ORDUITHE AN LAE. - ELECTRICITY (SUPPLY) BILL, 1927 THIRD STAGE (RESUMED).
SECTION 47 — AMENDMENT 65.
I would like to say further that I thought the Minister's justification of this section was most unsatisfactory. I think he ought to pay a good deal more attention to the difficulties under which existing contractors suffer, or may suffer, if the section goes through in its present form. It seems to me there is nothing in the section to prevent the Board carrying on the business of supplying material and wiring quite at a loss, thus preventing any fair competition between the Board and existing firms — that even quite apart from the fact that the Board will be, to begin with, in a much superior position to any existing firms, being free from rates and taxes, and they will be in immediate contact with all those who wish to consume electric current. Desiring consumers will come to them first, and they will get into immediate touch with them. In fact, everything will be in favour of the Board.
As the Bill stands at present, there is nothing to prevent the Board, as far as I can see, handing over this business to some other firm. In addition, there will be nothing to prevent them running this part of the work at a loss. It is not proposed that the accounts of this part of the work should be kept separate from the generation and transmission accounts. I think it would be a considerable improvement to the section, if it provided that the accounts dealing with this part of the Board's work should be kept entirely separate, as if it were a separate concern for the provision of electric supplies, wiring of houses and places of business that wish to get the current.
It seems to me that the section will undoubtedly be likely to do a great deal of harm to bodies with which it would be a great deal more to the advantage of the Minister to work in co-operation rather than to try to put them out of business. The Minister thinks that it will be extremely difficult for the Board, along with contractors, to do all the wiring that will be required by those who desire to get electricity. It is to be hoped that that will be the case. If it is the case, it is all the more necessary that the Minister should enable those contractors to continue doing work in which they have been engaged. Their work undoubtedly has been responsible for a great deal of the pioneer work required to make the Shannon scheme possible.
I was hoping that the Minister would have recognised the suitability of this amendment. I think the section is unfair to contractors generally and is a form of trading which it was recognised in the past should not be undertaken by a Government. I think it was fairly well recognised in the past, and I think the Minister must recognise it, that contractors' work was not a suitable activity for a Government Department to undertake. I think contractors outside will have a very considerable grievance if they are to compete with a State Department for work that, I think, might be left to private enterprise, as far as possible. It is difficult to recognise what a change the Bill will effect in the industrial outlook. It will remove from the sphere of private enterprise an area of operations which, in the past, industrialists looked upon as being within what might be called their province. Does the Minister forecast all the operations of the Board being done by direct trading, and that, when it is in full swing, the Board will go so far as to standardise fittings, so that it may control fittings, wiring, and all the incidental work following the full control of supplies of electricity? I find a difficulty in realising the revolutionary changes that are proposed in the Bill.
If this Bill is to be taken as a model of the development of industry under the Minister for Industry and Commerce, all the help that the Minister can give us to make us realise where we stand would be very welcome. If the programme he has outlined for the electrical industry, in so far as it recognises no intermediary interest of any sort, be adhered to by sweeping away what might be termed middlemen, whether municipal or private undertakings, coming down even to the minutiæ of the manufacture, the hire and the sale of utensils, one cannot very well see how far that will affect our every-day lives. When one sees sections of this sort inserted in a Bill, one must recognise that the revolutionary changes that took place some time ago were only the commencement of revolutionary changes in our business life. The principles which the Minister sets out to establish may have an extraordinarily far-reaching effect. I should have thought that the business of the Department of Industry and Commerce and of the Minister himself, would be to foster and assist private enterprise in every direction possible, and one must look with some surprise and with some apprehension along the road to which this Bill is apparently leading. Private contractors entered on undertakings of this kind in the belief that they were secure in carrying on their business — not secure against competition amongst themselves and amongst similar concerns but certainly secure against State interference.
The only thing that surprises me is how the Government can consistently claim to take powers, such as those given under Section 47 of the Bill, having themselves at the initiation of the Shannon scheme dealt with a firm of contractors on what I might call the broadest possible basis of contract. In regard to that particular aspect, after two years, during which the Shannon scheme has been in the course of construction, we are singularly ignorant as to the terms of the contract entered into between the Government and the Shannon contractors, but at all events we must recognise that the Government entered into that contract for the carrying out of a very big scheme with a firm founded on private enterprise. Now when we come to the distribution scheme, we find Section 47, indicating apparently the growth of State enterprise, in the same way as the Minister indicates that the operations of the Board will involve the elimination of all middlemen in connection with the generation of electricity. We must read clause 47 in the spirit that if this Board is to operate on the lines indicated, they shall have a complete monopoly of all work connected with electricity within the area of their jurisdiction. That may be reading too much into the clause, but one has to read a lot into this Bill in the light of the explanations we receive as to its outlook on the future of the industry. I, at all events, wish to enter my protest against the form which has been adopted, which will enable the Board to become not only monopolists as regards the supply of current, but monopolists as regards the supplying of fittings and everything concerned with the main operation.
Deputy Hewat appears to me to have an objection to this section more on the ground that he dislikes anything that savours of nationalisation or socialisation rather than from the point of view that it is not good for the consumer. I am inclined to take the view that this section is good for the consumer. The section will enable the Board to manufacture electrical apparatus and to sell that apparatus. A Board with wide powers to do that and with considerable capital at its back will, in my opinion, be enabled to manufacture apparatus along standardised lines. By reason of its large output, perhaps in the way of a monopoly, it is reasonable to forecast that the consumer will get the benefit of cheap electrical apparatus. If that is the position — and I think that is the position aimed at in the section — I cannot, looking at the matter from the consumer's point of view, see any objection to the section, and I venture to say that Deputy Hewat cannot make a case against this section from the consumer's point of view. It seems to me, from the point of view of assisting in the elimination of a lot of unnecessary competition and unnecessary overhead expenses, this section is useful, inasmuch as it enables the Board to manufacture on a large scale, to develop standardisation, and in that way to cheapen the supply of electrical apparatus for consumers. If that be the intention of the section, I personally do not see, and I do not think my party will see, any objection to a provision which enables the Board to develop on these lines.
The last speaker has indicated the point from which I approach this whole matter. We want to give the electricity consumer, current and everything to do with current, as cheaply as possible. If you take the ordinary account that a man pays for electricity, you can reasonably divide it into four parts. One part of his payment would be for generating cost, or in the case of the Shannon scheme, it would be generating cost, plus transmission cost; the second part of the payment would be local distribution cost; the third, the cost of wiring his house; and the fourth would be the cost of supplying appliances or apparatus for the use of electricity. In every one of these four things, the Board will be in a position to give a better and a cheaper service than anybody in the country, and that is the aim.
I think there is a misconception there. The consumer at present wires his own house; the local authority does not wire it.
He wires his own house, and he pays for it. In future, if he can wire at a cheaper rate than at the moment it will be because the Board will give him facilities he is not now getting. In every one of these four divisions — generating cost, plus transmission cost, local distribution cost, the wiring of the house and the cost of the apparatus — the Board is going to be in a position to give a cheaper service than anybody can at the moment. That is what we are aiming at. I am attacked on this section from two different angles. Deputy Hewat and Deputy Thrift assert that it is going to wipe out of existence all the electrical contracting firms. I do not think that is going to be the case. Deputy Cooper, on the other hand, said that he knew of no Government department which had ever intervened successfully in a trading matter. The deduction from that generalisation is that the Board is going to lose money on it itself, and presumably the electricity contractor is going to be relieved of the competition which Deputy Hewat and Deputy Thrift think will be not merely formidable, but bound to overwhelm him.
I cannot answer both these arguments. I think Deputy Cooper's argument, that no Government department has shown itself successful in managing a trading concern, is simply a generalisation with too little material for its consideration. Incidentally, this is not going to be a Government department, so that whatever Deputy Cooper has in his mind with regard to the impediments in the way of a Government department operating a concern on business principles does not apply to this Board. But there is, more or less, a Government department, of which I have knowledge, engaging in this particular type of business, and engaging in it with the result that if you compare prices paid by the electricity consumer in Holland with prices paid here, in hardly any case will you find the consumer in Holland paying more than half what is paid for similar articles here — and that, after making allowance for the cost of living here, wage conditions, and everything else. Quite recently I had the advantage of meeting one of the three Electricity Commissioners for South Africa, who had been over here on a tour of inspection, and to see the latest development with regard to electricity. He informed me that he was going back to his own government to seek the powers which the Holland Government have given to their main electrical works — the powers given in this section — and his advice to me was — not knowing that I had the section already in my Bill — that I should reserve to myself the right to give the Board, hereafter, these particular powers. There was nothing, he said, which had led so much to the rapid expansion of electricity in Holland as the use of these powers by the authorities there.
