I regret that the Minister has not been able to come in. The Minister for the Environment has not indicated to us why the Minister for Communications is not present at this serious time for the transport and communications sectors generally. There is a Minister of State attached to that Department but we did not get either. I will start by commenting on subhead X where a paltry sum has been made available for the former workers of Irish Shipping. That problem has been aired in the House with a certain intensity, especially from this side of the House which regards itself as the creator of the company, and from backbenchers on the Government side. In my experience in public life as a Minister and a TD I do not think I have ever had the privilege of being canvassed for support by a more dignified, humane, sophisticated and, eventually effective lobby than that of the former employees of Irish Shipping who suffered grievious wrong at the hands of the Government. I accept I cannot spend a lot of time on this but this side of the House does not regard as any way adequate what has been done for the people involved. The fact that they are behaving in such a dignified way, persistent yes, but always with dignity, is a tribute to them and to their ethos developed from the war years to the present time.
I have a desk full of representations from them all argued on the grounds of justice and humanity. For the purpose of this debate I dipped in and took out one letter at random and I will refer to it. The husband of the woman who wrote to me worked for the company for 25 years and his redundancy payment was £3,700. That woman listed parallels from the public service to point up the strength of her argument. She pointed out that the chairman of Irish Shipping, go ndeanfaidh Dia trocaire air, got £66,000 which was approved by the Minister. In the case of the workers at Verolme Dockyard which was 48 per cent State owned the corresponding figure her husband would have got under the same conditions would be £38,000. The NET workers were paid five weeks pay per year of service and the Minister, Deputy Kavanagh, was the one who extended it by three weeks. In those circumstances her husband would have received £48,250. In the case of the Dublin Port and Docks Board where, as the Minister mentioned a reorganisation job has been afoot for some time, a redundant worker with this women's husband's amount of pay and service would have got £30,000.
I should like to withdraw what I said about the Minister and the NET workers; it was the Avoca Mines that Minister Kavanagh was involved in. The corresponding figure in that case would have been £32,665. The corresponding figure as far as Irish Steel was concerned would be £23,000.
As well as that the people involved found themselves in a position that they were not able to pay continuing insurance policies where premiums were as high as £1,600 per annum. I know that in this House there is a sense of justice and a sense of fair play but there is, unfortunately, at times a tendency to listen to the person who breaks down the door.
It is on the basis that this is altogether a different kettle of fish that I am appealing to the Government, through the Minister present, and to the House, to see to it that some attempt is made to remedy the injustice under which these people have suffered. This is a well argued letter and an individual is mentioned whose name I shall not give to the House to whom a gratuity and pension have been paid, who was in the public service and was asked to retire. The writer makes a very strong point about the taxpayers' money with regard to the AIB-ICI payment, one of our large financial institutions. If this House does not decide, in all justice and equity, to do something about those workers it will be a sad day. I shall not go into the history of the company because the House knows it very well. It has been repeatedly debated and discussed. If the House does not do that, this House is not worthy of those who manned our ships during the war and provided us at times with a meagre ration of goods at risk to their own lives and many of their comrades did die.
I come to subhead V — the Irish Spruce, simply because it is linked into the same situation. I asked a series of supplementary questions on 14 November in the House. The Minister of State at the Department of Communications was present instead of the Minister. I am not criticising the Minister of State but he did not have the details to allow him to reply on that date. This morning I received a letter from the Minister for Communications referring to those supplementary questions and supplying me with answers. The first question was: did the Irish Spruce become the property of the Japanese company on 11 January 1983? The Minister's answer was: Yes. The second question was: was this for a consideration from the Japanese of £26.5 million sterling? The answer to that was: Yes.
The third question was: who got the money? I asked did the ISL or the liquidator get it, or did it leave the Japanese pocket at all. The answer was that none of these got it, that the money was paid to Verolme Cork Dockyard. The fourth question was: did Irish Shipping Limited lease the Irish Spruce back at £4.9 million per annum over 15 years? The answer to that was: Yes, under the lease annual payments were set at the yen equivalent of £4.9 million per annum for 15 years. The fifth question was: when the 15 year lease period is over, who will own the Irish Spruce? This is a very important question. The answer given was as follows: if the lease had run its full course the ownership of the vessel would have passed to Merrion Ferry Tours Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Irish Shipping Limited. The lease has, however, been repudiated by the Irish Shipping Limited liquidator and the final disposition of the vessel remains to be settled.
