This has been an interesting and, I must admit, a somewhat more lengthy debate than I thought it would be. I should have realised that with the best intentions in the world the Chair would not be able to confine the debate as rigidly as he would hope to do and that people, as Deputy Brennan has just done, would tend to talk generally about the ESB, their place in the economy of the country and in rural Ireland and their contribution to the development of our economy. I am sure every Deputy will agree with what Deputy Taylor said this morning, that the ESB have been a greater influence in rural Ireland than practically any other thing. Rural electrification—Deputy Lalor referred to it and I do not begrudge him his pride in the fact that it was a Government, of which he was a supporter, that brought in this measure—has been of tremendous benefit to Ireland. In the last few years, not directly because of electricity, although it was one of the contributory causes, there has been a great desire by people not to leave the countryside and not to come into cities and large towns. A lot of the amenities in towns are now available in the countryside as a result of electricity, plus the motor car, which has a social effect in this regard. This has stemmed the flow of people to cities and towns.
Deputy Lalor, Deputy Leonard and Deputy Barrett said that this was a chicken of the West Mayo by-election coming home to roost. That is not true. If it was I would not object to having that label hung around my neck or having to suffer the odium of the politician keeping his promises. I would be quite willing to accept this odium but this goes very much farther. It goes back ten years to another by-election in another part of the country, the South Kerry by-election, as a result of which Deputy John O'Leary came into the House and Deputy Michael Begley was the defeated Fine Gael candidate.
The first place I was interested in was the Black Valley, not Ballycroy. Even though those are the two places mentioned in my opening statement it does not necessarily mean that the beneficiaries under this Bill are confined to those two areas. Practically every rural electrification area, of which there are 792, can benefit under this but those are the two big concentrations of power. Those are the areas where the bills for the connection of electricity were largest. That is the reason why I picked them out. There are also other areas such as Woodford, which Deputy Callanan and Deputy Hogan-O'Higgins mentioned, which will benefit.
This as I said, goes back ten years to the halcyon days when the people who are now in Opposition campaigned in South Kerry. Their campaign was conducted by Deputy Blaney, who now sits on the Independent benches, waiting for a chance to give his ex-colleagues a kick in the behind every chance he gets. His co-director was Mr. Boland, of glorious and almost immortal memory. When Queen Victoria came here the criticism of Yeats in a poem was: "He is parading me crimes, says she, in The Irish Times, says she.” Mr. Boland's contribution to politics seems to be parading in The Irish Times the crimes of his former colleagues. That was an extraordinary by-election, when many promises were made. It was a critical one for the Government of the time, in 1967, which they were determined to win. Another one was held in Waterford at the same time. Every weekend the mighty cars of the mighty men in Taca swished down, splashing mud on the peasants as they passed by to South Kerry to ensure the election of the Government candidate. I was not even in public life at the time. I was not even a county councillor but I was a supporter and member of the Fine Gael Party. I was stationed in Killarney. One of my duties on two Sundays was to go up to the little church in the Black Valley and advise the people there that the best thing they could do was to vote for Michael Begley and get rid of the Government then in power.
Of course not being a public representative I would have taken my turn in the queue. The first speaker on each occasion was a Fianna Fáil Deputy or Minister, whoever was there. In fact Ministers did not go into the Black Valley. It is pretty hard to get at. Each Sunday up on the box with a microphone in his hand was the Fianna Fáil Deputy or councillor of the area and he would say, "You vote No. 1 John O'Leary and you will have electricity in the Black Valley in another three months". The people voted No. 1 John O'Leary but they did not get electricity in the Black Valley in three months. A general election came around again and I understand from the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Begley, that up at the church in Black Valley was the Fianna Fáil speaker saying, "You vote for the Fianna Fáil candidate and you will have electricity within three months." They did not get electricity in three months.
Between those two elections, the by-elections of 1969 and the general election, I was in Kerry on my holidays a few times and Deputy Begley told me of this problem in the Black Valley and I went to see for myself. The church of which he had spoken is at the very head of the valley and below that, stretching for a distance of six or seven miles, is the gorgeous valley with a river running through it and it comes out at the other end on the road to Sneem. There are very nice people there. Deputy Begley told me that the people in that area could not really enjoy life as everybody else in Kerry and most parts of Ireland because they had no electricity. I made inquiries and I found that the cost of connecting them, because of the remoteness of the valley, was enormous and they were being asked to make this capital contribution. They accepted in my conversations with them the fixed charge because everybody in the country pays this, and I will explain in a minute how these charges are built up. It is confusing and difficult to understand and I will make it as simple as I can. The electricity was a thing they would welcome but they were asked to pay the fixed charge and the special service charge, and after that the capital contribution, which can range from £10 to £3,000. Of course in an area as remote as that, even seven years ago up to £600, £700 and £800 was being asked from individuals living in the Black Valley for connection of electricity.
