Seanad Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 18 Dec 1973

Vol. 76 No. 5

Telephone Capital Bill, 1973 ( Certified Money Bill ) : Second Stage (Resumed).

Question again proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Mr. Deasy

In common with the other speakers, I welcome this Bill. I should like to give my views on the establishment of a new body, if that is possible, to spend this money, be it a semi-State body, which I think would be a very interesting idea, or even, if possible, to hand it over largely to private enterprise. The most important thing is to get the greatest benefit from the money being expended.

The present Department of Posts and Telegraphs is a dreary, drab outfit. There is a good case for taking the telephone system away from the Post Office end of the Department and having it entirely on its own. What strikes me most about the telephone service and the Post Office service in general is the dreariness and the drabness and the amount of red tape involved. It would be wonderful if the telephone system broke out on its own like the ESB and instead of having it controlled from the local post office to have a show shop, something like what the ESB have in every principal town, where people could go and do their business. The dreariness is dreadful, right down to the colour of the vans which operate around the country. I would ask the Minister to spend some of this money on a coat of paint to brighten the whole thing up.

Another thing that could be learned from the ESB is that they plan a campaign and inform the public in advance what to expect. They advertise in the local papers the areas that are to be visited and where they are to do rural electrification. They pick area by area. We are inundated with requests for telephones and we, in turn pass them on to the Minister. The whole thing just jams up the works. It would be far more satisfactory if the Minister could explain where exactly they are working or are likely to be working for the next year or so. We would then be in a better position to advise our constituents as to when they could expect to get service. The ESB are quite good at this. The Department of Posts and Telegraphs slip up badly.

There is a great deal of red tape in the telephone application business. The application just about goes around the world. First of all, if you have a main office in your town you fill in a form and you give it to your local postmaster. He, in turn, sends it to the telephone branch here in Dublin. The telephone branch then send the application back to the engineering branch in the area and ask if this application can be dealt with without top much trouble. When they have vetted the application they send it back to the telephone branch. Now, at this stage, if everything is in order, the telephone branch send an agreement to the postmaster who requests the applicant to come in and sign it. When that agreement is signed he then sends it back to Dublin. Finally, if everything is all right Dublin advise the engineering branch to go ahead with the job. That seems to be a very roundabout way to deal with a very simple thing like an application to instal a telephone. I would suggest to the Minister that this type of thing should be streamlined.

Senator West had a very valid point about the amount of liaison the telephone people have with the local authority, which must be almost nil in most cases. I have seen this in my home town of Dungarvan over the last few years. No sooner have the local authority provided a new road or especially a new footpath, which is a very expensive job, then the telephone people come along and break it up with, one would imagine, almost malicious delight. It must be costing the taxpayers a considerable amount of money because they have got to replace those footpaths. I would suggest to the Minister that the liaison between local authorities and his Department could be considerably improved.

The question of rural kiosks was mentioned here today. This is a big bone of contention between local representatives and the Department. I do not believe the Department should look on every kiosk as a profit-making operation. In rural areas you must give a concession. You must be prepared to lose money in order to provide a service and there is a great demand in isolated rural areas for telephones. They may not pay but they are vitally necessary.

It is a bone of contention between local representatives and the Department. I do not believe the Department should see every kiosk as a profit-making operation. In rural areas you must give a concession and must be prepared to lose money in order to provide a service. There is a great demand in isolated rural areas for telephones at crossroads or some other central point. They may not pay for themselves but they are vitally necessary.

