I move:—
That the Seanad is of opinion that in the public interest legislation is urgently required by which all mechanically-propelled road vehicles used for the carriage of goods or for the conveyance of passengers for hire shall be subjected to taxation sufficient in amount to compensate for the estimated injury to the roads resulting from the traffic and for the advantages and immunities they enjoy from the unrestricted use of the public highways; and, further, that the problems of inland transport can be most effectively dealt with by a single Department of State.
At the outset I wish to assure you that I do not propose to enlist myself in the great army of cranks, prisoners under sentence, or editors who write leaders, wishing to go one better than the Government by suggesting a particular Ministry, or anything else, to deal with this. Therefore, I limit it to the suggestion of a single Department of State. This problem is a new one, with which every civilised State in Europe and in America is confronted, the problem of the roads being constantly seized upon for the promotion of traffic which pays nothing for the advantages it receives from the roads. I am definitely separating my motion from any consideration of railways or canals, because they have nothing to say to it, other than as a matter of equity. But if you put the problem as it originally arose to the older transport companies, and compare that with the position of the bus companies, you would require the bus companies to purchase land, form and maintain highways, and maintain offices and stations on those highways, and even then you would not get a condition comparable with that which the older transporting companies had to face. The roads of Ireland were lately brought to such a pitch of perfection that they are now as good as any roads of which I have experience of in Europe. This was done by a grant-in-aid of £2,000,000 from the Central Fund, whereupon, using that as a subsidy, several dozen companies, more or less solvent, have exploited these roads, which were put down for the benefit of the whole community, to their own benefit, and it has been done by a method which is not followed by any other transport company. Buses have been hired by private individuals on a system of deferred payments. They have blazed certain paths and routes, and if they fail to keep up the payments for these buses the buses have been foreclosed upon by companies which enjoy the rights which are charged against the whole State. The companies represented by these buses have to their advantage a subsidy of £2,000,000 and a complete freedom from all taxes and all rates. The Great Southern Railways Company paid in the year 1926 £203,000 in taxes, but the bus companies of Ireland have not paid a farthing in taxes.
If it were merely a matter of competition between bus transport and rail transport I would not care. But it is not a matter of competition. It is a matter of the destruction of the property of the citizens on the one hand, and of a contribution to the upkeep of the roads on the other. What I mean to say is this: the railways, through their taxes and rates, are subsidising the roads, and they are subsidising a form of transport which is injuring them. I know very well that this cannot go on. No government intends to allow it to go on. But I hope that what I have to say will get the authority of the Seanad to help to hasten legislation. It has been worked out that the destruction caused by a bus or by a lorry is 3d. per ton mile— that is to say that every mile of road covered by a five-ton lorry is injured to the extent of 1/3. That lorry may possibly go 1,000 miles in a week, and that would be £62 10s. in a week. If one lorry does not go, another belonging to the same company may, or there may be twenty running together, so that at that rate the destruction caused to the roads by one lorry in a year is £3,250, and the tax on that lorry ought to be £3,250. Even that taxation would not be adequate to keep the roads. The railways, by taxing their engines, could not keep up their lines. It costs the railway £200 a mile for a single line of rails in Ireland, and if a bus or a lorry paid £3,250 in tax we would still be confronted with the problem of the destruction of the public highways, which last year reached their present state of excellence merely by a grant of £2,000,000 from the Central Fund.
I divide the buses and the lorries into two heads. The lorry is possibly more destructive, because it has not always got pneumatic tyres. Sometimes it is a small steam engine, without rails to run on. The bus has done damage to the country apart from the superficial damage to the roads. It has injured the small country towns by tending to centralise the population. Shopping is done in the larger towns, to the great detriment of the smaller towns. But the return in mobility to the public is not adequate to the charge they are placing on the public in rates and taxes through the destruction of the roads, and it does not take very much vision to see a point of stalemate, an impasse, being reached, when the rates will be no longer able to keep up the roads, and the buses, even though they have got a subsidy of £2,000,000 and have an exemption from taxes, will be harly able to move over the roads. We have more roads, proportionately, than there are in England. There are 48,000 miles of roads in the Free State, 18,000 of which are highways. The original situation which confronts every form of transport company is the buying of land. But if the buses had to keep these roads in cement they could only keep the highways in cement, and even then the railways would not get an adequate relief from the contribution that they have to make towards the upkeep of the highways. That is a matter of equity. Even if the railways were remitted taxation of any kind they would not be in a position of equality with the buses, because their legitimate passengers would still be taken, on account of certain advantages enjoyed by the buses that they cannot cope with. The Board of Trade has exempted the buses from any inspection, or from any guarantee that the lives of passengers would be safe; there is no inspection to see that the doors will let the people out in case of fire. Senator O'Farrell, some weeks ago, referred to the safety of the vehicle. There is no inspection of that.
