Dáil Éireann debate -
Thursday, 13 Dec 1979

Vol. 317 No. 9

Supplementary Estimates, 1979. - Vote 45: Posts and Telegraphs.

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Reynolds)

I move:

That a supplementary sum not exceeding £8,300,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1979, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and of certain other services administered by that Office, and for payment of certain grants-in-aid.

As I have only just been appointed Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, hopefully Deputies will not expect me to go into detail regarding this Supplementary Estimate. Therefore, I propose merely to say briefly why an extra £8.3 million is needed.

The main Estimate for my Department for 1979 was for a net sum of £117,588,000. This supplementary Estimate makes additional provision for £16.1 million under three subheads but there will be savings of £2.5 million on subheads D, E, G and L. 1 and increased Appropriations-in-Aid of £5.3 million thus reducing the net additional sum required to £8.3 million.

The Supplementary Estimate is necessary for three main reasons. First, it provides for various increases in pay for which no provision was made in the original Estimate. Secondly, it provides for an expenditure of £75.3 million on telephone development in 1979 as against £70 million in the original Estimate. Thirdly, it contains a provision for expenditure connected with the new interim boards for the telecommunications and postal services.

An extra £12.8 million is needed under Subhead A. This includes £10,000 for fees for the chairman and members of An Bord Poist and An Bord Telecom and for the pay of any special staff these interim boards may need in 1979. The bulk of the extra provision is, however, due to pay increases, including the cost of the first phase of the national understanding.

The extra £2.8 million needed under subhead C is for additional sites and buildings for telephone development.

Under Subhead J, an extra £500,000 is required to meet the higher cost of pensions and lump sums because of the national understanding and other pay increases.

The increase of £5.3 million under Appropriation-in-Aid represents the recoupment of higher expenditure on telephone development under subheads A and C.

The only novel provision in the Supplementary Estimate is the £10,000 I have already mentioned for the new interim boards for the telecommunications and postal services. In effect the additional amount now required is needed because of the extent to which the public are using—and paying for—the Department's existing services.

Mr. Deasy

I welcome the new Minister for Posts and Telegraphs on his first appearance in the House and I wish him well in his job. I only wish the circumstances had been somewhat different. I regret the departure of Deputy Fitzpatrick from the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and the transfer of Deputy Faulkner to the Department of Defence.

We expected that there would have to be a Supplementary Estimate to cater for losses incurred by the two major industrial disputes this year, and in particular the losses incurred by the postal strike. We also expected as a result of the wage increases that were given, and rightly so, that extra money would have to be provided. Obviously this Estimate makes that provision.

The Minister is taking over a most difficult area. I hope he can help to iron out the considerable problems that have arisen. I am sure that the two boards mentioned by the Minister, namely, in connection with the telecommunications and postal services, will be effective. I hope the people who have been put in charge of them, Mr. Smurfit and Mr. Quinn, will be able to bring about the type of efficiency and management that, sadly, has been lacking up to now. We look forward to an improvement in the areas in question which I am sure will come about as a result of the expertise of the people concerned and the boards. I know that the boards are only interim boards but it is a step in the right direction. Certainly we do not begrudge any money passed here today if it achieves the aims set out.

The public are asking, do we have to have industrial strife and all this extra expenditure? The Minister should investigate thoroughly the staff relations section in his Department because obviously there has been a great want in this area during the years. It has become a symptom of our public services that if a person is old or is not particularly dynamic, he or she is shunted into the staff relations side of the job. Probably the public sector has ended up with too many people who are unsuited for jobs dealing with industrial relations. Far too often the best people are put into the technical side or other areas. Of course those areas are very important but recently staff and industrial relations have become of paramount importance in every sector, whether public or private. Far too many people who are dealing with workers have inadequate training and experience to cope with the problems that arise. The result is militancy on the part of trade unions. We can hardly blame workers for reacting in that fashion if they are not treated with proper respect or if they are not managed in a proper way.

