment requiring new or extended buildings will be provided at Dublin, Cork, Waterford, Limerick, Galway, Sligo, Dundalk, Drogheda, Tralee, Athlone, Mullingar, Portlaoise, Naas and Wicklow. In several of these centres it will be necessary to instal equipment in temporary accommodation pending erection of new buildings.
It is planned to convert over 200 manual exchanges, including all the larger exchanges, to automatic working. Apart from Cavan, Clonmel and Fermoy, which will be converted next year, the programme includes Ballina, Cashel, Castlebar, Letterkenny, Listowel, Monaghan, Roscrea, Skibbereen, Thurles and Westport.
This will leave some 380 manual exchanges which it is estimated will be serving some 28,000 subscribers in 1978 when the system should be 94 per cent automatic as compared with 85 per cent at present. However, it is intended that a good deal of the preparatory work, that is acquisition of sites, erection of standard type buildings, provision of trunk circuits, for the conversion of the remaining manual exchanges will be done during the period. In addition the principal centres included in the list to be converted will be equipped with the necessary basic connection equipment to take the remaining smaller exchanges later.
The major trunk schemes to be carried out during the period of the programme will include upgrading the southern and northern coaxial cables from 600 to 2,700 circuits each and the western cable from 960 to 2,700 circuits; 900-channel radio link systems to serve Limerick, Waterford, Tralee, Enniscorthy, Athlone, Wicklow, Arklow, Sligo, Castlebar and coaxial cables to numerous other centres. Some 3,000 additional cross-channel trunk circuits will be provided. Overall the number of trunk circuits will be more than doubled.
New exchange buildings and extensions of existing buildings are being provided at Finglas and Dame Court trunking complex in Dublin, and in Castlebar, Galway, Caherdavin (Limerick), Cashel, Naas, Ballina, Waterford and 25 other places. New buildings are at the planning stage at virtually all the main switching centres and about 200 other places.
I come now to subscriber trunk dialling (STD) coinboxes. Since only local calls can be dialled from the existing type of automatic coinbox the making of trunk calls from these coinboxes throws a heavy load on the manual operating service and is already causing operating problems in some automanual exchanges particularly at night. A number of STD coinboxes have been ordered for experimental use in selected public call offices in Dublin and the provinces and are expected to be in service in a few months' time. It is hoped to provide STD coinboxes on an extensive scale during the next five years.
A number of mobile automatic exchanges are in operation and many more are on order. These transportable exchanges are extremely valuable in meeting temporary needs, that is where there is difficulty or delay in getting a building or extension.
The programme provides for an addition of 750 kiosks. At present kiosks are provided at places where they are likely to pay their way and, in rural areas, in replacement of sub-post office call offices that are used to a fair extent, even where the kiosks are not likely to be self-supporting.
In the next year or so we may be approaching the point where virtually all call offices which are used to a fair extent will have been replaced by kiosks. It is desirable at this stage to give thought to the basis on which future programmes of providing kiosks in rural areas should proceed and this question is engaging my attention. The view has been expressed in this House that the present policy should be more flexible. The difficulty is, of course, to establish criteria which could be applied consistently and would not open the floodgates to demands for kiosks for which there would be little real need. For the present, I intend to continue the present policy, which will mean providing a further 200 kiosks or so during the next year near post offices in rural areas. But if any Deputies wish to make suggestions on the criteria which might be adopted for rural areas where there is no post office, I shall give them careful consideration.
Particular attention will be given to the improvement and expansion of the international service which has already been greatly improved in the past year or two by opening direct circuits to some continental cities. When the new international exchange in Dublin opens for service about March next, the number of circuits on direct routes to various European and North American centres will be increased from 100 to 190 and it is planned to increase this number to over 400. On the opening of the new exchange the operators will be able to dial calls directly to subscribers with automatic telephones in western European countries and in the United States and Canada, and the connection of calls will be expedited.
Towards the end of next year some subscribers in the "01" area will be enabled to dial calls to certain large cities in Western Europe and these facilities will be expanded to include certain large cities in the USA and Canada, and extended to all subscribers in the "01" area in the course of 1975.
It is planned also to extend the STD facilities between the "01" area and London and Belfast to a number of provincial centres. There are several technical difficulties in the way of quick and large-scale expansion of STD to other places outside our Administration.