At one time, before these powers were availed of, it was found, despite cheapness in the way of generation and distribution of electricity and apparatus for wiring, that the demand for current was, nevertheless, being stopped. On inquiry it was found to be stopped simply because appliances were not being sold cheaply. That department has made good. It could have made profits, but it has adopted the other line. Instead of making profits on the sale of appliances, and devoting the profits to the cheapening of current, it went in for the other policy — the lowering of the cost of appliances, selling them as low as seemed reasonable, and giving the consumer the benefit — through his appliances. Both Deputy Thrift and Deputy Cooper spoke with regard to the fitness of a Government department for this work. Having dealt with that, I now come back to the other point. This Board is not going to be a Government department, and whatever arguments may be used as to the rigidity of Government departments, and the minuting of opinions, and everything else that is said to prevent proper business dealings by a Government department, will not apply here.
As regards Deputy Good's argument, that this is going to result in the disappearance of all electrical contractors, I say that no reasonable forecast for five or seven years ahead can lead to that conclusion. The Board will necessarily have to engage, right at the start, in the sale of the cheaper type and more easily standardised type of appliances. The electrical contractor, in so far as he is engaging in the sale of appliances, will have plenty of scope for work in the sale of the better class of appliances — the article wanted by the person who desires to purchase, not merely an electrical appliance, but an electrical appliance which is. at the same time, an ornament. The electrical contractor will have the dearer and more exclusive end of the trade thrust upon him, because obviously there is going to be—at least, we hope there will be — a tremendous increase in the number of electricity consumers. We are going to have electricity brought into districts not served at present. We are going to have an upper section of those consumers who will want a particular type of appliance or apparatus, and the electrical contractor is going to have a very much enlarged field for his operations as a result of the Shannon scheme.
In so far as the electrical contractor is making money out of the wiring of houses let it be considered that there will have to be wired, in the next few years, one hundred and thirty-five towns, and that there will have to be one hundred and thirty-five local networks established. There will be from 100,000 to 150,000 premises to be wired and the difficulty is not going to be one party cutting out another but rather whether or not there will be enough men in the country to wire all these places.
Deputy Thrift has raised certain points of detail which are rather apart from his amendment, but on which I think I could meet him. He said it would be possible that the Board might even run this electrical-appliance side at a loss, making good the loss from some other side of its operations. I think we can meet that. I have already spoken of the separate account. I would undertake to make it quite clear that a separate account must be kept for these appliances. I do not think it would be necessary to go any further than to say that that end must meet its own outgoings—that, in the division of the work, the Board must see that there will be no loss on the appliances. Again, I would ask anybody to consider whether the Board is likely to have recourse to sales at a loss in order to make one side go.
Publicity would be the principal thing.
The main result of all this upon the aim at the back of the Bill would be this — that by removing a handicap in the way of dear appliances one will increase the sale of current. Certain people who might otherwise take current are prevented from doing so at the moment, simply because, when they add the whole thing together, the cost of appliances bulks rather largely in their view. The removal of that will lead to increased demand. I can definitely undertake that a separate account will be kept for this appliance side. I might even go so far as to say that I could consider it in relation to Clause 20 — that, even on this matter of sales or appliances, revenue should meet outgoings. I can consider that; I am not definitely promising it. On the further matter Deputy Thrift referred to — that the Board might delegate all this matter of sales and appliances to somebody authorised for the purpose — I could get that blocked definitely so long as it would not block the Board acting through its own agents. The Board will have to appoint a sales department to look after this. As long as the Board's sales department is not blocked, I do not mind its blocking anything else.
On the other general matter that was raised, namely, that we should aim at making the Board co-operate with electrical manufacturers rather than putting the latter out of court, I hold that within the first five or seven years as regards wiring there has to be the closest co-operation. I would draw attention to one fallacy that seems to be behind that argument. Deputies may have seen a statement in the manifesto of the electrical contractors on this very point, which is put up, presumably, for the green people who are to be met here. It is stated: "The Board is to have at its disposal an army of unpaid employees." As regards that I want to get back to Deputy Norton's point. I cannot imagine in this country any unpaid employee. The employee has to be paid by somebody, and, no matter who employs him, he has to be paid in the long run by the consumers. To say that the Board will have an army of unpaid employees means that it will have an army of employees whom it does not pay, but whom other people will pay and recoup themselves from the consumers. That has been dealt with in the newspapers, and I would just like to make that remark on it.
Deputy Hewat says that one must read a lot into the Bill, but I do not mind how much he reads into it as long as he does not say that this is to be a model of industrial development for the future. It is not to be put in such a way. It is dealing with electricity, with a particular commodity which is almost regarded as essential. There should be no deduction from it as to what is likely to happen to industrial matters generally. We had better leave industrial matters over until we meet them. No principle is established in this Bill, because it is dealing with a particular commodity, and the whole Bill must be regarded as one piece. All its circumstances must be adverted to. I do not mind, as I say, what Deputy Hewat reads into the Bill as long as he does not read into it that it is to be a sort of model for future legislation dealing with all future industrial matters.
As to the question whether the Board is going to lose on selling, I do not think that any Deputy, possibly with the exception of Deputy Hewat, believes that it will. Then again, as to the question whether the Board's operation will wipe out all existing electrical contractors, I would answer in the negative. The effect of this Bill is going to open a much bigger field for the operations of electrical contractors, but, on the other hand, there will be a big amount of work which the Board can do for the benefit of the consumer in cheapening the cost of appliances. You must keep the chain intact. The Board must be allowed to reduce the cost to consumers in four divisions — First, the generating cost; secondly, the distribution cost; thirdly, better facilities for wiring will ease the cost to the consumer; and, fourthly, the Board must have power to cheapen the cost of appliances to the bigger number of consumers who want cheap standardised appliances.
I gather from the Minister that in this Section 47 the word "may" has become "will." The section opens by saying "the Board may manufacture." From all we have heard from the Minister this afternoon "may" becomes "will." That makes the problem a much more serious one When I read the clause in the first instance I was rather inclined to read into it that the Board took these very wide powers and would only use them in the event of certain emergencies arising. But, from what the Minister told us this afternoon, it is obvious that the State is going to enter into immediate competition with ordinary traders. I think that that is a step that ought to be very carefully considered. If the State is going to do that in this particular department there is no reason why it should not follow the same precedent in other departments of trade.
What position is that going to put us into? Where is the ordinary business of the State? Where is that going to be carried out except by the State? If that is going to be the object of members of the Dáil in connection with carrying on the business of the State I am afraid that it will have a short life and a merry one. The Minister pointed out that the interference of the State in this matter will not in any way interfere with the work of the ordinary trader. Last Friday when we were discussing this matter I pointed out to the Minister that I was quite satisfied, from my limited knowledge of this particular department of trade, that there would be found to be a shortage of tradesmen in the very near future. It has been pointed out to the Minister that his Department should have foreseen the developments that were likely to arise in connection with the Shannon scheme and make preparations for them.
So far as I am aware, and I think I have as much information on this point as most Deputies, no such steps have been taken by the Minister or his Department to make any special preparations in advance for the large amount of work which we all expect will accrue from this Bill. What will be the effect of that on the industry of the ordinary trader? As I tried to point out on Friday, we have a large amount of work to be carried out, we have a limited amount of tradesmen, and we have competition between the trade on one side and the State on the other for the limited supply of workmen. Naturally the workmen will go to the State, which offers attractive and in many cases constant employment, so that the result will be that the ordinary trader will have to recruit his ranks from the workers of other countries or will have to go without them, and therefore go without work. That is a most unfortunate state of affairs. It will not help to push on the work, because where you have a limited number of workmen employed, either by the State or by the ordinary trading contractors, it means that you will only have the same volume of output. Therefore, any advantage that may accrue from State interference will carry with it considerable disadvantages.
Of course, the advantages which are claimed by Deputy O'Connell, who is smiling at the plums which he sees before him, will be in the way of pensions. We will swell the enormous pension list which we have had under consideration in this Dáil almost at every session. Deputy Norton will be glad, no doubt, to see a number of his supporters added to that list. That holds out attractions to those who sit on the Labour Benches, and it gets over any difficulty which they may have in their minds about State interference in trade. The Minister told us quite distinctly that it is his intention to start manufacturing certain specialities. I want to know from him whether these specialities will be of the ordinary type which we are accustomed to purchase, or will they be of a special type manufactured only by his department, and available only through it.