The remedy is very hard to seek. I say that it would not be an equitable remedy if you relaxed the taxes in the case of the railways, because there are other factors. But there is one consideration in this country which makes this problem more urgent than it would otherwise appear to be. This is a producing country. Produce always looks after itself, but in order profitably to market produce one must have distribution, and the question of distribution will be an ever-increasingly important one. In every country where there is an attempt made to help agriculture, the first thing they do is to lower the freights on the railways. Now, freights cannot be lowered on any railway which has to cope with competition and at the same time subsidise its rivals. By paying taxes they are subsidising the untaxed buses. The buses, with their great stands outside shops on the quays, and lined up against every cul de sac in Dublin, are paying no rates for what should be stations as large as the Broadstone or Kingsbridge stations. That is going on every day, but far more in those portions of Ireland which are sought to be advertised as tourist centres, where there are bog roads which will not stand this traffic. I travelled on the Friday before Whit Sunday through some of the most beautiful scenery in Connemara, scenery that is practically undiscovered, and coming back on Whit Monday I got such a shaking that it was as much as I could do to sit in the car without getting a shock to the base of the skull from the ruts. That was on a road where there were only four buses. I believe the county councils had some discriminating power about stopping buses on certain roads, and that they could allow them to run only on certain routes. They will have to be stopped, or also apply for certain routes which they would pay for themselves. In America I believe they are trying to meet the case by taxation and by relegating the buses to certain routes. But this country is too small for such routes, and it can only be done by a large increase in the taxes that buses are paying, or by the remission of taxation on other companies. The buses cannot carry the essential merchandise that this country depends on, nor can they engage in the distribution of live stock which is being sent out of the country, for which the railway companies are required, and the railway companies must continuously keep up subsidies to the buses. There are shops that should be distributing their merchandise that England sends over in return for our goods, and they are gravely injured by the concentrating of the centres of population caused by these buses.
I am not an enemy of the buses. I rather like the great speed at which they go along, and I certainly like the exhilarating petrol pumps that relieve the scenery everywhere. But this is not a matter that can be tolerated very much longer, because the question of transportation is a vital one. The very routes that used to transport food and certain of our produce are becoming impassable, and the destruction is far greater than any advantage the country has gained. It may soon be desirable to put a tax of £3,250 on buses, but 3d. a ton mile will not pay for the roads, if that tax could possibly be enforced. If one suddenly stopped every bus in Ireland there would be an outcry with regard to the hardship of people being unable to move, but I think we would have hardly any outcry, because the people are at present enjoying quite an artificial condition of affairs. They are enjoying a subsidy of £2,000,000 unwittingly given for the use of these buses; they are enjoying the action of foreign companies who dumped buses into this country out of their surplus supplies in England, and they are enjoying the bankruptcy of the small bus-holders being unable to meet their payments. They are also enjoying the fact that when a railway company tries to buy up a bus company two or three other bus companies come in. Other bus companies will come in if this motion is passed, merely to gain goodwill. I opposed Senator O'Farrell's motion because I saw that there would be a kind of goodwill extended to all the bus companies if there was a Minister appointed from whom they could get compensation for ceasing to run. The country has far too many buses, and in one way far too many road services. But whether it is met by a petrol tax, which would be hard on those who own private cars under a ton in weight, or whether it is met by an inclusive tax, it is a thing we have to consider, not a problem of competition with the railways, in which I have no interest, but as competition that is going to be a far more serious matter than we can see now, because later on it may be that if the proposal of Mr. Baldwin, who intends, I hear, to remit rates on agricultural holdings, is followed in Ulster it will be followed in the Free State, and we will be starting off with minus £3,000,000 a year for the upkeep of the roads and for public health and poor law services. Instead of having this £2,000,000 a year out of the Road Grant we would have minus £3,000,000 a year on account of a remission of rates on agricultural holdings. This problem will have to be met and dealt with, and the reason I suggest that it be met in one Department of State is to prevent anyone having the objection against me that I had against Senator O'Farrell's proposal, that it would lead to the creation of a Ministry, though I think the more Ministers the merrier. One Department of State ought to deal with this problem before the roads become so impassible that the money that should be spent on them cannot be afforded, because we can get a certain degree of damage, and beyond that it really means absolute ruin. I will not occupy the time of the House any longer than to ask them to consider this problem, which is just now, in this country and in every other country, the question of the privateering of public moneys for certain transport companies, which have the undue advantage of contributing nothing to the general upkeep of the highways over which they ply.