We have had the luck in Dungarvan town and the mid-Waterford area of having the manual exchanges converted to automatic service. This has been a considerable boon to the area. I suggest you note that the suicide rate has dropped considerably there since the frustration and frayed nerves that went with the manual system have gone and the automatic system is working wonderfully. However, there are one or two matters I should like to point out as they may help in the future. The planning of the new numbers, when an exchange is to be converted to automatic working, should be done years in advance. At present we have the ridiculous situation that if you want to find a number in a neighbouring exchange area you have to get on to the inquiries section. This must be creating an enormous amount of work in the exchange. I suggest that the numbers be made out two or three years in advance and be placed in the telephone book previous to the exchange being converted. I know we get a sheet of the new numbers but it only relates to the exchange in which you are situated. I would suggest that all the numbers in the exchange area and in the neighbouring exchange areas be placed in the telephone book in advance.

I should like to refer briefly to local directories. Some chapters of the junior chambers of commerce have done very praiseworthy work in that they have made up local directories for the benefit of the public. However, there seems to be some objection to this from the Department. I do not know whether this stems from copyright considerations or whether the Department are afraid there are inaccuracies contained in the directories but this is a wonderful local service. I know the Dungarvan Junior Chamber of Commerce received a letter from the Department stating that under no circumstances were they to proceed with the printing of this directory. If the Department do not wish the junior chambers of commerce to publish such a directory then the Department themselves should do so.

Finally, I should like to ask the Minister if he has any intention of going underground? I do not mean to be funny in saying that but is any of the £175 million pounds to be used to stop the countryside from being spoiled by overhead cables as it is at present? This is more particularly obvious in the scenic areas where the population is sparse. I know it is not economic to put wiring underground but lines of telephone poles and wires through scenic areas should be avoided if at all possible. The Minister should use some initiative in this direction in order that we may keep our countryside beautiful.

Mr. Boland

I do not think I could let this opportunity pass without saying a few words about the inadequate telephone system that I have referred to here on several occasions during the last few years. The last time I spoke about the Department of Social Welfare I said that there was only one thing in public life which annoyed me more than the Department of Social Welfare and its ineptitude and that was the emasculated telephone service which I had to use to try and contact the Department. Thankfully the situation in the Department of Social Welfare has shown a marked improvement in recent months and I hope that the introduction and passing of this Bill will bring about a marked change in the telephone service.

As a public representative in the Dublin area who is tempted to use the telephone extensively, there is not a day goes by when I do not curse Edison, Bell and Marconi and whoever else who was intelligent enough to invent the system. I curse also their successors who were even more intelligent and perfected it and everyone here who has for the last 50 years made a marvellous job of imperfecting it to a glorious degree. I have every sympathy with those people who have spoken so often about the difficulties encountered in obtaining ordinary telephone service in the Dublin area. I believe the real difficulty is that because the system is there one expects that it should work. If there was not a telephone system we would all be quite happy to communicate with each other by letter or verbally but because the telephone system is there we take up the instrument and expect that we should be able to get through to the person at the other end of the line. Often this does not happen. In this respect it is fair to mention that not only does this not happen in most parts of Dublin but one of the areas where it happens least of all is here in this House. To try to make a telephone call from Leinster House to any other part of Dublin or to any public service or Government Department is one of the most trying occupations of public life. At least 30 per cent of the time of any public representative in the Dublin area is spent on the telephone and about 90 per cent of that time is spent in trying to get through to the person at the other end.

I find nothing more frustrating than having to ring a number in the Dublin city centre area or in the other Dublin exchanges. I know this is not the fault of the present Minister or of the people who are immediately involved in the telephone system here. The improvement of the telephone service is quite a slow process because I appreciate that the placing of contracts involves a major amount of work and, I understand, each exchange is custom built to the requirements of the area for which the contract is placed. For that reason it is a very lengthy process and a great deal of time elapses between the placing of the contract and the delivery and installation of equipment.

