I seem to remember that, not very long ago, a very large and voluminous report was described as being half baked and slovenly. It would, I think, be very much fairer to apply those epithets to the White Paper that was circulated in connection with the turf development scheme rather than to the 450 page report of the Vocational Commission. This White Paper, supplemented as it is by the report of the Turf Development Board and by the statements of the Minister made in the Dáil and in this House, forms the basis on which we must decide whether it is wise or foolish to spend £3,750,000—not our own money but the people's money— in this way. Not only this House and the Oireachtas, but the public as a whole, must decide whether they are going to take this scheme, or whether they are going to be opposed to it.
It has very often, I think, been commented upon that there is a great lack of an intelligent public opinion. It is almost impossible to have an intelligent public opinion if the Government do not, on every opportunity that is available, put on the Table the whole of the known facts in regard to every social and economic problem with which they have to grapple. If those known facts were made available to the people as a whole, it would be very much easier for an intelligent public to form an accurate opinion for itself.
So far as this scheme is concerned I am one of those whom it would have been extremely easy to satisfy, because I take the view that the development of our peat resources is highly desirable from the angle of the development of our national resources, on the one hand and, on the other hand—I regret that this aspect of the question was only touched upon in passing by the Minister—from the angle of the reclamation of a substantial area of our country. I shall come back to that at a later stage.
I want to impress upon the Minister and the House that it is because I am genuinely anxious to see our peat resources properly developed I desire to examine carefully and critically the proposals put before us. It must be realised by everybody that, if this scheme of turf production does not go down with the public, then it marks the end of any chance for the development of our peat resources, not only during our generation but during the lifetime of our children and their children. The Minister must appreciate that, so far as the cities are concerned, particularly Dublin, the word "turf", after the past six years, has no pleasant memories. Whether that is reasonable or unreasonable, does not enter into the question. The Minister never got over to the people, particularly in the cities, that they were very lucky to have the material in the emergency years that was available. That was not turf in the ordinary sense of the term. It was a fuel which we were lucky to have, and I do not want in the slightest to detract from the value of the work done by anybody in producing that fuel. It was an emergency fuel which had to be used. It was brought up to Dublin in a way in which it would not have been brought but for the emergency. The Minister would achieve much greater success in the future—I am speaking now, as the Minister was speaking, of the post-emergency period—if he would admit frankly and openly that the stuff brought up to Dublin and sold as turf during the emergency was not turf, as it should be produced in non-emergency years, quite apart from the question whether it was machine-won or hand-won turf. It would then be very easy to develop our peat resources in a successful manner. It is regrettable that that was not brought out more clearly in the White Paper, and it is more regrettable that it was not brought out clearly in the Minister's utterances on this subject.
So far as the White Paper is concerned, it can, I think, fairly be described as an effort to get the members of the House to agree blindfolded to a proposition. Nowhere in the White Paper or in the Reports of the Turf Development Board are there accurate estimates other than the estimate contained in one small page of the appendix. In the other House, references were made to the introduction of the Shannon scheme in 1927. I was not sufficiently old in 1927 to take cognisance of that and I do not propose to make that comparison. But I do propose to make another comparison.
I propose to make comparison with the report brought in under the aegis of the present Minister and submitted to this House by another board—the Electricity Supply Board. The Minister will himself recollect the meticulous care shown by the Electricity Supply Board in the preparation of their report on rural electrification. That report, extending to 114 pages, was full of accurate, technical information, with illustrative graphs, which enabled people who wanted to get at the roots of the proposition put forward by the Government to see exactly what was proposed. This White Paper is notable for all that it omits of matter such as was contained in the report introduced by the Electricity Supply Board prior to the passing of the Act of last year. It would have been interesting, for example, if the White Paper had given us some information of the area to be developed in respect of each of the bogs, so that it would have been possible to judge whether the expenditure on one bog, as against another, or even on lowland bogs as against mountain bogs, was desirable expenditure. It would have been possible also for members of the House to consider the question of the life of the bog itself. Twenty-five or 30 years is a very long period in our lives but it is only a trifle in the life of a nation. We must remember that in dealing with this problem. So far as the national life is concerned, this is not a long-term operation.