This is an important consideration, because I have been told that in the work carried out at Limerick there are special lamp and other fittings which can only be refitted by the present contractors, Messrs. Siemens-Schuckert. If we are going to have the same policy adopted by the Minister in this instance, it is going to eliminate all other competition and keep this work practically in the hands of his own department. These are considerations that should be looked into before we pass this section. I want to get an undertaking from the Minister that these fittings, which are to be manufactured by his department, will be standardised fittings as far as possible, and that everyone will be able to purchase, if he likes, similar fittings of some other manufacturer, and, in that way, keep these particular specialities of our own Government within a reasonable figure.
I only rise to ask the Minister one question, and to amplify slightly an argument which I made, or rather which I did not make but which the Minister very successfully answered. I never said this was going to be an ordinary Government department. What I did say was that it is the creation of the State financed and subsidised by the State. While it is plain from the Bill that the relations between the Board and the Dáil will be very distant and aloof it is equally plain that the relations between the Board and the Minister for Industry and Commerce will be very intimate. That was what I intended to say. I did not talk of this being an ordinary Government department. The question I wish to ask the Minister, and it cuts at the root of the matter, is, are there enough men in the country to do the wiring of these houses? As Deputy Good has said, if there are not it is the Government's fault. We have heard nothing about special courses of instruction in the technical schools for the training of electricians and nothing about an extension of the apprenticeship system. The need for them has not been foreseen. Where does the Board propose to get these electricians? Where will it get men to do the work? Is it going to take them from the staffs of the private contractors, or is it going to import them? That is a question to which the Dáil is entitled to get an answer, and it is specially a question on which the Labour Party has a right to know the answer, because if the first big experiment in State trading we are going to make is to be accompanied by a big importation of labour from outside, I am afraid that the average workman will not smile as happily as Deputy Norton and Deputy O'Connell do regarding this project and would be disposed to make them answer for it. I hope the Minister will be able to answer that question as to where he hopes the Board will get its employees.
I do not differ very much from the Minister or from other Deputies who have spoken. The main thing is to provide cheap electricity all along the line for the consumer. Deputy Norton seemed to me to be making a mistake in thinking that the outcome of this section will be in all probability to establish factories for electrical apparatus in the immediate future, I do not think the Minister indicated that at all. It seems to me what is far more likely to happen is a larger importation of standardised apparatus. That would not meet with Deputy Norton's point of view. I think the Minister is making a mistake when he says it is a question of electrical fittings and wiring and their cost that is of most importance in the main to the consumer in deciding whether he will take electricity or not. That is not the result of experience. As far as I know the deciding factor almost always is: "What is going to be the running cost; what am I going to pay for current when I have made myself ready to make use of it?" The most important feature, I am sure, will be the cost of the electrical unit to the consumer. The only hope for the Minister in making that cost small is to widen the area of supply, and to widen it as rapidly as possible.
I can tell the Minister that intending purchasers of electrical energy, seeing by this Bill that the Minister hopes to be able to get the wiring installation done more cheaply than by existing firms, have said: "We will not go on with our plans for installing electricity. We will wait until this Board is carrying out that function in the hope that the Board will carry it out much cheaper." It cuts at the Minister's idea of getting the supply of electrical energy taken up as quickly as possible. If he can supply current cheaply from the beginning he can increase the area of supply quickly, but if he cannot he will have to charge more for his current. If he charges more for current at the beginning he will cut down the demand. The whole importance of the scheme is that he should be able to provide current at the outset as cheaply as possible, and be able to fit up consumers for taking that current with as much rapidity as possible. I think the Minister has indicated the three important points on which he is prepared to improve the section. He has said he will prevent this Board delegating its powers. He is prepared to do that, and that is an improvement. He has said that he is undoubtedly prepared to insist on this part of the Board's accounts being kept separate from other accounts, and that is an improvement. Thirdly, he has said he will at least consider the making of this part of the Board's work as self-maintained. I think that would be also most important, because if he does not do that it would possibly lead to what I think we would want to prevent, namely, this becoming a real monopoly to the detriment of the interests of the consumers. If others were cut out of the field, then the Board will be able to charge what price it likes, and that, I think, would not be anything else but detrimental to the consumer's interests.
However, the Minister said on the last day that he is not attracted by the amendment in the form in which it is put. I do not like the whole section. The Minister said the amendment is objectionable to him, but the section is as objectionable to me, and I say that with no more offence than the Minister when he made his remark about my amendment. I would not myself press this matter to a division, but I think it is of fundamental importance the Minister should consider taking every possible step with the help, and that is what I mean by co-operation, of the existing firms to secure that the demand for this electrical energy starts as early as possible, and with as big a demand at the outset as possible. The Minister on the last day raised the question of the possibility of firms putting up prices. If he thinks about it he will see that is impossible. Our firms are not alone in competition with themselves, but in immediate competition with firms outside the State. If the consumer could get articles cheaper from abroad he would, and it would be to the Minister's advantage that he should. The essential fact is that the consumer ought to be able to get this electric energy as cheaply as possible all along the line.
With regard to Deputy Thrift's point about the co-operation of the Board with existing contractors, the Minister told us that the Board would only deal with the cheaper form of standardised articles in the wiring of houses, but the bulk of these fittings are of the cheaper standardised kind.
In passages, servants' rooms, etc., nobody puts in very expensive fittings. Would it be possible for a consumer to have his house partly equipped by the Board with the cheapest standardised fittings and partly by a private contractor in the case, say, of three or four rooms where the consumer might desire to have some ornamental fittings put up? Would it be possible to provide that the Board might undertake a contract for the partial work, leaving the remaining part to a private contractor. I would be glad if, when considering Deputy Thrift's suggestion, the Minister would also consider this point.
I am amazed at some of Deputy Good's remarks. He talked of the additions to the army of pensioners. I do not see anything mentioned in this Bill giving power to the Board to allocated pensions to any of its officers, and therefore I cannot understand the reference to "an addition to the ranks of pensioners in the country" through the operation of this section.
Every man employed by the State for a number of years expects a pension.
Employed by the State? I am speaking of people employed by the Board and employed under the authority given to the Board and on which it acts. If the Deputy looks at the section dealing with employees he will see nothing in it as to the giving of pensions or gratuities to officers of the Board. Deputy Good also spoke of the manufacture of specialties. He said that the Government, meaning of course the Board, was going to engage in the manufacture of specialties. I have not said a word about manufacture so far. I know that there is a section giving power to manufacture. We discussed that on two or three other amendments, but we have been dealing the whole time with the sale of appliances.
I certainly do not remember having said anything about the power to manufacture certain special things. My idea is that at the beginning most of these items will have to be imported. I hope, however, that after the three-year period mentioned in the Patents Bill has expired that there will be a real chance for getting manufacture done in the country, because one can then insist on certain patented goods being manufactured here on a commercial scale, or else a licence taken and handed over, and obviously the recipient of the licence under the new conditions would mainly be the Board. Deputy Good, and also Deputy Cooper, referred to the negligence of my Department with regard to the preparations for the tremendous outbreak of work that there is going to be in connection with the wiring of houses. There will be a division of the work that is ahead. There is going to be a very big period in which an effort will have to be made to get many houses wired for the first time, and to get the first big load of appliances supplied. It will be mainly as regards wiring that men will be required. I do not know that it would be considered a sound thing to set about the training in the ordinary way, say, of five thousand men for a period of very intensive work that would only last about two and a half years. What has got to be done is to see that the bigger normal requirements in the way of skilled workmen arising out of the Shannon scheme will be provided for. That will be done and can be done quite easily. When I speak that way I desire to make it plain that I cut out the number of people who will be engaged on the preliminary wiring of, say, these 100,000 premises that have to be tackled right away, but once wired there will be the bigger field of operations year by year in the matter of normal repairs, refittings and so on. All that has to be met, and we have the intention of meeting it.
No steps have been taken so far to train men.
That is the Deputy's statement.
I would like to have it from the Minister himself.
Are all the available skilled men now employed?
Deputy Good has made statements about pensions and the manufacture of specialities both of which were quite wrong. He now comes along with the statement that no steps have been taken to train men. Deputy O'Connell made the apt retort that there are certain skilled men without employment at the moment. I do not want to be taken as accepting Deputy O'Connell's statement as a complete retort to Deputy Good, but at least it answers him in part, and even if I were to admit that not a single thing has been done up to date, does that mean that men will not be trained to meet the normal additional requirements that will arise as from 1929? Deputy Cooper referred, more definitely, to the number of men required almost immediately for these 100,000 premises. I should say that the Board will have to train a lot of them. In fact, I think it is the only way in which it can be done. My Department, obviously, could not do it. Neither could one start specialised courses in technical schools for men who have to be trained in a quick way. We have models in Sweden where, following a particular extension, a big number of consumers were added, and a big number of premises were wired in a very quick way. That was done by giving training to a number of people by means of a course that extended to about 200 hours. We are not yet within the 200 hours of the outbreak of this intensive period of work, and between now and when the wiring has to take place there will be plenty of time to have the men trained. I should say that ordinarily the training will have to be done by the Board where it is not being done by the electrical contractor at the moment. Remember that there is another side to this. If a Government department is to be criticised for negligence in dealing with a business almost entirely outside its scope, what about the electrical contractor who must have been looking forward to this particular big increase in his business? We hear nothing as to whether he is taking any steps to get extra men trained or even whether he is taking steps to secure the trained men in the country at present and see if they could help in the training of the men required for the immediate rush of work that we will have in about a year's time. Deputy Cooper said that the Board would simply be a Government department. He said that he knew of no example of success achieved by a Government department in dealing with a business proposition like this.