I am interested—Senator Alexis FitzGerald referred to this also—in the Minister's remark about the stop-go policy which has so disrupted the development of the telephone service. I am particularly interested to hear him refer to a stop-go policy since approximately 1969 and 1970. I think he is being more than charitable to his predecessors in that regard. It is very well known both within and without the public service that the stop-go policy in relation to capital development, and the development of the telephone service in this country generally, has been a policy that has been carried out over the last 12 years. It is a policy that has resulted not only in vastly overcrowded exchanges and in many thousands of subscribers seeking new outlets and connections but in the Post Office having extreme difficulty in maintaining a proper quota of skilled technical staff who can carry out the installations and provide proper maintenance of equipment over the years. When there was a recession or a decision to cut back on capital expenditure in the telephone service, it meant that the number of people in skilled training was cut down and that a number of those in employment left and went into private industry or into such bodies as the ESB.

It seems to be very important that not only should there be this vast sum of money expended but there should also be a development of a quite large skilled technical force and training school, which the Post Office have run so successfully, so as to provide an adequate number of trained technicians who would subsequently be employed at a rate attractive enough to keep them in the service.

Every time part of the stop-go policy was implemented the number of such technicians decreased and when money was again provided to be spent on the telephone service, the skilled labour force was not available. It is important that that aspect should be looked into.

I should like the Minister to tell us when people who are connected to overcrowded exchanges in the Dublin area can expect any immediate improvement. I know the length of time it takes to instal new equipment but I should like to know if subscribers can expect any immediate improvement in making local calls, and in the number of crossed lines and interference one experiences when using the telephone. I heard Senator McGlinchey complain bitterly, and at length, in a very interesting way about the crossed lines one can get going through a manual exchange. One can pick up the telephone operating from an automatic exchange in Dublin and hear all sorts of conversations.

I remember one day in the House endeavouring, for about ten minutes, to make a 'phone call and every time I picked up the 'phone someone from the Department of External Affairs, as it was then, persisted in sending a telegram to embassies abroad. I could not get anything else but the text of this telegram, in which I was not particularly interested. I should like the Minister to tell us if we can hope for more privacy on the telephone. I know a number of people who are not prepared any more to discuss matters of importance on the telephone, even through the automatic exchange system.

Obviously the problems of the manual exchange are different. Senator McGlinchey has explained this to us and I could not help thinking when listening to him that whatever his difficulties were with recent events which occurred in his constituency, what must the difficulties have been for the then Members of the Opposition for so long, when Senator McGlinchey was on more friendly terms with the person who apparently was involved in the operation.

What were regarded as luxuries of yesterday are demanded as necessities by many people today. While it was unusual 15 years ago for many people to have a private telephone it is now expected as a necessity of life rather than a luxury that a telephone should be installed in a private home. We are not in a position to supply all the telephones required for some years to come because of the vast backlog which has occurred. It is obvious that the steps being taken are going to cure this problem, but they are long-term steps of necessity. What the public want to know is whether in the meantime there can be any hope of improvement.

The Minister in a brief way referred to the introduction of mobile automatic exchanges which could be used in a temporary capacity. I should like him, when he is replying, to expand on that and explain if they could be introduced to relieve pressure in congested areas.

I should like to be a little parochial for a moment and say, speaking from memory, about 18 months ago an inordinately high proportion of the applications for service were from the County Dublin area. I should like to ask if the number on the waiting list is still as high or if it has improved in any way. I receive complaints from people from all over County Dublin who have applied for telephone service 18 months or two years ago. All too often the reply is that they will have to wait for a considerably longer period. The amount of development in County Dublin is extraordinarily high in relation to the rest of the country but surely the Department must have been aware of the extent of that development which has been going on over the past 12 years. In that area of the country more than any other the capital development works of the Department have fallen further behind.

The Minister mentioned in his speech that major capital work is being undertaken with the connection of subscribers from the Lucan/ Clondalkin area into a new exchange in Tallaght. We are grateful for this, but there are many other areas in the county which are rapidly becoming at least as overloaded as the exchanges in the "59" digital areas. I hope that urgent attention will be given to the needs of those areas also.