That election went and they did not get the electricity, even though they voted as they were advised to do. At the last general election the worm turned and people in the Black Valley did not vote at all. They protested against a Government and a system that, because they were living in a remote area, deprived them of what they considered an essential amenity, and they went on strike.
That is the background of it. When I was given my present responsibilities I discussed that matter with Deputy Begley again and said I would see what was involved and what I could do to help solve the problem. Not long after that, certainly during my first 12 months in office, Deputy Staunton, as he admitted here yesterday, and the late Deputy Henry Kenny came to me. They did not know I was interested in the Black Valley, but they made representations on behalf of an area called Ballycroy in Mayo where the same situation exists. Prior or subsequent to that Deputy Callanan, Deputy Hogan-O'Higgins and Galway Deputies came in and told me about the third area in Woodford where the same position existed. I set about doing what I could for this quite small number of people in remote areas, for whom the very remoteness made life different if not difficult for them, in regard to the absence of what is now considered a basic amenity, even though our fathers and our grandfathers would not have thought so. I decided to get what information I could. Deputies have criticised the small amount of money and the few people being catered for in this regard. The people who have the lists are the ESB, and I must accept when they say it is 80 to 900 people and it can be done for this amount of money. That is the money I am providing here for the purpose of connecting these places to electricity.
Deputy Enda Kenny, by a strange coincidence son of Henry Kenny who, as I said, was one of the people who approached me about this, made a very good point in a very good maiden speech yesterday. Generally speaking, I think the new younger Deputies who came into the House in 1973 are of a higher calibre and have made better contributions to debates on both sides of the House that I have listened to from those who came in with me in 1969. I do not know whether Deputy Barrett or Deputy Briscoe would agree with that. The contributions from the younger Deputies in this House now are thoughtful, significant and well researched. I am very pleased about that, because politics has come to be debased, and they perhaps can bring some idealism and vision back into their contributions here and from here out to the ordinary people.
No matter how much critics outside this House, or indeed we ourselves, decry our role, in this country the alternative to politics and to politicians does not bear thinking about. We are elected here for a very short time in the history of the free Parliaments of this country. Any one of our contributions, be it from Minister, front bench spokesman, backbench Opposition or Government Deputies is pretty insignificant; but we have responsibilities and duties. One of the responsibilities is that when we take public money from taxpayers— and that is all that is spent in this House; nobody ever puts a £10 note from his own pocket up on the benches and says we should discuss what we are going to do with that— we have the responsibility to spend that money with the interests of the taxpayers in mind. We also have a duty to see as far as possible that the quality of life and the standard of living enjoyed by people, whether they are rural or urban, is as much in balance as possible. One of the ways that can be done is to see that what material benefits are available are available to all the community, though we may have at some stage to spend the taxpayers' money and to spend it in a responsible way to fulfil our duties.
The money we are providing here has been criticised as being too small, £300,000. In my speech introducing this Bill I pointed out that £80 million or so has been spent on rural electrification since it was introduced in 1946, just after the war. Of this the taxpayer has provided about £27 million. Regarding the cost of connecting these last 2 per cent of houses in remote, scattered areas throughout the country, the relationship between what has been spent, what has been voted in this House and what will be spent is the same relationship. When we vote here £300,000 we are talking about a figure of around a million pounds which will be spent, because all the rural electrification schemes have had a contribution from the ESB. Of the £80 million so far spent they have contributed £53 million and the taxpayer £27 million. The same relationship will apply to the money we are voting today and that should be sufficient. That is what the ESB have asked for.
Deputy Lalor pointed out a minute ago that, when the question was answered last week by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, I said this information was not yet available from the various counties. I think some people were surprised. They thought it would be an easy thing to ring up the ESB and ask how many people in a certain county were looking for electricity under the scheme. As most Deputies know, the ESB have divided the country into 792 rural electrification areas. They are not necessarily grouped countywise but are under regional offices. In addition the information they have may not be asolutely accurate because there were cases between 1971 and 1975 when people refused to take electricity under the subsidised scheme and they may be still on the ESB books. It could also happen that some of the houses have been knocked down in the meantime. Until the whole scheme is finished I think it would be nearly impossile to say how many houses are connected and the cost. The best estimate the ESB can give is that between 800 and 900 houses are involved. The amount the ESB looked for from the Exchequer was less than the £300,000 I am looking for now, but I put in a little extra because I thought the estimate might not be correct.