I went on to say that the Board was not a Government department, but that it was rather the creation of the State.
Surely when the Deputy used that argument in relation to this section the indication was that he was thinking of the Board as a Government Department. My answer to him is this, that so far as there are any disabilities supposed to be about a Government Department engaging in business, that is the very thing we have tried to prevent here. We are putting the Board at arm's length. We are giving it tremendous freedom to make its charges and rates. We are giving it as complete independence as anybody could desire, and the only person who tried to put any hindrance on that was Deputy Cooper by the introduction of his amendment dealing with the Comptroller and Auditor-General. By the introduction of that amendment, the Deputy was imposing on the Board the very obstacle to which he now objects.
Deputy Thrift has asked me to state what I am prepared to consider by way of amendment in connection with this section. In addition to what I have already stated, I want to make one further distinction. In connection with the delegation of powers, it must be remembered that at the moment under the 1911 Electricity Supply Act any local authority authorised to supply electricity may provide or let for hire and may connect, repair, maintain and remove electric lines and fittings. I do not say it proposes to take away that power from any authority which has it at the moment. Dealing with delegated powers, I am only speaking of the special powers which the Board is here being given. I would consider the idea of not having that delegated to anyone else.
Certainly. Deputy Thrift's other remark reminds me of a letter that I read to-day. He dissented when I said that the costs of fittings and appliances might prevent one anxious to have electricity from getting it. I did not say that by any means that that is the deciding factor in the majority of cases. I did say that you would find an individual who, looking at his prospective bills for wiring and appliances, would say "that is the last straw."
I read to-day a letter in one of the daily newspapers, where a correspondent writes to say that he had attempted to get his house wired, and taking it per point it cost him fifty shillings where he could get it in England for fifteen. That is a thing I want stopped and that is why we want the Board to have extra powers.
If he had read the electrical contractors' paper of the same date he would have seen, by a curious coincidence, a statement that in England labour costs in connection with electrical fittings amounted per point to between 10/- and 15/-. That does not seem to corroborate the letter.
I do not want to go into that point but I could give examples in another country of wage costs being pretty much the same as they are here. The comparative figures of wiring per point would be in the region of 25/- here and about 12/6 in the country I am talking of. There is no doubt that there is a certain amount of leeway to be made up in the matter of wiring. I noticed Deputy Thrift said it would be an undesirable thing to allow the Board to get into the position of having driven everybody else out of the electrical appliances trade because it could charge them whatever prices it liked. That drew a murmur of applause from Deputy Good. Deputy Good was in support of this amendment and of the appointment of an electrical contractor who would stereotype prices in this country. The Board would have to follow and Deputy Good also said he adhered to that.
I understood we were discussing the clause.
My memory is not so short that I cannot remember what the Deputy said on the amendment; it was to be the first example of statutory price-fixing and if the electricity contractor wanted to raise his prices the morning after the amendment was passed by 100 per cent., all the Board could do was to follow behind.
I pointed out the fallacy of that argument. It is entirely controlled, in my mind, by access to other countries of supply. No consumer would purchase here if he got the same articles at a cheaper rate across the water.
There is a reaction to Deputy Thrift's argument in that prices are fixed not in Ireland but in England. The stuff comes in from England, and this clause was to put us on the same footing as the English wholesaler. If he rises his prices the Board will have to follow. As far as these fittings are concerned, things come in from England, and if the English wholesaler wanted to raise his price 100 per cent. all our Board could do was to follow behind.
You take Germany, which is not England.
However, that is the situation put up to me. That seems to meet Deputy Good's approval, and now he "hear-hears," and there is hinted a danger that the Board will wipe out everyone else. The Board has no such incentive. It would be cutting its own throat if it were to cheapen electricity to the consumer, to cheapen electrical distribution costs and then to proceed to charge exorbitant prices for appliances. It would not be carrying out its own functions. I do not say I have understood Deputy Cooper's point, but I do not see anything in the clause here to prevent the Board allowing a contractor to engage in business or to supply portion of the appliances, if the contractor likes to come in and deal in articles that the Board is not going to deal in. Obviously a situation such as this will not arise. On the question of contracting, I do not know if the Deputy would desire to have anything in here as that the Board should contract out with regard to articles to the electrical contractor. If he desires that, I can give it consideration. What I can do is to discuss that with him further.
I intended to convey that to the Minister.
The Deputy asked would it be possible for the Board to allow a contractor to do portion of the wiring.
And portion of the supply of appliances?
I do not see anything to prevent it doing so, but it is at the Board's discretion as the Bill stands. I do not know if the Deputy wants that changed.
The Minister did not reply to the point made by Deputy Good about creating a monopoly for the products of any one firm in the way of supplying fittings or goods to be used in the country. For instance, will those fittings be of such a nature that they will take the lamps manufactured by three or four companies so that whoever gets his house fitted will not be limited to any one contractor for the supply of lamps? What the man who is not in the trade calls the "two-plug lamp" is made by several firms in America, Germany and Great Britain. We have them on the market here, and can buy them at various prices. I want to know whether the cables, fittings and wiring generally will leave it open to consumers of electricity to be able to buy lamps from any of those different firms; in other words whether the fittings would be of such a nature that they will take lamps in use generally? We have a single screw-in lamp with one plug in it, and if our wiring or cable put in will only take that single screw-in lamp, you are confining the manufacture of such lamps to one or two companies instead of giving the public an opportunity of buying in the best market they can. This is a point worthy of consideration. I think the Minister ought to tell us something on it, so that we shall be assured that the kind of cable or wires going in to-day, or which will go in, will not be the product of any special company, and will not leave the people in the position that they will have always to buy one type of fitting.
That is for every individual to arrange for. In the case of the fitting the owner of the house has to see what the cable is, what the terminal is like, and so on. I have tried in sub-section (2) to put an impediment on the Board imposing any conditions by way of preference being given to certain things. If the Deputy is not satisfied with the existing provision he can put down an amendment.
Mr. BYRNE
I want further to know if the cable or wire will take any lamp in use to-day.
Mr. BYRNE
The general wiring coming in from the street to people's houses.
That will have to be arranged with the individual hereafter.
Mr. BYRNE
The general street cable or wiring is what I am trying to get at.
There will be some other side to the contract.
Mr. BYRNE
I hope I am making my point clear. What I want to secure is that the lamps in existence, which can be purchased at various prices, made in Great Britain, America, and Germany, will fit into those fittings that the Board may put up, and that the Board will not put up fittings giving preference to one or two companies. It is a point that ought to get further consideration, and a definite declaration should be made on it.
Definite declarations are no good to anybody. If the Deputy is not satisfied and wants to get something into the Bill, let him propose it.
The Minister is not going to answer the point.
It is very hard to answer a point that I have not understood.
Is it not the case that it is for the person who is getting his house wired to say what kind of fittings are to be put in?
That is one side of the Deputy's case, and I think that is the answer to that.
Did the Minister say that I pretty fairly stated the points?
Amendments 67 and 68 not moved.
Question put—"That Section 47, as amended, stand part of the Bill."
The Committee divided: Tá, 39; Níl, 10.
Tá
- Earnán de Blaghd.
- Séamus Breathnach.
- Seoirse de Bhulbh.
- John Conlan.
- Máighréad Ní Choileain Bean
- Uí Dhrisceóil.
- James Dwyer.
- Desmond Fitzgerald.
- John Hennigan.
- Liam Mac Cosgair.
- Pádraig Mac Fadáin.
- Patrick McGilligan.
- Seoirse Mac Niocaill.
- Liam Mac Sioghaird.
- Pádraig Mag Ualghairg.
- Tomás de Nógla.
- William Norton.
- Peadar O hAodha.
- Mícheál O hAonghusa.
- Risteárd O Conaill.
- Tomás O Conaill.
- Parthalán O Conchubhair.
- Aodh O Cúlacháin.
- Séamus O Dóláin.
- Mícheál O Dubhghaill.
- Peadar O Dubhghaill.
- Pádraig O Dubhthaigh.