Very rarely does one get an opportunity to praise people in the public service but I did recently. In connection with the installation of those additional lines and the heavy duty cable required for the Tallaght exchange I had reason over the last few days to contact the section of the Department which is installing that cable. Quite accidentally they had arrived with their major excavation machinery to the main street in Clondalkin to commence work during Christmas week. They were engaged in digging up the street and, naturally, the local traders, and the residents, were very perturbed at this major upheaval of having to cope with a one-way street during Christmas week. I contacted the Minister's Department and the Telecommunications Section dealt with the problem efficiently and courteously. They agreed, very readily, that they were creating a disturbance at such a busy time of the year in the centre of a commercial area and agreed to suspend their operations until after Christmas. It is nice to see that behind the face of bureaucracy there are occasionally some human beings operating who appreciate other people's problems and try to help to solve them. We ought to thank them.

Finally, in company with the Minister, I am less than sure whether the activities of the Post Office should be transferred to a State or semi-State body. I am not too happy about the accountability of some of these organisations, in their operations. In such a major field as the telephone service, involving such major capital expenditure, one wonders whether this ought to be embarked upon. Perhaps the Minister could explain to us when replying—I am afraid I am more ignorant about this than I should be —what strictures, if any, our membership of the European Community places on the hiving-off of the telephone service or any other aspect of the postal service to a State or semi-State body with a monopoly on the service. I understood that the EEC imposed some restriction on the amount of hiving-off into monopoly situations which the State could carry out.

I wholeheartedly welcome this Bill. Perhaps can we return to that Utopian situation where when one dials six digits the telephone bell rings at the other end. This is not happening too often at present. It is not the fault of the Minister. I am not asking him to apologise for the sins of his predecessors. I am just asking him to explain how quickly he intends to bring the grace of God down on all our souls in future.

Mr. Kilbride

I welcome this Bill. The Minister, however, will have to consider the lines on which telephonic development must proceed in this country if the people as a whole are to be equally and justly served by that useful service. It is not always as useful as it might be in some areas having regard to the expenditure and the facilities which are at the disposal of the Department. Those living in the cities and towns have had a definite advantage over the rural dweller in regard to telephonic communication. It is possible to have to travel four or five miles in rural areas to the nearest telephone. In such areas many people would like to instal phones. The telephone is a valuable means of enabling people to transact their business economically. When a person in a rural area wishes to instal a telephone he is first asked: "What is the distance from the nearest exchange?" It may be three or four miles and this makes the installation more expensive. The applicant is told he must pay four or five years' rental in advance. Otherwise the Post Office cannot take the risk of an installation of this kind as they could suffer a loss. The applicant for the telephone on receiving the estimate of the cost of installation is faced with a bill of from £80 to £100. He is the pioneer of telephonic communication in that area, because before he made the effort to instal a telephone the inhabitants of that area had to travel up to three miles to the nearest telephone. This man's neighbours will come night, noon and morning to make calls on his telephone. These calls will be available if he is in connection with an office where service is provided around the clock. If not, it will be available up to a certain hour. These people will still have to depend on a day's service from the rural post office which is serving this area. This man has had to pay £80 to £100 in advance and also has to oblige all his neighbours.

The Minister might consider having a telephone installed at a local centre, perhaps near a school, a small country shop, or where people congregate for meetings. The person who would utilise it for his business could pay a reasonable rent appropriate to the connection distance. If that were the case more people would get connections off this line and the difficulty at present experienced by rural dwellers would be eliminated in a reasonably short time. People would have the facility without being fleeced of a considerable sum beforehand.

Another anomaly exists in the telephone service in my home town of Granard, which has a population of 1,500. The telephone engineers brought a line to Granard from Mullingar for an automatic system. In the course of the laying of the line they installed an electrical telephone appliance at the rere of the post office which is to be called into use as soon as the Post Office people decide to make Granard telephone exchange automatic. There is only a wall between and the lines to Cavan are passing the front door. A new footpath was dug up and had to be replaced at the taxpayers' expense, just as Senator Deasy described. Until very recently a very difficult situation obtained with nine small local post offices coming through Granard, all trying to get in contact through the trunk line in Mullingar. I should like to thank the Minister for having eased that situation but nevertheless it is an anomaly that should not exist. The people in the sub-post office in Granard are most anxious that that should be redressed and I would ask the Minister to do so as soon as possible.