The appendix deals with the development of Clonsast bog. Here we find one of the difficulties in assessing the merits of the scheme without the information which, I think, the Minister should have put before us. The sum of £65,000 is to be spent on Clonsast and the bog is to have an annual output of 120,000 tons. The Minister, in his opening remarks, agreed that Clonsast bog would have a maximum life of about 30 years. That means that, out of Clonsast, there is to be produced during this period approximately 3,500,000 tons of turf. It would have been much more proper if the Turf Development Board had indicated the area of Clonsast which they proposed to develop. There were originally in Clonsast 8,144 acres of bog. So far as I can ascertain from any of the technical people concerned, there are at least 7,000 acres of bog still in Clonsast capable of producing 21,000,000 tons of turf. The Minister proposes to take out of Clonsast for this electricity power station only some 3,500,000 tons of turf. Perhaps, the Minister would explain how that is and how it is that he is going to erect a substantial, costly plant for the generation of electricity if the bog is only going to last between 25 and 30 years, while there are 21,000,000 tons of turf available in what is commonly known as Clonsast bog. That would, on the Minister's own estimate, as given to the Dáil, last about 250 years.
In the other House, the Minister made comparisons respecting the cost of electricity which will be generated. I should like him to explain to us what proportion of the cost is represented by amortisation of the large plant which is to be erected for only a period of 30 years. It appears to me, from what the Minister has stated, that when the 30 years are over, there will be no further use there for the developing machinery, and that there will be no use for the building which are to be erected to house the machinery. I think it has been estimated, so far, that the present utility of the turbine used for hydro-generation is somewhere about 94 per cent., and that, therefore, so far as the turbine in a hydro-electric scheme is concerned, there is no limit to its life; it is purely a question of maintenance. It is not going to be scrapped because it suddenly becomes out-of-date, because obviously the last 6 per cent. of utility is not worth while achieving when it comes to scrapping machinery as a whole.
I do not know what length of life is anticipated for the generating machinery at Clonsast, but, regardless of the length of life that is anticipated for the machinery, it would appear to me that a length of life of only 30 years for the buildings that are going to house the machinery, and for the very large structures necessary from the point of view of storage, etc., is one that is going to make amortisation excessively costly, and that the cost of the current that is going to be provided will be such that the whole cost of electricity will be increased. When I talk of an increase, I am not talking of the emergency period; again, I am speaking of it in a long-term way. Therefore, I should like to know whether, in view of the information available in the shape of the bog commissioner's report and the report of the commission of inquiry into the industrial resources of Ireland, it would not have been more satisfactory to put such a generating station in a position, if one is going to be erected, where it would have very much greater resources to draw upon than merely 3,500,000 tons of turf, which will mean that at the end of 30 years the machinery and buildings will be left there derelict and useless, after having used only 120,000 tons of turf per annum.
There are some 4,500 square miles of bog in this country and 2,000 of them on the Minister's statement are available for mechanical production. Surely it would have been possible to arrange that the generating station, having regard to the enormous capital cost involved, could have been placed at some point where it would have a longer life than 30 years?
I do not know how it is intended to deal with the transport of turf from the bog to the point of sale, or, in respect of Clonsast, to the station itself. I have been assured that that has not been dealt with up to this by the Turf Development Board in regard to the emergency scheme; it has been dealt with by another Government Department. I should like to be quite certain, in so far as this scheme is concerned, that there is going to be no possibility of the repetition of the ramp that existed in regard to the transport of emergency turf. It is a common report, that one particular firm, starting from nothing, has accumulated in regard to turf transport about £150,000. I mentioned on a previous occasion in this House how one individual gave evidence in the District Court that he was making £12,000 a year from the carriage of turf. No wonder it is said in the turf areas—it is a matter of common gossip—that the best possible thing one can get into in the way of a racket at the present time is the carriage of turf. People are, in consequence, leaving everything else to get into that racket. I know myself that people have left even the Guards in Kildare in order to get into the turf-carrying ramp. I sincerely hope that whoever has the responsibility under this Bill the same opportunities of abuse will not be afforded in connection with the transport of turf as were afforded in the past.
The Minister dealt, in passing, with the Lullymore briquette factory. He suggested that the figure of £7 per ton is being charged for briquettes. I think it would be desirable, not only in connection with that, but in connection with the whole scheme of machine-won turf that is to be operated through this Bill, that we should have placed on record the report of the people who went to the various foreign countries to see what was done in these countries, and that we should know what technical advice was given. I am not interested in the names of the people, what I am interested in is the qualifications of those who tendered the advice on which this scheme was based. That should be known by the Oireachtas and the people of the country as a whole, so that if the scheme is a success, as we hope it will be, we shall know what part of these technical reports was correct and what parts were inaccurate.
So far as Lullymore is concerned, the present figure given by the Turf Development Board for the sale of briquettes is 54/9 per ton. That figure is arrived at after taking 1/6 per ton off for head office expenses. It is, I think, a new departure in business accounting that in arriving at the cost of items produced by the business, anything should be taken off the account for head office expenditure. A much more correct figure would have been reached if we had the figures from the Turf Development Board, both in relation to macerated turf and Lullymore turf. So far as Lullymore is concerned, the turf produced in briquette from has, I think the Minister will agree, a calorific value of 8½ thousands. It has, therefore, approximately one-third more of a calorific value than macerated turf, which has something over 6,000. Taking the Minister's figures for the sale of macerated turf, 20/- to 25/-, or taking the top figure of 25/-, so far as the calorific value of briquettes is concerned, they would have to be sold at something like 33/- or 34/- to be equivalent to the machine won turf from the point of view of pure fuel heat.