- Eamon O Dúgáin.
- Seán O Duinnín.
- Donnchadh O Guaire.
- Fionán O Loingsigh.
- Risteárd O Maolchatha.
- Tadhg O Murchadha.
- Séamus O Murchadha.
- Máirtín O Rodaigh.
- Andrew O Shaughnessy.
- Mícheál O Tighearnaigh.
- Seán Príomhdhall.
- Patrick W. Shaw.
- Nicholas Wall.
Níl
- Earnán Altún.
- Bryan R. Cooper.
- Sir James Craig.
- John Good.
- William Hewat.
- Séamus Mac Cosgair.
- Maolmhuire Mac Eochadha.
- James Sproule Myles.
- Ailfrid O Broin.
- Liam Thrift.
Tellers: — Tá: Deputies Dolan and Sears; Níl: Deputies A. Byrne and Good.
Question declared carried.
SECTION 48.
I should like to ask the Minister whether, so far as goods that are to be sold in these shops are concerned, Section 83 will apply to them? Will the Board be in a position to sell articles free of customs duty on which other dealers will have to pay customs duty? If so that would manifestly be an unfair and inequitable provision, and I hope it is not the case.
I have the intention of deleting Section 83 if I am allowed.
Section agreed to.
Sections 49 and 50 agreed to.
SECTION 51.
I raised a question with the Minister with regard to the standards which are being erected for carrying the mains. Would that come under this section?
That is not to be done by the Board, and will never be done by the Board.
What particular section will it come under?
A particular section of the 1925 Act.
There is no section in this Bill under which we could discuss that?
No. That has reference to the transmission system which is not dealt with in this Bill, so far as its construction is concerned.
Wayleaves here would not count?
No. That has nothing to do with the Board. The Board will have nothing to do with the erection of the transmission system of the Shannon works. I am entirely responsible for that, and may hand it over to the Board, but that will be after the wayleaves have been acquired.
One will have to consider some means of discussing that particular question.
Section agreed to.
Sections 52 and 53 agreed to.
SECTION 54.
(1) Whenever the Board offers to an authorised undertaker or a statutory undertaker a supply of electricity in bulk to be supplied by the Board or by another person at a rate of charge which is equal to or less than the cost of generation in the generating station of such undertaker, such undertaker shall take such supply in bulk upon such terms and conditions as shall be determined by agreement or in default of agreement by the Board.
(2) An undertaker who takes a supply of electricity in bulk under this section shall not be required to construct outside his area of supply any works for the purpose of such supply as aforesaid, but such an undertaker if so requested by the Board and if he consents to do so may construct outside his area of supply any such works as aforesaid.
(3) If any dispute arises between any undertaker and the Board as to whether the cost of generation of electricity in the generating station of such undertaker is or is not greater than the rate of charge at which a supply of electricity in bulk is offered under this section to such undertaker, such dispute shall be determined by an arbitrator appointed by the Minister and the decision of such arbitrator shall be final.
(4) In this section the expression "cost of generation" means all costs incurred by an undertaker which ought properly to be allocated to those parts of his undertaking engaged in the production of electricity.
I move amendment 69: —
In sub-section (1), page 29, line 56, after the word "charge" to insert the words "(including provision for any expenses necessarily incurred by such undertaker in taking such supply in bulk)."
This is a concession to the undertaker and as such, I presume, will be accepted.
I should think the undertaker in that case is thankful for small mercies—they are very small.
In fact they are doubtful mercies.
Amendment agreed to.
I move amendment 70: —
In sub-section (1), page 29, line 56, to delete the words "equal to or."
This amendment provides that the Board, in order to compel undertakers to take power from the Shannon, shall provide it at a rate cheaper than the cost of generation involved in the undertakers' own works. I have a prophetic feeling that when I have moved the amendment Deputy Hewat will get up and reproach me by saying that all these safeguards are no good, because the undertakings are doomed. If that is so, if the mute with the bow-string— perhaps I ought to apologise for calling the Minister a mute—is standing over the Rathmines undertaking, the Minister might at least grant its dying wish, and one of its dying wishes is that it should not be compelled to take power unless that power is provided more cheaply than it could provide it itself. It is not an unreasonable proposition. If you are asking such an undertaking to scrap its generating sections, to discharge its employees, and generally to go out of business, you ought to be able to offer it some advantages, and a provision that the cost should be less than the cost of their own electricity, seems to be the fairest and most reasonable way of doing it. If the Minister is in the mood for meeting some of the wishes of the authorised undertakings, I hope this may be one of them.
The dying wish seems to be, in a lot of cases, the wish that the Shannon scheme should die at the same time. I think the wish that is at the back of the minds of some people is that if an undertaking is to perish in a particular locality it is going to die happily if it can, at the same time, drag down the whole Shannon scheme. Let us come to the merits of this matter: The Deputy says an undertaking is to be asked to scrap its generating plant and to pay off the employees who are in the generating station. Here is the proposition: Imagine a case in which Shannon current is going to be supplied at the same rate as an undertaking generates it; that that undertaking ought to be allowed to go on generating current notwithstanding the fact that the State has sunk over five millions of money in the Shannon undertaking; that despite that, and despite the fact that it offers to supply current on equal terms to the undertaking, still the undertaking should be allowed to carry on at its own station. I think that is an unreasonable proposition.
I do not think so in the case of authorised undertakings which are themselves public bodies. There is not the same amount of money sunk in these undertakings, but, at the same time, there is money of the ratepayers sunk in those undertakings, and it is only reasonable that they should have a fair and equal deal. The Board will have enormous advantages as a bulk proposition. But what are the advantages of the Shannon scheme if it is not going to supply electric current more cheaply than the existing undertakings?
Why object, then, to the amendment?
Because it is absurd on the merits.
The Minister's ideas of absurdity and mine are different, but we will agree to differ on that point. It is of no great importance, because the undertakings are to be swallowed up, but it might have some temporary importance, and I urge it as a temporary provision.
The cost of generation comes in, in this way, and in any of these things it is going to be got back off the consumer. You are going to have a consumer in a particular locality, and the question is, what is that portion of his cost going to be which is represented by the generating charges? The Board is in the position of being able to say "We offer at so much," and the undertaking can say "We generate at exactly that price." Its costs are arranged after a whole lot of things have been added on, and the question is, what item is it to be allowed to be charged to the consumer as generating cost? Whatever it is, the Board can supply it at the same cost. The cost to the consumer will not be increased by one iota, and the ratepayers' money is not being put out of commission to one single penny. Everything is carried on as before, and the Board offers at exactly the same cost as the undertaking proves it can generate at. But in the background there is this fact always to be weighed, that is, if the Shannon scheme does not get a sufficient load taken from it in bulk, that is if a sufficient amount of units are not taken from it, then there is to be a loss on the Shannon undertaking. You are balancing any possible loss in the case of a local undertaking taking its supply from the Shannon against a considerable loss if the Shannon cannot sell to the undertaking. I think the merits are entirely in favour of leaving the words as they are in the clause.
This amendment cuts at the root of the whole proposition and emphasises the compulsory nature of the Bill as regards the Shannon scheme's capability of supplying current on advantageous terms. Deputy Cooper obviously was speaking for Rathmines electricity works. Assuming for a moment the local body had some inclination to support a national undertaking, but over and above the inclination that they would like to have a say in their own affairs, if the Shannon supply were offered to them on equal terms it might not appeal to them as a good and proper reason to execute their own concern. I do not think that the Minister has made much of a case on the lines that he has indicated and on the lines of development that have already been started of going to districts where there is no electricity at present. I think he has indicated that there is not very much difficulty, or, possibly, none at all that he can foresee, of not only getting the output of 110,000,000 units that has been laid down, but considerably in excess of that.
Surely it is not too much to expect that a big national scheme such as this should be in a position to offer a supply to Rathmines at a rate lower than that at which Rathmines is at present able to generate. I should imagine that the Minister might very well accept that position, because if the power cannot be delivered in bulk to Rathmines under their present generating price then the whole scheme, as a commercial proposition, will be a failure. There is not very much use in labouring the position as regards any one particular station when we have in the Bill the principle that nobody is to be allowed to generate electricity within the Free-State and that the supply must all come from the one source. But I do say that the Minister ought to show his faith in his own statements regarding the outlook by giving people liberty, if they do not get advantage from the bulk supply of the Shannon, to generate electricity themselves.