A different situation exists in relation to telephone communications in the rural areas as compared with the city. Comparisons have been made here with the ESB. The telephone service in rural areas is very important for doing business. Lines of electrical services were provided in rural areas and people were invited to make connections. I accept that the Minister is overwhelmed with applications for connections and that many of these are from people in urban areas.

While I agree with what Senator Boland said about the difficulties involved in installing underground cables to certain new exchanges, I would welcome the development of an extensive installation of telephone services in the rural areas. Rural Ireland is so far behind the cities and larger towns in telephone services that the Minister would need to, and I hope he will, devote his attention to using this money to bring telephone communications in rural areas into line with those in the cities and towns. I hope he will do this as soon as he can. If he looks at the waiting list he will find out that the disadvantages I have outlined exist in the rural areas. It would be an advantage to have proper telephone services in rural areas. I should like to thank the Minister for the many improvements he has made with regard to telephone services in the area which I represent. I hope he will be successful in bringing this capital programme to a very successful conclusion.

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Dr. Cruise-O'Brien)

I should like to thank the Seanad for having fully debated and discussed the Second Stage of this important measure. As Minister for Posts and Telegraphs I am grateful to Senators for the depth of their discussion. This has now been discussed in all its Stages in Dáil Éireann and in its Second Stage in the Seanad and I may say there was remarkably little overlapping. On the whole, Members of the Dáil and the Senators covered different areas. The discussions complemented one another and were certainly of value to me and to my Department, as they would be to any other Minister.

In particular, the Seanad debate has been fuller and more helpful to my Department and to myself in relation to one important point, namely, whether the Department of Posts and Telegraphs should or should not evolve into a semi-State corporation. Very little about that question was said in the Dáil. Deputies covered other areas in more detail but a number of Senators came in on this and, I think, something of a consensus was apparent among Senators in favour, though not without reservations and qualifications of some sort, of evolution towards a semi-State corporation. I shall have to take that into account in balancing it along with various other indicators of what public opinion may be on this issue.

I might mention the Government have just decided to set up a Post Office Users Council and I want their reaction on that. Then I would have to discuss it with the staff organisations and the trade unions concerned, whose co-operation is absolutely essential in the event of any such move being made. I should like, while I am still under that head, to refer to one proposition made here which is that perhaps telephones could be separated from the remaining postal services and run by a State corporation, leaving the remainder of postal services to be run as at present. From initial soundings that is the least attractive proposition from the point of view of at least certain of the staff organisations concerned, and some of the most important ones. That, of course, is a very important factor. It seems essentially to be a choice between continuing more or less as at present, possibly with the internal changes recommended in the Devlin Report, or proceeding in the direction of a semi-State operation for all the postal services. I do not think they can be divided up.

Senator Lenihan in his speech, to which I gave very careful attention, spoke of the danger of erosion in the sums committed here. I thought he and some other Senators suggested that it might be difficult for us to provide these services in view of the difficult economic situation, particularly in the case of the difficult energy situation. The main point to consider here is that we cannot afford not to deal with this problem. We cannot afford not to have enough improvements in the state of our communications because if we do we are going to cut ourselves off from the rest of Europe and accentuate the lag behind that we already have. The second point here, and it is a main point, is this is not a question where we are looking to the benevolence of the Minister for Finance or the long-suffering taxpayer. Telephones are a profitable service and it should not be hard to raise capital for them. I do not think it will be so hard.