The Minister will have to tackle this problem immediately. If it means taking people from the private sector, getting university graduates and getting highly qualified people in the public relations area, that must be done. There is a great lack in our educational system basically and also in the public service because people are not trained specifically in staff and public relations. It is left to pure chance and, as I pointed out previously, far too often that turns out to be wrong. The situation will have to be redressed and the sooner the better.

I feel sorry for people in the Post Office and in the telecommunications sector who work hard, who take great pride in their job and who get a very poor return. They are abused by the public for not providing a good service. This is very unfair to the dedicated persons in the service. It is unfair that they should be given a bad public image. The Minister should ensure that the public relations section of his Department gives these people a chance to explain themselves to the public.

I should like to compare operations in the public service with operations in the private sector. The ESB are one of our better State bodies. They do a good public relations job and their employees are given an opportunity to explain themselves publicly. In all our cities and towns the ESB have offices. One can go into any of these offices and discuss one's problems with the district manager or engineer. That situation does not apply to the telecommunications area. If one wishes to make a complaint about the telephone service, one has to make a telephone call to speak to someone one has never heard of in order to make the best possible case. As that situation can be difficult even for a Deputy, what chance has the ordinary person got? The impersonal service offered by the Department cannot be tolerated any longer. I advocate the Department getting into business at ground level next door to the ESB offices or AIB offices. Such a move would reduce the friction between subscribers and staff.

I have great sympathy for telephone operators and for the members of the engineering staff as all they get from subscribers is a litany of abuse. The area manager or somebody else should be available to take subscribers' complaints.

Following the recent strike all subscribers were issued with an impersonal letter which was dictated by the then Minister, Deputy Faulkner, and signed by the Chief Accountant. The letter asked subscribers who had difficulty getting telephone calls during the strike to lodge their complaints and advised them that they would stand a chance of getting refunds on their bills. That letter may have satisfied some people but I believe that it did not satisfy the majority of telephone subscribers. A number of my constituents have complained that they are not satisfied with the procedure. The Minister should set up a direct line of communication between subscribers and his officials.

The Minister did not give us a breakdown of the losses incurred this year during the postal and telecommunications strikes. The losses due to these two strikes must have been considerable, especially during the postal strike. During a recent debate the previous Minister told us that there were heavy losses but I have not been given a breakdown of the figure. People in the telecommunications business tell me that we should be making a big profit. One expert told me that he would make a very good living with only one international line at his disposal. Cities in Europe can be dialled direct from most of our automatic exchanges, yet we are unable to make a profit. The Minister should tell us how the system can be run at a profit instead of having these two sections being subvented each year by the taxpayers.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

The Deputy is broadening the debate. These matters will come up on the general Estimate.

Mr. Deasy

We would not have to pass a Supplementary Estimate of £8,300,000 if the service was run properly. I am told that the telephone service is not as bad as the letters to the newspapers would lead us to believe. There have been complaints from industrialists who cannot get telephones installed, from people whose existing service is bad. I am told that things could be improved if the main exchanges were updated. The exchanges in many areas have been changed from manual to automatic. This has improved the service considerably, but it appears that in the main exchanges there is outdated equipment dating back to 1940. As a result of the report of the review body set up by the previous Minister, recommendations have been made for the expenditure of £650 million over the next five years. I notice that the amount of money being provided for 1979 has had to be increased from £70 million to £75.3 million. The good work will have to continue, especially in the eight or nine main exchanges. It is no good to me in Waterford to be able to dial Paris or Brussels if I cannot get through to somebody in, say, west Waterford, five or ten miles away. Seemingly the method of transmitting calls and the equipment within these main exchanges is so antiquated that there are bound to be breakdowns because of overloading. That overloading can be rectified only by the replacement of that antiquated equipment by modern equipment and techniques.

I do not wish to detain the Minister any longer or to give him a baptism of fire. Certainly, I do not blame him for the faults which have existed in these two sectors to date. I wish him the best of luck in his task. I hope that, with the help of the two interim boards recommended, he will do a highly efficient job. It is probably one of the most challenging Ministries in the whole of the Government. It is exciting to be coming from a 100 per cent State position into a semi-State one where there is private enterprise involved. I know the Minister has been very successful in his own sphere in this regard and I hope he will be likewise in the service of the State.