I am asked to agree to a thing I describe as being absurd on the merits in order to show faith in something. I am really showing very little faith in people and in their ability to manipulate figures by putting in the proposition that at any time it would appear that the cost of generating from the Shannon and from a local undertaking would be the same the supply shall be taken from the Shannon. When you are getting down to the region of .5305 of a penny it will not be very hard to show that the last figure of that can be reduced by a point and thereby be brought down below the cost of the station. That is hardly worth arguing about, it is so unlikely to occur that the price will be exactly the same. And, of course, in connection with Rathmines, the whole cost of the Shannon works would have to be three times what it has been estimated at before the figure would approach anything like the Rathmines generating cost. It does not come into the calculation. You might have some place like Killarney coming into the calculation, and that is the one place I had in mind. But on that basis I am supposed to give in to something in order to give Deputy Hewat proof of my belief in the Shannon, which proof he would not accept and which would have no effect on any of his arguments hereafter, and in order to do it I am to accept an amendment for which no case has been made. The consumer will be charged a price, one portion of which will be made up of generating costs; the undertaker will say that that portion is such and such, and the Shannon Board will say: "We can supply at the same price." There is no handicap on the consumer, there is no handicap on anybody. But if there does happen to be that extraordinary state of things that the cost is the same as in the case of the Shannon, then the Shannon may suffer, and if the Shannon suffers the community suffers. On the other hand, the undertaking will not be penalised to any degree if we say: "If the Shannon costs are equal to your generating costs, then you shall take your supply from the Shannon."
Amendment put and negatived.
I move:—
In sub-section (1), line 60, to delete the words "the Board" and substitute therefor the words "an arbitrator appointed by the Chief Justice of Saorstát Eireann."
This point occurred last week, and I protested against the appointment of an arbitrator by the Minister. I protest much more strongly against the Board acting as their own arbitrator, as this section provides. The section says: "in default of agreement by the Board." The Minister has informed us, not later than to-day, that the Board will not be a Government Department.
If the Board were a Government Department I would be more inclined to accept this sub-section, but the Minister definitely says that it will not be a Government Department. It will be a business department, and the Minister seeks to place the Board in a position to arbitrate between itself and an undertaker. I contend that this is much more unfair than previous sections which empower the Minister to appoint the arbitrator.
I wonder if Deputy Myles realises what his arbitrator would have to decide. It is not a question as to whether the bulk supply is being offered at the same as or less than the generating cost, but, after that fact is determined, such terms and conditions taken on such terms and conditions as may be agreed, or in default of agreement, the terms and conditions offered by the Board. In other words, Deputy Myles wants to set up an arbitrator to say that the Board must sell at this, that or the other figure, a determination having previously been come to on the question: Is the Board offering at the same as or on less terms than those at which the undertaking can itself generate? I do not know if any department having to do with sales would permit the price at which it sells anything to be determined by some authority other than itself. This is the ordinary basis: You agree about the price, or if you do not the Board says: "There is my price," and as long as it is under or equal to that at which the undertaking itself generates the undertaking is forced to take it. There is no harm in that, and it is not being penalised. If the undertaking gets the slightest remission it is benefited by the Shannon scheme.
Why talk about agreement at all? Why not say the whole thing shall be determined by the Board beyond yea or nay?
The Deputy has put a rhetorical question.
You say it shall be determined by agreement.
Who else is it to be determined by except the Board and the undertaking to whom it is going to sell? I am afraid the Deputy does not understand the question.
It is not the question of an arbitrator. It is not whether or not the price is equal to or less than what the undertaking can generate at, but it is, that fact having been determined, and the implication of that having been decided, that the undertaking must take from the Board. It goes on to say what it shall take it at, either the price to be fixed by agreement or, in default, the price settled by the Board. In other words, the Board says: "Here is my price. It is either equal to or less than what you generate at yourself. That being determined you have to take it from the Board at such and such a rate."
Does not that end the matter?
It does not end the matter. That is where the Deputy has not yet understood the thing. It does not end the matter. The first point is, is the Shannon bulk supply offered at a greater cost than the undertaking generates at? That having been determined, the Board cannot sell to that undertaking. If it is less the Board can sell. As between the cost at which the undertaking is generating itself there may be any number of prices, any number of lowerings below its own cost, and every one of these lowerings represents an improvement in the position of the undertaking in getting its supply from the Shannon scheme. Obviously this agreement is a matter of offer and acceptance. It is an ordinary sale. If they can agree to a price then that will be the price. If they cannot agree the Board says "There is my price; that price represents an advantage except in the peculiar case of its being equal to the generating cost of the undertaking." Where it is less it represents an advantage to the undertaking.
Amendment put and negatived.
Amendment 72 — In sub-section (3), page 30, line 6, after the word "charge" to insert the words ("including provision for any expenses necessarily incurred by such undertaker in taking such supply in bulk") — Aire Tionnscail agus Tráchtála — put and agreed to.
The following amendment stood in the names of Deputy Hewat and Deputy Myles:—
In sub-section (3) line 8 to delete the word "Minister" and substitute therefor the words "Chief Justice of Saorstát Eireann."
This is the same point as we had last week and I have nothing to add to what I then said. I think it is only right when an Act of this Dáil provides for a certain arbitrator that that arbitrator should be appointed——
That was settled in amendment 51.
Amendment not moved.
I move amendment 74:—
To delete sub-section (4) and substitute therefor the following sub-section:—
In this section the expression "costs of generation" shall mean the cost of the current at the generation station of the undertaker and shall include all sums paid for fuel, stores, salaries, wages, repairs to and maintenance of generating machinery, but shall not include any sum for capital charges, and the expression "rate of charges" shall include the cost of bringing the bulk supply from the Board's line to the distribution centre of the undertaking, and the cost of transforming the supply to the type and pressure of the supply of the undertaker.
The Minister has already two amendments to this section which to my mind are not as clear as an Act of the Dáil should be. I have put my amendment in as clear language as possible. Taking the cost of generation first I think that the amendment very fully explains itself. It must be recognised that the capital charges in this case should not enter into the account when putting the price of the bulk supply against the price of the supply generated in the undertaker's station. Therefore, I will go on to the rate of charge and what it means. The transmission lines from the Shannon will come close to some towns. In the case of others they may pass within two, three, five, or even ten miles. That will be a very serious item. I would like the Minister to tell us definitely that the cost that he will put up against the local supply people will include the cost of bringing the supply from the nearest point of the main transmission line. It is not only a question of bringing it to the bus bars or the distributing points of the existing station, but the question of transformers comes in. Who is to pay for the transformers? Who is to pay for the cost due to the loss of efficiency in the transformers? These are matters that perhaps the Minister will, in his usual style, tell us are very small items. But people with electrical knowledge are well aware of the fact that these losses do exist and that they are very serious items in the year's working.
There is another very important question that enters into this amendment. It is a question that we will meet later, but it is no harm to deal with it now; in fact, it is necessary to deal with it now, in estimating the different costs; that is, the type of pressure in the local generation station. I am perfectly sure that a great many members of this Dáil are not well up in what might be called the technical points of the Bill. The Bill has been talked of, many a time, as a technical Bill. I do not agree that it is any such thing. I think the Bill is one with a few technical points in it, and only a few. I will try to explain the point that I wish to bring out in regard to this pressure business. Deputies may not be aware of the difference between alternating current and direct current. The Shannon scheme will generate alternating current, and it is a well known fact that alternating current can be transformed much more efficiently to a lower pressure, still alternating current, than it can by converting it to a direct current. On the one hand the transformer consists of a very simple apparatus. It is stationary—no moving parts. You have a series of coils of wire which change the energy from high pressure to low pressure.
The losses due to inefficiency in these transformers is very small compared with the losses that would be incurred in changing to direct current. In the case of a change to direct current a different type of machine would be necessary, a machine that would have revolving parts, that would require constant attention, oiling, cleaning, and general tuning up, with its attendant expenses, and it would add very considerably to the cost of what the supply would be as delivered to the distributing points of the undertaker. But worse even than the expenses incurred in this case would be the loss of efficiency in this particular machine. The loss of efficiency, I venture to say, would be in or about 20 per cent. That would be an enormous difference when estimating the cost of the bulk supply and the local supply. I think it is up to the Minister to put all these facts before us. Who is going to pay all these things? Who is going to be at the expense of these sub-transmission lines, rotary converters, and ordinary transformers? Those are matters upon which we would like some information.
I have already amended the section, inserting after the word "charge" the following words "(including provision for any expenses necessarily incurred by such undertaker in taking such supply in bulk)." The question as to whether or not the rates included in that item are equal to or less than the cost of generating by the undertaker will be determined by the arbitrator. I hold that that meets the second portion of Deputy Myles's amendment — the portion that deals with the rate of charge.
I take it, then, you are accepting the principle that the Board should pay for all?