As regards energy prospects, this is a reason not for pulling in our horns in relation to telecommunications but, on the contrary, for pressing ahead with telecommunications development. As far as we can extra polate from the present general situation, it looks as if it will be more difficult and more expensive for business people to travel from one European capital to another and possibly even from centres in Ireland which are far apart. That will become a more expensive operation and there will be a tendency for business to rely, not less, but more on that form of telecommunications of which the main specimen is the telephone, which is low in energy consumption and relatively cheap, as compared with carrying people around by aeroplane, or motorcar, or what have you. Therefore, the energy shortage points in the direction of the necessity of making faster progress in this area even than we anticipated.

As regards the erosion of the capital sum—£175 million—I should like to mention one point. One Senator said he understood this as being £125 million including £50 million of the last Telephone Capital Act. This is not the case. The £175 million is in addition to the sum of £50 million included in the last Telephone Capital Act. It is a large sum. It may still not be enough for what we require to do in these five years. If that should prove to be the case, then we would not hesitate to introduce a new Telephone Capital Bill, which we would have to do to complete such works before the end of this five-year period.

I must take up another reference made by Senator Lenihan. He referred to the loan of £7.5 million, which we have just got from the European Investment Bank for the present year, as being paltry and totally inadequate. The Senator has a perfect right to apply any adjectives he thinks proper to a loan from the European Investment Bank. However, as the responsible Minister, I must utterly reject his language here and the concept it represents. Senator Russell dealt entirely accurately with this point.

The position here is that the European Investment Bank has certain norms. We belong to the bank and our representatives have approved these norms. One of them is that the bank does not give more than 40 per cent of the annual cost of an ongoing project. My Department's Estimate for the current year— which was not, as has been pointed out, initially prepared by me—was for £19 million. If the Senator looks at the figures, he will see that the sum provided is almost exactly 40 per cent of that and is, in fact, virtually the maximum that the EIB could have provided for us. We will spend £25 million this year and we will have to look for a Supplementary Estimate to provide for that. What we get is not what we are going to provide for, but on a basis of what we have allowed for.

Mr. Lenihan

I was talking about the five-year projection and how that could be escalated over the five-year period, not in respect of one year.

Dr. Cruise-O'Brien

I do not think the Senator can apply a description of "paltry and totally inadequate" to what the EIB may provide for the future.

Mr. Lenihan

The burden of my complaint was that all we had was £7.25 million for the present year, until next March. We have no indication of how that sum is to be raised to meet the sort of expenditure set out here in the Bill over the next five years.

Dr. Cruise-O'Brien

Perhaps the Senator would allow me to complete my remarks. The European Investment Bank has provided for the current year the maximum which it could have provided. It cannot now be expected to extrapolate and provide a proportion of what we may be providing. It has to go on what will be provided and we have good reason to hope that it will continue to provide on the basis which it has provided for this year, that is to say, approximately 40 per cent. After that, it is up to us. We know that whatever capital we provide, this project, as such, is approved by the European Investment Bank. We do not have to go back each year and say: "Telephone capital expenditure in Ireland is a good thing." They know that already and we have a very good case in looking to them for that money.

I think that I owe it to our partners in the European Investment Bank to say that I completely reject this language, that the loan is "paltry and totally inadequate". I also reject the suggestion that a big noise has been made about this loan. The European Investment Bank people came here. They signed this agreement with the Minister for Finance. They were well received here. Their visit was well publicised by the media, without any notable manipulation or encouragement from anyone else. This is entirely as it should be. Was it expected that these gentlemen were to come here, negotiate this loan, and that nothing should be said about it? It is important that it should be said. It is important that these gentlemen should know that this loan was welcomed here and that more of the same in proportion to our increasing expenditure would be forthcoming in the future.

Mr. Lenihan

We want to hear about the future—not what has been negotiated.

Dr. Cruise-O'Brien

The Senator will. He used the description, "paltry and totally inadequate". It could only be related to what was forthcoming so far, because he has no basis on which to relate it to any future expenditure.