Mr. Tully

I wish the Minister the best of luck in his new position, in which he will need all the luck he can get. It was one of the wisest decisions of the new Taoiseach to change the Minister in this Department because, whether he was good or bad, the situation is that things have gone so terribly wrong over the past couple of years that a change could not do anything but good. At least people cannot now blame this Minister for all the things that went wrong in recent years.

A matter which requires the Minister's immediate attention is that of the whole area of telephone and postal services. It is somewhat irritating to be given the stock answer time and time again, when anything goes wrong in the telephone service, that this and that has been the result of recent industrial disputes. I know that the proposal of the previous Minister to spend £650 million was accepted by those interested in the telephone service as being something that should be done. But those of us who know how money is found in this House will realise that the prospect of finding that amount of money to do anything important, or unimportant, is so unlikely that the Minister need not worry unduly about how it will be spent. If this £650 million is to be spent on improving the telephone service, I do not think it will be worrying him. Neither do I think the new boards about which we are speaking will be any worry of his. This is because whether or not he is successful, it takes so long to get anything like that started.

However, with what is available to him at present, the Minister can effect big improvements. He is a successful businessman and knows how things should be run. A typical example of what I am speaking about was to be found here a couple of weeks ago when I put down a question to his predecessor and when his Minister of State told me that there was a whole area in which seven lines had not been operative for quite some time and that only three of the seven had ever worked. He told me in this House that he would have the seven lines put into operation. By the time the question was answered, the seven lines were in operation. He said also that there were four new lines going up in the area of south Meath, but I had a letter from the Department the other day saying that they regretted that those four lines had not been put into operation because they had been damaged by gunshots. I do not know whether or not something peculiar has happened there of which I have no knowledge, but that is the response I received from the Department. The Minister himself must take a personal interest in what is happening. Otherwise the same situation will obtain, the situation in which lines will be out of order, in which complaints will be made and overcrowded lines will cause chaos in industry as well as in private lives in the area.

There is the other matter of where the necessary material or equipment is to come from. As we are aware, for many years everything used in the telephone services was imported. A few years ago when we assumed office we found that, although a lot of requirements could be produced here, they were not. An effort was made by one of the Minister's predecessor to have some of this equipment manufactured here, which met with a certain amount of success. But we are still dependent on imported equipment to improve the telephone services. The money must be forthcoming. We must keep pace with other countries attempting to improve their telephone services who probably have their orders placed before ours, with the result that we simply do not receive ours for quite some time afterwards. With the vast experience available to us, with the vast numbers of people at present unemployed, why can we not manufacture some of this equipment here, thereby creating a situation in which it would be readily available? Indeed, I would take a bet that one of the gentlemen who has been selected to run that service will not be very long in deciding to take that way out of the difficulty, because it is one of the most constant causes of complaint.

In regard to the telephone service, I am sure the Minister, who up to a few days ago was a backbench Deputy, is aware of the appalling situation, even internally in this House, that the internal telephone system seldom works and that it is almost impossible to make a call outside the Dublin city area. In my office there are five telephones, only one of which is working. In my opinion nobody should be expected to accept that kind of service. It is not because there have not been complaints lodged about it; the situation simply does not appear to be rectified. Apparently the same situation applies in practically every other office in this House. It is impossible to make outgoing calls to any place except the city. Indeed, after a while I am sure such lines as are operative must get red hot because they are being used to such an extent. But, in fact they also go on the blink and it is nothing unusual to find no telephone at all available in a whole section of this House. It is absolutely ridiculous that such a situation should obtain at the end of 1979. I am not blaming the new Minister for it, but it is something of which he will have to take cognisance. We know there was a telephone dispute, but that was quite a long time ago and that excuse cannot be thrown up for the non-provision of services or not providing additional lines. God knows half the letters I write are to the telecommunications sections of the Department requesting telephone service in areas where there is practically none at present.

