In some respects they are and in some respects they are not. The basic letter rate in Britain is now 8½p, an increase of almost 90 per cent in a period of 12 months and only a half penny less than the rate which will apply here from 1st January next. Other Irish postal charges from 1st January will be generally lower, some significantly so, than the British rates. Our new telegram and telex charges will be considerably below current British charges. The telephone charge structures in the two countries differ but generally the new charges here are below the British level. I do not wish to labour the comparison with British charges because conditions in the two countries are not the same. I feel, however, that the particulars which I have given will help Deputies to judge whether our new rates have been fixed at an unreasonably high level.
It has been asked why the deficits being experienced cannot be offset by improved efficiency and productivity. The Department are fully conscious of the need for extra productivity and of ensuring that the services they provide are operated with the maximum economy. There is a constant effort to improve performance by way of organisation and methods and the extension of data processing, in both of which fields the Department were pioneers in this country, and most recently by setting up a Post Office Users' Council and by accepting the survey of the National Prices Commission, the Department are introducing methods of inquiry into their work which are unusual in relation to the public service generally. On the postal side, mail distribution and delivery arrangements are constantly being revised with a view to economy. Rural delivery services are being motorised as quickly as staff vacancies permit and uneconomic marginal services are continuously being looked at critically. In telecommunications, advantage is taken of technological developments and improved working methods. Costs swings from year to year resulting from these efforts are substantial, but in comparison with pay increases and other cost increases arising from inflation, are very small indeed.
This experience is not peculiar to this Department or to this country. I have already referred to the position in Britain. All posts and telecommunications administrations in Europe have faced for some years, and are at present facing, serious financial difficulties arising from the effects of rising costs. Inflation on the scale of recent years simply cannot be offset to any significant extent by higher productivity. Through our membership of international organisations such as the Universal Postal Union and the International Telecommunications Union, the Department have access to the results of continuing expert studies into many aspects of postal and telecommunications services and these are available for our use.
Let me repeat: the prospective financial situation facing the Department in 1976 could be dealt with only in one or more of three ways—by a reduction in the range and/or the quality of existing services, by subsidisation or by charging economic tariffs. I have referred to these matters briefly already and I propose to discuss now the question of restricting services. I assume that it is generally accepted that there should be no question of holding back unnecessarily on telephone and telex development or of deliberately worsening the standard of these services. So far as I am concerned, the emphasis here must be very much one of significantly improving present standards rather than the reverse. The Department are not providing telephones nearly as quickly as I or the Government would like or as the public are demanding. The standard of telephone service to existing subscribers is deficient in a number of respects as it has been for many years, and the pressure from users is for the remedying of deficiency.
The telephone and telex services form an important part of the national economic infrastructure, particularly from the point of view of industrial development and the promotion of trade with other countries. I am satisfied that the question of restricting these services does not merit serious consideration, nor is it being urged on us here. There may be more in the case for restricting postal services, but again that case has not been made here and I do not propose therefore to linger on it as I am restricted in time.
I am certainly not aware of any demand from users for severe restrictions in the standard of the postal services. None of what I have said should be taken to mean that individual postal services should not be critically reviewed on a continuing basis, in the light of the financial position and of changing consumer attitudes. That will continue to be done but so far as the prospective deficits facing us in 1976 are concerned there are no conceivable reductions in standards, even if they were to be implemented with complete disregard for the staff affected and for the attendant social consequences which would have obviated the need for the increase in charges which have been decided on.
The telegram service has run at a deficit since it began and for social reasons that continues. The other policy alternative to charging economic prices in a situation of financial deficit is subsidisation. I do not know if I understood Deputy Brennan rightly in suggesting that and, as I say, I do not understand the position over there in this area. If charges are not to be raised to an economic level, the resulting deficit in the accounts must be borne by the taxpayers. It seems more equitable that the cost of the services should be met by the users rather than the taxpayers because the public use the services in widely differing degrees.
Deputy Tom Fitzpatrick waxed indignant about the fact that the Department, unlike private industry, are not required to submit proposed increases in charges to the National Prices Commission. This indignation would be better founded if it were not for the fact that it was the Fianna Fáil Administration which incorporated in the Prices Act, 1958, the exclusion from price control legislation of charges in respect of activities carried on by or on behalf of a Minister for State. In October, 1971, the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy P.J. Lalor, established by order the National Prices Commission whose powers did not extend to examination of charges for such services as the Post Office carried on by a Minister of State. The Press release concerning the establishment of the National Prices Commission stated that under administrative arrangements increases in prices or charges for trading services provided by the State, as well as some others, were already "subject to the closest scrutiny and require Government and Ministerial sanction before they are implemented".
Subsequently, the Prices (Amendment) Act, 1972, brought certain charges previously excluded for activities of semi-State bodies, except shipping and air transport, under the price control legislation but the continued exclusion of Post Office charges, as well as charges for some other services, from control legislation was a fully deliberate decision. Speaking in the Dáil on 11th July, 1972, the then Minister for Industry and Commerce, Deputy P.J. Lalor, said that he considered it would be inappropriate that the activities of the various Departments of State, local organisations, vocational education committees and harbour authorities should come within the scope of the Prices Act as that would lead to unacceptable confusion as to the functions and responsibilities of various Ministers. He confirmed this view on 18th July, 1972, in the course of a Seanad debate on the Bill when the question of control of postal charges was raised there.
A case can certainly be made for the exclusion of charges made for services provided by the State from legislative control in the knowledge that proposals for increases in such charges will be dealt with responsibly by the Government, and a case can be made for bringing these charges under review by the National Prices Commission, but you cannot have it both ways. It is a bit much to have Deputy Tom Fitzpatrick complaining bitterly of the exclusion of such charges, which were so excluded deliberately and after full consideration, from legislative control by the Fianna Fáil Administration such a very short time ago.