We are spending £25 million in 1974-75 and we anticipate that the programme will work out at an average of around £38 million, approximately, for each of the four succeeding years. If the Senator works out 40 per cent of that in relation to each year, he will see approximately what we will look for. Senators will appreciate that the precise sum for each year is a matter for discussion with the Minister for Finance within the framework of this Bill. We are very conscious, first of all, of the need to capture it and, secondly, what I would regard as the real possibility— I cannot confirm it as a probability, because it depends on others than ourselves—that approximately 40 per cent of that will be forthcoming from this source. That is a very important stimulus to our endeavours here.

It was suggested that the development fund of the EEC might contribute something in mitigation of our repayment cost on this. My Department would like to see this. However, it is possible that the Minister for Finance may think that others have a greater claim on at least part of that. It is something that we would be looking into and trying to get, if we can, but I am not promising that we can.

Senator Russell dealt, on the whole, with Senator Lenihan's points. He made suggestions about decentralising my Department's activities. I welcome his support for that idea. It is something under study at present in my Department and I hope that we will make progress in that direction. Such progress would be well worth while.

Senator Quinlan spoke—I do not think he intended to speak quite as negatively as he sounded—of coming down to reality, of cutting down expenditure to an absolute minimum and of something he referred to as the region of luxuries. We will certainly have to cut down on luxuries but anyone who thinks of the expansion and modernisation of the telephone as a luxury is very seriously mistaken and, if we fail to get the massive investment we require, we will have to cut down on many other things because we will be lagging behind economically. However, I welcome the point Senator Quinlan made about a continuing study team, detached from the executive and policy forming sides of the Department, looking at how the capital programme is going. This is not an entirely new idea. My Department during the last few years have made use of a number of consultant groups in various aspects of their work and there will be more, not less, use for this kind of study as the programme goes on.

I do not know what to say about Senator McGlinchey's remarks. In so far as these constituted a severe criticism of a Member of the House of the Oireachtas to which I belong, I can only say that I regret that the criticism was not made where the Deputy would have been in a position to reply to it because there is nobody here who can reply for him. The matter was brought up in a rather contingent way in the Dáil and, no doubt, there will be some future opportunity on which to raise it there.

As far as demand dealing with confidentiality is concerned, there is no way of totally ensuring against what seems to have happened, at least in part of this case, that is to say, a breach of trust by an employee of the service. Such breaches are very rare in the telephone service which is one with a high morale and a strict discipline and the Senator acknowledged that the one case concerning which clear evidence could be produced was properly dealt with. That will continue to be the case. Such leaks are rare but every telephone service experiences them. The best remedy is the fullest possible automation and that is the way we are going. The Senator may be assured that my Department are determined to deal effectively and, if necessary, severely with anyone who lapses from the strictest confidentiality required in manual exchanges.

I want those Senators, who may be disappointed to find that I have not dealt as fully as I might have with their points, to know that their remarks will be very fully studied in my Department and taken into consideration there. I will myself study them as I go over the report of the debate.

Some miscellaneous points were raised. Senator West raised the question of the State investment in the Goonhilly Earth Station. That is of the the order of £250,000 and we are already getting development there.

Dr. West

Is this a capital figure?

Dr. Cruise-O'Brien

Capital.

Dr. West

Will it require a per annum investment?

Dr. Cruise-O'Brien

I do not think so. It is a basic sum which makes us a member of the club and, when we get the data, as I indicated in my opening remarks, we may find it worthwhile at some point during the planning period to move over to an earth station of our own.

A point was made about the relatively low efficiency, particularly in some areas, of the service available at night. There has been a problem there, a problem of recruitment and an unwillingness on the part of certain people, including most women operators, to work at night. It is an area where women are generally considered to be more efficient than men and their non-availability for this night service causes some difficulty. I do not say that in criticism of the night staffs generally; many of them are highly efficient and devoted, but there is a difficulty in getting enough operatives.