One other point I would make in regard to the telephone service is that the Department seem to think that if they instal an automatic exchange they can immediately take everybody off that exchange and the whole thing will run smoothly. This causes a lot of frustration because when a breakdown occurs the complaint goes to the few people who happen to be manning the switch. The worse the service the more complaints there are to those people endeavouring to operate the system, and so the frustration continues.

There are just two other matters to which I should like to refer in regard to the postal service. We are coming up to Christmas now. I think we will have a new low record of Christmas cards this year because the cost of printing them is so great.

Mr. Deasy

Not for Ministers though.

Mr. Tully

I am excluding them. It should have been relatively easy for the State to arrange that the postage on Christmas cards be reduced to a nominal sum, or to, say, 5p, for a card sent in an open envelope. I am sure that such a concession would be availed of widely. Instead, the postage is almost twice that sum and in addition there are the appalling prices being charged, in the top class stores as well as in the other stores, for Christmas cards which can only be described as rubbish. It is unfortunate that people are being put in the position of having to say that they are not sending Christmas cards this year because they cannot afford them.

Each Christmas there is a considerable amount of overtime worked by postmen and sorters. I appeal to the new Minister to ensure this year that when Christmas is over we do not have once again the unseemly wrangle that has gone on for the past 20 years whereby the people who do the extra work are promised verbally that they will be paid but find, having done the work, that somebody tries to shortchange them. There is no need for any such situation to arise.

Hopefully, the Minister will endeavour to arrange that public relations in the Department, particularly in regard to staff, are brought to a level where it will not be possible for the State and a large number of its employees to lose millions of pounds between them merely because somebody fears that a decision taken might have some other effect at a later stage. This year we experienced a postal strike which should never have occurred but the cost of which will continue to be counted for years to come. Hopefully, the Minister will not allow anybody to talk him into allowing such a state of affairs ever to obtain again. Today we have had a situation in which a Minister was able to intervene in a dispute which appeared to be almost impossible of solution. Though he had to double what was recommended by the Labour Court he succeeded in bringing about a situation in which the people concerned can return to work and in which it appears as if everything is turning out all right. The new Minister for Posts and Telegraphs might take note of that action on the part of his colleague and might ensure that he does not allow a situation to arise in which people could say that he, as Minister, tried to starve them into submission but failed.

Mr. McMahon

I shall not delay the House but the subject before us is one that we could debate for a week without saying all that needs to be said. First, I congratulate the Minister on his appointment. Since his election to this House he has impressed people as one who is concerned with the various issues in society. I am glad that he has been given responsibility at this level for what is a very important Department. I wish him well in his new appointment.

Regardless of whether the Minister's stay in the Department is long or short, I am confident that he will be concerned with the various issues involved, but the question of how much he will be able to do is a different matter. Like the rest of us I am sure the Minister has been experiencing representations from increasing numbers of people in regard to the installation of telephones. If any of us goes to his local for a drink at any time there is every chance of being approached by three or four people inquiring about telephone installations. Perhaps this does not happen to the same extent in the Minister's constituency but it is the situation in my area where there is so much development.

When I spoke earlier in the year on the Estimate for this Department I made a request to the Minister which I thought was received favourably by him. I pointed out the large numbers of people who were waiting to have telephones installed in the new housing estates in County Dublin and I asked that where it is not possible to meet applications in a housing estate for a long time, a few public telephone kiosks would be provided as a matter of urgency. I appreciate the difficulties involved in meeting requests for telephones in vast areas of development, but, though I thought my suggestion was well received, there has not been any evidence of it being implemented. I have in mind estates in Tallaght, Knocklyon and the general Templeogue area where there are people who have been waiting four years for telephone connections. That sort of situation warrants a crash programme. I do not expect the Minister to have all the answers but I hope that at least he will have some ideas as to the putting into operation of such a programme.