One very important question arises from that. The division of responsibility with regard to the financing arrangements was as follows: Irish Shipping Limited were to be responsible for 25 per cent; on the Vote for the Department for Communications there was another 25 per cent; on the Vote for the Department of Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism there was 50 per cent. If Mr. Tempany repudiated the lease as far as Irish Shipping Limited are concerned, who is responsible for the Irish Shipping Limited pay back? I know there may be a difficulty about replying today and I should be pleased to get a reply in the form of a letter, as I did to my previous supplementary questions, but I should like to get it more quickly than that. If Mr. Tempany as liquidator has repudiated the lease, upon whom has fallen the responsibility for the 25 per cent payment for which Irish Shipping Limited were responsible? While I am at it, I may as well ask what about the Department of Communications. We have before us a figure which is why I am talking about the Department here. Is the responsibility still at 25 per cent, or have they to take on the greater share? I ask the same question about the responsibility of the Department for Industry, Trade, Commerce and Tourism who were responsible for 50 per cent.
Basic to our approach to this matter has been the desire to have a deep sea fleet, Irish owned. I said I was not particularly hung up on having it State owned, although in the circumstances it appears now that that is the most likely way of having one at all. Incidentally, it is not a bad time to be in the market for buying ships because there are good bargains going. There should be a deep sea fleet, State owned or privately owned, or a combination of these. I am already on record in the House on that point. I know a study was conducted in the Department on the desirability and feasibility of a deep sea fleet and I gather they came down positively on the side of having one. One point made was that they rather favoured the handy size rather than the larger vessel for a deep sea fleet. If it is intended, as it was originally, to carry coal across the Atlantic to Moneypoint, then the recommendation on the handy size would not be at all economical, practical or feasible. I would appreciate some elucidation of the position of the Minister and the Government on that.
I had consultation with some people in this area of business. If we had a positive decision to start developing again a deep sea fleet, then we would be in a position to have a forward look at it and would be able to contribute by a debate in this House. The tonnage recommended, of 150,000, was somewhat lower than what we had been talking about — 200,000 tonnes. The point is that as of now we do not know where we are and we do not know what the future holds. I have been asking when the liquidation proceedings will be finalised. It is important to know. The legal implications of the establishment of another State owned company are important. The quicker the liquidation proceedings are brought to an end the clearer the air will be and the better will be the opportunity to make decisions on the development of a deep sea fleet.
On subhead D.1 the Minister has put down £115 million plus £100,000 for the grant to CIE. I would have welcomed a more explicit statement on CIE. One of the difficulties is that when questions are put down about the activities of CIE the chances are 100 to 1 against their being accepted. On 12 November I got a letter from the Chair — I am not criticising the Chair but simply stating a fact — saying he regretted tht he had to disallow part of the question addressed by me to the Minister for Communications asking for the timetable for the appointment of executives for the new CIE structures and saying that this was a matter for CIE themselves and that the Minister had no official responsibility to the Dáil in relation to it.
We have got into a rut with regard to semi-State companies. When the subsidy from the House was a small proportion of the total finances of semi-State companies, that kind of answer was acceptable. That is no longer the case. In the case of CIE where £115 million plus £100,000 are being voted by this House, there should be available to the House and to the public the fullest possible account of the activities of CIE. I could mention half a dozen more questions which were disallowed. In one question I wanted to know how the new bus company was structured. The Bombardier company had pulled out and the GAC had come in and I asked a question about it and I could not be answered. If there was a sound commercial or financial reason, if this company was in international competition and if giving too much information about it and its workings could damage its activities, then I could see a reason for the refusal. That is not so. CIE borrowed £10 million with the permission of the Minister who is agreeing to pay £100,000 interest on it. All those operations should be opened to scrutiny in the House. The Committee on Public Expenditure were established by this House and may be able to probe all those areas, but that is not enough. The fullest information about the activities of the company should be available to the House and to the media.
In the early days when many of the State companies and bodies were established by the late Seán Lemass his reasons for keeping this House out of them for the most part were to give them a chance to operate without interference which would have harmed them financially. It is still important that they should be allowed to develop themselves fully commercially but if their operations need heavy subsidisation the whole area should be probed and fully open to the House and the media.