Senator McCartin also mentioned the question of education in the use of the telephone. We are concerned with that problem and in the recent advertising programme we are trying to do something about it. We agree that it could be developed.

Senator Moynihan, Senator Killilea and others raised the point about giving priority to rural areas. I take the point because I know to what extent development of industry and commerce in rural areas and, in particular, the more remote rural areas, depends on the telephone. I know it has happened that business people from the Continent, or elsewhere, having looked at a given area, decided that the telephone service was not good enough and they could not operate. I can certainly understand the concern of Senators on this point. To the extent possible, my Department will wish to give such priority as they can to the development of the telephone service in rural areas and particularly the more remote and disadvantaged rural areas.

At the same time there is a question of balance. All these problems hang together. There is no value in improving the telephone facilities available in a given western area if, at the nearest main centre, the facilities are lagging behind. The Dublin exchange is lagging behind at present. Continental business people coming into a western area do not care where the bottleneck is, whether it is in the west or in Dublin; all they want is to be able to get through to Düsseldorf, or wherever it is without too much delay. The problem is an overall one but that does not mean that I underestimate it.

I take particular note of Senator Alexis FitzGerald's important statement especially on the question of conversion into a semi-State corporation. His statement, together with those of other Senators, will be very carefully considered in my Department. He made one rather philosophical observation. He said that he regarded telephones as a misery. I have good cause to agree with him. As in many other spheres of life, perhaps, telephones are a misery but without telephones, misery would only take on another form which might be more acute for the many concerns in which the Senator is interested.

Several Senators referred to the question of social cost in the telephone service. Some Senators asked whether there was such an element or whether it was an entirely economic or a commercial service. It is essentially, but not exclusively a commercial service. It is a commercial service which has to carry—and this of course, is not unique—a certain burden of social cost or social contribution. If it was left entirely to the unaided zeal of a commercial corporation, development in certain rural areas and in the west would be, for the time being, very considerably less. If, at any point, we are to hand this over to a State corporation or any other such body the State would have, for social reasons, to find some way of underwriting these social costs in the more thinly populated area, which, of course, include such matters as the provision of kiosks in rural areas. It is not exclusively that. There is the point as to what extent local authorities give some help in such matters as guaranteeing the cost of kiosks, whether they could come in to a great extent, whether other State boards could come in to a greater extent. Senator Moynihan mentioned the Dunloe question which is an area very difficult of access. If my Department were to bring in a proper telephone service there, we would need to put in an extraordinarily high capital commitment per head. I agree with the Senator that it should be done, but there is a question of how it should be done.

Senator Halligan also made a very valuable contribution on the theme of turning the Post Office into a semi-State corporation, and his remarks also will be carefully studied. He made a valuable distinction between administrative and technological aspects of choice He made a very important statement when he said that Ministers for Posts and Telegraphs, including myself, have not been technologists. It would be rather surprising if they turned out to be; it would be about the happiest coincidence on record if they were good technologists. Of course, nothing is more dangerous than a Minister or other head of such an enterprise who has some smattering of the subject and inflicts half-baked ideas on everybody. If his ideas are not even half-baked he is not tempted to inflict them so widely.

As I see it, this is the main advantages of the semi-State idea. There can be a fan of confidence deliberately chosen—not emerging through the democratic system—for the special competences which can bring to bear a useful and effective scrutiny on the operations of the Post Office. This could be a very valuable thing, not because there is any reflection to be made on either the administrative or technological servants of the Post Office, all of whom are of high competence working with exceptional devotion, but because we can all benefit from informed criticism being brought to bear by people who have a responsibility to exert such criticism on our efforts. That is one of the reasons I lean in this direction, and I have been encouraged by this debate to do so.

I have tried to cover the main points. Perhaps I have gone on at too much length. Those whose specific points have not been covered will find, I think that I have attempted to cover the main principle of them in my remarks, and individual points will be borne in mind by my Department.

Question put and agreed to.