I have what I consider to be a serious complaint to make regarding this Department in relation to this question of telephones. When I receive representations from somebody who has been waiting three or four years for a telephone I find that if I write to the Department all I receive is a stock reply to the effect that my representations have been received, are being looked into and that a reply will follow. But the reply never materialises. Because of this I have given up writing to the Department. It appears that not only are public representatives and the applicants for telephones being frustrated by the situation but that civil servants are frustrated to the extent that while they acknowledge representations, the inquiries are not followed up. I have explained this situation to constituents. The situation is deplorable and the treatment of public representatives in this respect is reprehensible. I do not know whether the Minister during his time on the back benches had such experiences also. Perhaps people on the other side of the House are treated a little better by the Department.

Mr. Deasy

That is doubtful.

Mr. McMahon

I would be interested in hearing from some of the Ministers who have been promoted from the back benches as to what their experience was in relation to representations they may have made to the Department in relation to telephones. We cannot afford to continue with this cheese-paring attitude in regard to telephones. There is too much of that attitude in other areas. If a county council plan a new road to a new area or a new road to service a new estate but find that a fairly long time will elapse before the necessary moneys are available, they usually put a rush job into effect in the interim. People outside think it is a waste of time and money to put three or four public telephone booths in an estate where in two or three years nearly every household will have a private telephone. I do not agree with that. We have had experiences in Tallaght when the lack of a public telephone could have cost lives. There have been numerous fires in the area and in one instance a person had to go nearly two miles to get a telephone through which to summon the fire brigade. On another occasion a caravan went on fire and there was not a telephone within three-quarters of a mile. I am referring to a densely populated new town.

Deputy Tully made a point I had intended to make. It has to do with the posting of Christmas cards. Our postage rates are much higher than in most EEC countries. I think it would be cheaper for me to post a Christmas card from here to Paris or other European cities than to post a card to the Minister. That should not be the position. The numbers using the Christmas post are decreasing and that is so for one reason. It is not because people do not wish to convey Christmas greetings—indeed in many instances Christmas is the only time of the year when friends contact each other—but because of the high postage rates. The Minister should try to reduce the rate on Christmas cards. The Department would not lose anything by such a reduction because more people would use the post. It would be worth the Minister's while to make such an experiment. I do not see why our general postage rates should be higher than in Britain, but that is another matter.

Reverting to the provision of public telephone kiosks, my experience of dealing with the Department is that they expect to have the telephone installed in two years. That does not happen, to the frustration of all, including the civil servants who, perhaps because of that, do not bother to reply to public representatives.

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Reynolds)

I wish to thank the Deputies who have contributed to the debate for their kind wishes. I hope I live up to the opinion Deputies opposite have of me. I will be trying to tackle one of the most difficult tasks facing any member of the Government, to try to set up an efficient telecommunications service and an efficient postal service. It is what we all desire and the country cannot afford to do without it. These services have not kept pace with other developments in the Irish economy. Lack of finance over the years has been partly responsible, but this Government gave a commitment to develop a new communications service.

I have been but a matter of hours in the Department—I was in the Seanad earlier in the afternoon—and I would have liked to have acquainted myself more fully with the workings of the Department. I know the challenge that is there, I know the job of work that has to be done but it cannot be done without the provision of the proper tools. In general, I welcome the suggestions made during the debate, I have taken note of them, and in the assessment I will be doing in the Department, starting tomorrow morning, I will bear these suggestions in mind.

I am aware of the difficulties public representatives have had in relation to representations to the Department, but personally I have not had the same experience as Deputy McMahon. I will look into the complaints he has made in relation to replies to Deputies and to the public. I agree there is a public relations job to be done in the Department. The Department is an organisation employing 28,000 people and it is not an easy thing to come in here to try to suggest simple solutions in an organisation of that size.