I am accepting my own amendment. It will leave all these things as to whether there are any expenses necessarily incurred by an undertaker to be determined by the arbitrator. I do not think it is necessary to go into all these technical matters here. If people are satisfied that it is a question that ought to be threshed out, I suggest that should be done at another time. Personally I do not think it will ever come to be threshed out. It is the most academic discussion the Dáil has had for quite a long time. It is really dealing with a situation that may never arise. I can see three or four undertakings where even an approach to a case can be made and, even throwing all the things Deputy Myles has spoken of into the balance against the Board, there will be no doubt as to the cost of generation and the supply in bulk from the Board having to be taken by undertakers in the Free State.
It is only when we put these things up to the Minister that we get this information. Even his own amendments are very vague, and they do not convey information to the same extent as the amendments we put up.
The phrase, "including provision for any expenses necessarily incurred by such undertaker in taking such supply in bulk," covers everything the Deputy has put up and for which a case can be made. I do not say the phrase covers everything that the Deputy will put up. It is really a waste of time and a waste of effort to touch now on this question of generating costs. I wonder does Deputy Myles believe that there is going to be a very large number of instances in which there can be any approach to arguing on this matter as to the costs between the Shannon supply scheme and the local undertaker?
We have no means of knowing. We have not the faintest idea of what the costs will be.
This is something like the amendment put down by Deputy Hewat. Deputy Hewat casually put down an amendment to increase the period from 1932 to 1942, simply because he had no idea when the scheme would be remunerative and he was anxious to find out. Now Deputy Myles, who has nothing at the moment to go on with regard to an increase in the Shannon costs, puts forward this amendment. The Deputy has, in fact, my definite statement that I would think it my duty to come before the House and let Deputies know when the estimated costs were going to be increased. Despite my statement to that effect, and the fact that I had not come before the House to indicate any increase, we nevertheless, get this amendment and a long statement. Why, one would have to get to the region of fifteen millions before one would get a bulk supply cost about which there could be any argument on a comparison with the local undertaker and his generating costs.
As regards the second part of the amendment, I believe that what I have put down meets everything that should be properly met. There is the proviso that any expenses necessarily incurred by an undertaker in taking supply in bulk are to be decided by an arbitrator. The first part of the amendment sets out that the costs of generation shall mean the cost of the current at the generation station of the undertaker, and shall include all sums paid for fuel, stores, salaries, wages, repairs to and maintenance of generating machinery, but shall not include any sum for capital charges. In so far as there is a positive side of that, I think it is already met; in so far as it has a negative side, in that it shall not include any sum for capital charges, there is reason in saying that such capital charges as remain to be borne by the undertaker after taking a bulk supply should not enter into the count. Those should not be added to the cost of generating in the local undertaking. Again, I think that would be one of the matters to be considered, and would necessarily be considered in a whole calculation, and would be brought into the count by the arbitrator if a dispute arose.
On the single matter that there shall be definite advertence to the fact that certain capital costs remain to be borne and that those, if they are outstanding, should not be totted up in the count of the costs of generation at any station, I would agree. On the other hand, there is an item which may have to be brought in. People forget, in talking about the Shannon and its bulk supply, the very big item of the elasticity of the Shannon supply. It prevents any moneys having to be expended for an increase of plant in a local undertaking. That would have to be set against capital charges that remain to be borne by a local undertaker. The particular item I have spoken of is very hard to get into a section. The main points of Deputy Myles's amendment, leaving out the single item of capital charges which may have to be attended to in a more precise phrase, are met by amendments 69 and 72, which have been accepted. They meet everything the Deputy seeks to cover and which should reasonably be met. The determination as to whether it is equal to or less as between the Shannon costs and local costs is to be determined, if any dispute arises, by an arbitrator. That leaves the position fairly clear.
The position being "fairly clear" still, a little elaboration is required, and I think the amendment endeavours to get it. The Minister does not dissent from the terms of the amendment; therefore, I cannot see why he objects to taking it to his bosom.
The words "necessarily incurred" are the ones I went on.
The amendment deals with rather a contentious matter, the cost of generation. It is a very indefinite term, but the amendment endeavours to explain what is meant by it. In various undertakings they deal with what is called "cost of generation" in different ways and bring in very different results. The amendment would be a guidance to the arbitrator who is brought in to deal with the matter. Of course, the Minister has stated that, even if the cost of generation or of the load was considerably lower than it is at present in some undertakings, still, that would be overshadowed by the Shannon supply. I wonder if the Minister is right in that statement. I wonder has he taken everything into account.
As an example, I would like to make some reference to a concern in which, as most Deputies are aware, I am interested — the Tramways Company. I do not think the Minister will dispute the fact that the margin at the generating station at Ringsend, and the price at which power from the Shannon scheme is likely to be offered to them, will show such a difference as to make it obvious that the bulk supply from the Shannon will be the cheaper. If the Shannon supply was offered in bulk to a concern like the Tramways Company, at a price lower than that at which they could generate it, obviously that is a commercial proposition that would appeal to the Company, or to anybody of business men.
But that raises a query. What is the comparison going to be based on? What are the inclusive costs of generation at the Tramways station in comparison with the cost of the current they are going to get? The main transmission wires will come to Dublin and distribute from a certain point. Considerable cost will be involved in the transfer of the current to the Tramways Co.'s cables. Then there would be the question of the change of periodicity which will involve a considerable amount of expense. I presume these things will be taken into account between the Board and the Tramways Co. when the question arises. They are material factors as to what the calculations will be based on. The amendment appears to clear up one point. The Minister in his amendment has cleared up another point, that the total cost of giving a supply in bulk at certain points will be borne by the Board. That calculation is fairly easy and does not leave room for very much cause of dispute that a capable arbitrator could not settle.
Then comes the question of the Board's position as regards any guarantee for continuity of supply. The question of the Tramways Co. has nothing to do with this matter. I only mention it for the purposes of argument, and in order to make the situation as simple as possible for Deputies. Failing agreement between the Board and the company the arbitrator's decision fixes a certain price at which the bulk supply is to be delivered. Is there any proposal so that that arrangement shall have a guarantee of continuance? I am not thinking of a breach of faith or anything of that kind. We will assume that the Board controlling the Shannon scheme will first take the larger areas for development. They are, of course, the most profitable areas and, in that respect, the Shannon scheme is taking the most profitable end. Arising out of that the Board must and, I think, are compelled under the scheme to go further afield so as to make the current available to all and sundry. The further afield they go the more costly the supply of current must be in thinly populated areas. Are thinly populated areas to bear their own cost or will it be the policy of the Board—in so far as one can indicate any policy — to raise the price to consumers in more thickly populated districts in order to bring the price of extension and development within the means of people in scattered areas? When the Minister says that a large proportion of the authorised or non-authorised undertakings throughout the country are working on a generating cost which would be far in excess of the rate indicated in bulk for the Shannon power, is he taking into consideration the cost of development of such districts, or is he working on the basis of the cost of transmission to the areas in which this scheme will be first introduced?
It is an important question as regards relative costs when you come to a small undertaking in a distant part of the country that is at present generating at what appears in Dublin a high cost. Is it clear that with all the expenses involved in bringing current to that particular district the difference on that section as against the undertaking that is at present working is going to be as considerable as the Minister indicates? I think it will not, but that is merely a matter of opinion, largely expert opinion, which, of course, the Minister is better able to deal with than I am. But the Minister so far, has not given us any indication as to the lines on which this calculation will be made. A short time ago the Minister referred to my "absurd amendment," which, "in a haphazard way," was going to change the date from 1932 to 1942. All I can say is that if any of these absurd amendments will extract from the Minister as much information as that extracted by the despised amendment which has been rejected by the Dáil, they will have amply justified themselves.
The Deputy has made two statements, to each of which I must reply. In the first he said the Board will be compelled to go far afield. The Board will not, of course, be so compelled. The Board is not compelled to do anything in the way of supplying electricity in this sense: it will definitely not be bound to go to an area where there is no demand, so that what the Deputy has spoken of — the Board having to extend different transmission systems of various voltages or to establish local networks and then finding that they had not sales to pay for the expense of bringing and distributing current to that particular locality — will not arise.
In that case the area will be No Man's Land, because if the Board does not develop it no one else can.
If it is an area that can be remuneratively developed the Board will go into it. I think, of course, it will eventually go into all areas, but in the early years of the Board's activities it will not have time to make extensions into areas which would not be remunerative. It will eventually, go into such areas, but that will be after it has built up a reserve fund for that particular purpose. Deputy Hewat, speaking on another section, tried to get me to add to my bulk supply cost the interest and everything else belonging to the three and a half million now being given to the Board for working expenses. Similarly here on a question which is entirely a question of a bulk price — supply for sale in bulk as against generating cost at the station — the Deputy has talked of distribution, but there can be no question of distribution arising at this point. It simply amounts to this: is the price at which the Board offers in bulk equal to or less than a particular undertaking can generate at? The Deputy has talked of piling up costs, the cost of bringing to a particular place and of bringing to consumers in that particular place. He said that included distribution. I may have taken him up wrongly.