In relation to the problem with the one person buses, if there is a big loss in the Dublin city services the Minister will have to come back to this House to vote the money. That is a very serious problem. Yesterday the Minister for Labour displayed an open-mindedness and commitment to try to solve the problem and I said in the House that I detected a certain machismo on both sides in relation to this dispute. It is an Irish characteristic. There was a strike in Dún Laoghaire that went on for 35 or 40 years in Downeys public house. The ownership of the pub changed several times in the meantime but the man picketed officially outside for all those years and they used to bring him out a pint on each anniversary. There is a certain amount of that in all of us; we do not want to be downfaced. If somebody is trying to best us we get tough and rigid.
For that reason if the concessions recommended by the Labour Court are not acceptable to the management and the unions there might be a possibility of bringing in the strong and efficient industrial relations departments in UCD under Professor Brian Hillery and in Trinity College under Professor McCarthy, both of whom have considerable sophistication in this area. I am not criticising the Labour Court but we should all try desperately to find a way out of this difficulty particularly in the run up to Christmas. Deputy Ahern mentioned that business in the centre city is suffering badly because people who traditionally come to the centre city are not able to get in. That will get worse if there is not a resolution before 25 December. I ask the Minister once more to make one final strong pitch to see if he can resolve the problem before it gets worse. I know the Minister is circumscribed but at all times of one follows the rules too closely one will not get anywhere.
With regard to the harbours, I gather that next week the Minister will be bringing an order before the House under the State Guarantees Act and we will have an opportunity to have a further discussion on Dublin port and docks. The Minister rightly says that we had a very wide-ranging discussion on this recently and he gives quotations in his speech. I wish to comment on the grant in respect of harbours. The management — something to which I have already referred — criticised the Fianna Fáil Government with regard to the Dublin Port and Docks area and the proposition which the Fianna Fáil Government made in regard to it in 1982. I repudiate that criticism as there was never any question of Fianna Fáil acquiring that site for less than its market value. The management of the port and docks board and Dublin Cargo Handling Limited should not try to find a scapegoat for bad decisions. The Dublin Cargo Handling Limited venture was a disaster. There has been a considerable improvement and I got a letter from the Minister the other day giving a list of the people now employed there. I received a letter from him earlier purporting to give the list of those employed but in fact it was a list of those who had opted for redundancy.
There is an opportunity for development in the port. I will not repeat the substance of the debate here but it is not so long since everybody was delighted with the way the Dublin Port and Docks Board handled their business. There was no question of coming to this House looking for money, they paid their own way. I remember a former Deputy, Seán Moore, who was a member of that board for a long time. The management of Dublin Cargo Handling Limited and the workers seriously damaged Dublin port. Of course there was a spin-off for other ports but the port in the capital city should be something special and now it has another chance. I recall the criticism occasionally launched at this side of the House by the Government side in regard to investment and if we wished to invest a sum of £9 million we would be told that Fianna Fáil were too flush with funds, etc. However, we will be debating that next week and I will not make any further comment on it because we now have to decide whether they are entitled to borrow a sum of £7 million.
The whole thrust of the arguments from the Government side — and from the Opposition — is that it is an area capable of development along the lines which I mentioned in a Private Members' motion which was discussed earlier.
The Minister also said:
An additional amount of £450,000 is likely to be required under subhead V — Payments for bulk carrier to meet the essential care and maintenance costs of the Irish Spurce which is berthed in Marseilles pending the final disposition of the vessel which I expect to be settled very shortly.
What does that mean? Is the Irish Spruce for sale and, if so, who is selling it? Is it being adopted as a base unit for a new Irish deep sea fleet? Must disposal await finalisation of liquidation proceedings? The Minister has not given sufficient information. I have already asked a number of questions about responsibility for the yearly payments, a quarter of which have been repudiated by the official liquidator. I am not saying this aggressively but I should like the Minister to expand on that sentence because at the moment it is tantalising.
I am glad that the Minister is giving extra money to the meteorological service because, although their work is taken for granted, sailors, farmers and so on rely very heavily on them. They are in the news at present of course because of Halley's Comet.
Deputy Leyden, unfortunately, could not be here to deal with the postal and telecommunications part of the Estimate. I am a little dissatisfied with the paragraph which reads as follows:
On subhead B.3 an additional amount of £60,000 is required to meet the increased costs of postal and telecommunications services, for which no provision was made in the original Estimate.
Does that mean that more services will be provided or that there will be more money for the same service? It is very interesting to note that the old account of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs is still in operation to honour cheques and warrants drawn before 31 December 1983 but not yet cashed. I note that the Minister will put an end to this account very shortly but these people who are holding cheques are very trusting——