Staff relations problems have been referred to but I must give these matters great consideration before I would be prepared to put any comments on the record. A special committee was established under an independent chairman nominated by the Chairman of the Labour Court to review the Department's rules and regulations, disciplinary and consultative procedures. The work of that committee is proceeding. Furthermore, a mediation committee, also with a chairman nominated by the Chairman of the Labour Court, was established to deal with staff grievances which had not been settled in direct discussions. A number of such problems have been resolved by that committee.

Although it may appear to many people outside that proper attention is not being given to staff relations problems, from the brief knowledge I have and the information given to me by my predecessor, I appreciate the big job of work that has to be done in that area. I know I am aware of the great efforts by my predecessors and I can assure the House that I will not be lacking in effort to try to improve staff relations. I have worked as an employee and as an employer and I know that if you can get to the root of the problem before it starts to fester it is often easier to solve it. I will bring this type of thinking to bear in the Department when I begin to examine the whole area.

Deputy Tully raised an interesting point about equipment and the vast amounts of money being spent by the Department on equipment being imported. This has not gone unnoticed in the Department or by my predecessor. Much of the equipment is now being made in Ireland. In my constituency, Ericsson of Sweden, one of the world's leaders in telecommunications, are manufacturing equipment. Technicon are also in this work.

I should like to draw the attention of the House and the Deputy to the fact that the IDA have a section known as the imports substitution section which has been very successful in substituting Irish manufactured goods for imports. The IDA carried out an in-depth study of the imports into this country and have been successful in establishing industries here to cope with that situation. This will be kept under constant review by me in connection with the purchase of equipment for the Department. Anything that is manufactured in Ireland will get priority as far as I am concerned. That is my philosophy and it would be the philosophy of any Irish politician.

Some Deputies, when referring to my term of office, queried whether it would be a long or short stay. I do not know what evidence they may have that I might have a short stay, but I hope it is longer rather than shorter, because a short stay in the job that confronts me would not be very good. I could not hope to produce the results Opposition Deputies expect from me if my stay were short. There is a long job of work to be done and it will take a concentrated effort by everybody to succeed. I must pay tribute to the management and staff in the Department on having gone so far in laying the foundations for what I believe will be a challenging task for me in trying to set up the two new boards, An Bord Phoist and An Bord Telecom. Those two boards are chaired by two successful businessmen who are presently engaged in carrying out their own assessment in the telecommunications and postal areas. I will have an opportunity of meeting them next week. I look forward to working with those two very successful Irish businessmen. Hopefully, together we will be able to push forward the impressive programme the Government have laid out for us in developing a very efficient telephone and telecommunications service.

Deputy McMahon raised a question about providing telephone kiosks. I should like to tell him that where an area cannot be served immediately by telephone lines priority is given to the establishment of telephone kiosks. I have noted the areas mentioned and I will communicate with the Deputy in relation to them.

Deputy Deasy raised the question of the up-dating of the equipment in exchanges and I should like to tell him that that is part of the present programme in progress.

We are all aware that there are problems in the telephone service. I would not be foolish enough to deny that. I am aware that a special committee, under Mr. Michael Dargan, set a minimum time limit of five years to try to bring the service up to an efficient standard. That does not mean that in the interim we will not be endeavouring to improve the service. I will be endeavouring to implement the programme as fast as possible.

We face a major legislative operation in setting up the two semi-State boards. Many of the matters complained about today can only be properly tackled by such boards. They are not easy to deal with in present circumstances. This is all part and parcel of the new thinking in relation to the two boards and, hopefully, we will introduce the necessary legislation soon. I look forward to that move, like everybody in the country, because a proper telecommunications service is the cornerstone of a good viable economy. As a former industrialist I am aware that people use the telephone and telex systems extensively. Industrialists want a good service and they are prepared to pay for it, because without it their business, and hopes for expansion, are severely handicapped. I look forward to the challenge of this new position. I will give it all the effort I can and, if I fail, it will not be for the want of trying. I do not intend to fail. I intend to do the best I can. With the full cooperation of the management and staff of the Department we can go forward from there. The foundation stone has been laid and together we can deliver an excellent and competent telecommunications and postal service.

Vote put and agreed to.