Of course the briquettes have other attractions—the fact that there is not so much wastage, the fact that they can be pressed into a much smaller space and that they are cleaner to handle. I think it desirable that we should appreciate that, at 54/9, the price without the 1/6 to which I referred, they are a luxury article, a luxury article of which we are producing 16½ thousand tons per annum. If the 51,000 tons of peat brought into the factory were used for machine won turf, they would produce some 34,000 tons. It is questionable if we can afford the luxury of producing it in that manner rather than producing more machine won turf, which would in the long run be cheaper and which, in addition, would give out half as much heat again in the bulk. Those are some questions I should like the Minister to deal with and I should like him also to amplify whether there has been any possibility of developing the Lullymore method of working from a lateral method to a vertical method. I understand that the quality of the turf has not been quite satisfactory. In Clonsast the whole bog is vertically cut, and so the bad and the good turf are mixed up, but that is not the case in the cutting of the Lullymore bog. I think it would have been very desirable if the Minister had indicated for the convenience of the public the storage capacity necessary to store briquettes as against macerated turf and as against hand-won turf. In city houses there is always a great difficulty of storage accommodation and that is why very great importance is attached to the question as to whether briquettes or macerated turf or hand won turf will take up the most space. It is a matter that could very easily have been dealt with in the White Paper. If it had been made more clear it would have helped the public mind to a considerable extent.
The White Paper and the Minister indicate and the board would suggest that the production of peat moss is something that is a new thing. It is no more new than was the production of machine-won turf when Sir John Griffiths suggested it. In 1920 it was set out that there was an output of some 50,000 tons of peat moss but the Minister now is only discussing a quantity of 3,500 tons per annum. The suggestion that that is a step towards getting back to what the production was is misleading and undesirable.
The Minister at one stage I thought was going to make his case for this Bill on the shortage of coal but in response to a query from Senator Hayes he shied away from that point and went on a different tack. The proper case to make for this scheme, it would appear to me, is not in any way related to coal but in relation to the fact that it is desirable, if we can do it, to reclaim a large tract of our country which is at present useless. It is on that general line that the whole plan should have been based. The important thing we should have been told is the area of land that it is hoped will be reclaimed as a result of the operations of this Bill. From my calculations the Minister only proposes to operate about 20,000 working acres. I do not know if he will agree that that is an under-estimate or an overestimate but I have taken that from the figures he has given of the life of the present bogs and the amount of turf that is going to be produced. Then I want to stress again, that it would have been highly desirable to make known to the public the area that it was hoped to reclaim under the present scheme. It is stated that it is hoped to produce 2,000,000 tons of turf from the Clonsast bogs and the bogs of Roscommon, but in 1920 it was estimated that the total production of turf from these two bogs would be 15,500,000 tons. That is a question on which the opinion of the technicians should have been brought before the House and the country as a whole and that would have been much easier to judge the merits of the scheme.
I find it difficult to understand so far as production in Kildare is concerned if it is going to be sold in the area round the bogs how it is going to do anything more than displace the hand-won turf that is already produced there. That is not going to be any improvement on the present situation. It is merely going to be a displacement. Hand-won turf has been produced for decades around that area by people who live there and who were able to sell it in competition with coal at a time when coal was at its cheapest price. If that hand-won turf is going to be replaced by the machine-won product I think it would be very undesirable. It is one of the grouses I held against the Turf Board in Kildare that in its original years it cut across the operations of the co-operative societies and that it did prevent those societies from disposing of their output.
There is also the question of the housing of the workers concerned in these schemes. Some 3,400 workers are going to be permanently employed. Is it going to be left to the Kildare County Council to put up the additional houses that will be required to house those people or will the Turf Development Board do it? Apart from that question, when the houses have been erected, will they be of such a nature that after the end of the 30 years' lease of life which the Minister has given to these bogs, that they will be of use for agricultural purposes when the bog is reclaimed and when we hope it can be put to agricultural uses?
I am afraid I have strayed over a great many different points but I want to say, in concluding, that the one essential in regard to this scheme, if it is going to be a success, is to get it over to the public that machine-won macerated turf is of a more uniform quality and of such consistency, even when produced in rainy weather, that it will do the job for which it is essential. Unless that fact can be put over to the public the scheme has not got any hope of success and that fact cannot be put over unless a clear differentiation is made between turf produced during the emergency and turf produced at the moment.