The proposal is to supply in bulk to an undertaking at a certain price. It is the cost of bringing it to that undertaker I was referring to.
That is simply going back on my last two amendments. 69 and 72, bringing in two points, I think, that ought to be brought in in this calculation of the Board's price for supply in bulk and the local undertaking's home generating cost. There is no necessity to make any additional provision, with the single exception of adding to sub-section (4) something dealing with capital charges remaining to be borne by the undertaker after taking a supply in bulk offered under the section. The Deputy went on to discuss his own amendment, No. 75, with regard to tramways, but I would prefer to leave that matter until we are dealing with that particular amendment.
Amendment put and negatived.
I move: —
At the end of the section to add the following sub-section: —
(5) This section shall not apply to any tramways or light-railways company in so far as such company generates current for the operation of their own system.
The Minister is quite right in saying that I anticipated this amendment in my remarks on the previous amendment. On this point, however, I would like to say that the Tramways Company is, of course, a statutory body, and under legislation already obtained they have got certain privileges and rights for generating electricity which this Bill seeks to withdraw. The offer of a bulk supply from the Shannon is a commercial question altogether, but if the Minister says that the Company will be in the same position as an authorised undertaking within the meaning of this Bill, and that the Bill extends to people who are not authorised in the ordinary way for the sale of current, then, of course, the statutory powers the company has received go by the board. What I said on the previous amendment about the cost of generation stands, and the Minister might, at this stage, indicate whether it is his intention to bring within the compulsory sections of this Bill railways worked under Acts which give them statutory authority under certain conditions. Of course, the cost of generation looms very largely for consideration in connection with this matter, but I do not think the attitude of the Minister is clear, not only in regard to the undertakings which are not in the ordinary sense authorised undertakings and which do not sell electricity but in regard to private undertakings or private plant. What is his attitude towards those undertakings and those private plants which are not operating for sale? Under a recent Tramways Bill, which is still before the House, there is provision in connection with a new line, for the Company to become authorised undertakers for the supply of current and light to the district concerned.
It is well within the knowledge of the Minister, and it will be well within the knowledge of members of the Dáil interested in Private Bill legislation, that amendments were submitted to the Committee providing that in the lighting of that district the periodicity should be brought into line with the standard in connection with the Shannon scheme. The periodicity in the case of the Shannon scheme is 50 and in the case of the Tramways Co. it is 25. That being so, it would be of interest to learn from the Minister what his attitude is towards the companies and individuals who are not working as authorised undertakers but under statutory provisions.
The section is quite clear as to that. The section refers to an offer to an authorised undertaker or a statutory undertaker and the definition of "statutory undertaker" clearly includes the Tramways Co. I was anxious to hear from the Deputy — instead of his wanting to hear so much from me — his reason for putting the tramways in a completely different position from everything else. Every authorised undertaking has definite powers given to it by Act or Provisional Order, or in some other way. These powers have been broken in upon. I was anxious to hear some argument as to why this section should not apply to tramways or light railways in so far as such companies generate current. All the Deputy did was to put a series of questions to me which, I think, I can answer simply by saying that the section refers to a "statutory undertaker," and the Tramways Co. is a "statutory undertaker" within the definition.
Amendment put and declared lost.
Question: "That Section 54, as amended, stand part of the Bill"— put and agreed to.
Sections 55 and 56 agreed to.
SECTION 57.
(1) The Board may make scales fixing the methods of charge and the rates of charge for electricity (whether supplied in bulk or otherwise) by the Board and by authorised undertakers and permitted undertakers respectively and may at any time and from time to time as the Board thinks fit revise or revoke the scales so made or any part thereof or any particular item therein.
(2) Any scale fixing the methods of charge or the rates of charge for electricity made under this section may relate to the supply of electricity in bulk for resale and distribution or to the supply of electricity direct to consumers or to both such forms of supply, and any such scale may apply to the whole of Saorstát Eireann or to any specified part thereof or to any one or more areas of supply or to any one or more transmission systems or any one or more parts thereof or to any one or more classes of consumers.
(3) So long as any such scale as aforesaid is in force it shall not be lawful for any authorised undertaker to whom such scale applies to give any supply of electricity to which such scale applies at any other price than the price fixed by such scale, and every authorised undertaker who gives any supply of electricity in contravention of this section shall be guilty of an offence under this section and shall be liable on summary conviction thereof to a fine not exceeding five pounds for every day during which such supply is so given....
I move amendment 76: —
In sub-section (1), line 29, to delete all words after the word "Board" to the end of the sub-section, and substitute therefore the words "authorised and permitted undertakers may with the approval of the Board make similar scales for electricity supplied by such undertakers, and the Board, or any such undertaker with the approval of the Board may from time to time revise or revoke any such scale made by them respectively or any particular item therein."
The aim of this amendment is to simplify matters. Instead of having the Board go round fixing prices, I think the matter should be dealt with more or less on the lines of Local Government administration. The undertakers should be permitted to fix the charges and submit them for sanction to the Board, at the same time supplying all the necessary facts. That would seem to me to simplify the process.
I do not see very much difference in the methods proposed. Instead of the method proposed in the section, the Deputy suggests that the undertaker propose a scale and that the Board sanction the scale.
There is no catch in the amendment.
Except this: Suppose the authorised undertaker does not make a scale, there would be nothing to revise. We could alter the amendment by substituting the word "shall" for "may"—"authorised and permitted undertakers shall with the approval of the Board..." If the Deputy is agreeable, I will discuss this matter with him and see if there is any great difference between us. I think we are both aiming at the same thing.
Then with the leave of the Committee, I will withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment 77: — In sub-section (2), line 38, after the word "scale" to insert the words "made by the Board" (Deputies Hewat and Myles).
Amendment not moved.
I move amendment 78:—
In sub-section (3), line 44, after the word "undertaker" to insert the words "or any permitted undertaker," and in line 47, after the word "undertaker" to insert the words "or permitted undertaker."
This point was referred to on Second Reading by Deputy Thrift. Permitted undertakers should have been brought into the section. This is an omission I should have adverted to on first draft.
Amendment agreed to.
Question —"That Section 57, as amended, stand part of the Bill"— put and agreed to.
SECTION 58.
(1) Whenever the Board fixes a scale of methods of charge and rates of charge for electricity any authorised undertaker to whom such scale applies may serve on the Board a notice in writing of his objection to work his undertaking under such scale, and thereupon the Board shall by order do one or other as it thinks proper of the following things that is to say either acquire the undertaking of such undertaker or take control of such undertaking for a period of not less than two years.
I move amendment 79: —
In line 64, page 30, to delete the words "as it thinks proper" and after the word "things" to insert the words "as such undertaker may require or in the absence of such requisition as the Board thinks proper."
This amendment is brought in as a result of a meeting I had with certain people who thought their interests were going to be affected by this section. They pointed out the fear they had that the control might be used really to run the plant to destruction and thereafter hand it back for the purpose of having the price fixed on the depreciated value instead of on the original value. I argued then, and I argue still, that there is a certain value, though not a great deal of value, in retaining the control section, and I think if the choice of the Board as between control or acquisition be taken out, there is really nothing to be said against the control section. This section, as amended, would mean that the scale of charges being fixed, the undertaker may serve on the Board a notice of his objection to work his undertaking under such scale, and thereupon the Board shall do one or other of two things as such undertaker may require or, in the absence of such requisition as the Board thinks proper — that is to say, either acquire the undertaking of such undertaker or take control for a period of not less than two years. The original provision was that on such objection being received the Board would do either of two things, control or acquire. Now, under this provision they will do whichever of these two things the undertaker will require them to do, and only in the absence of a requisition being received will they decide. An undertaker, on getting the scale of charges to which he objects, may come along and say: "I want to be acquired straight away and I do not want to be controlled." I think this amendment meets the point completely.
Amendment agreed to.
Amendment 80 not moved.
Question —"That Section 58, as amended, stand part of the Bill"— put and agreed to.
SECTION 59.
(4) Whenever an authorised undertaker or a statutory undertaker in pursuance of an order made under this section ceases to use a generating station as a generating station, the First Schedule to this Act shall on such cesser apply to every person who at the date of such order was employed in such generating station by such authorised undertaker or such statutory undertaker (as the case may be).
I move: —
In sub-section (4), line 41, after the word "ceases" to insert the words "wholly or in part."
This amendment is intended as a drafting improvement in connection with the phrase "wholly or in part" as apparently it is not safe to assume that that phrase will apply throughout the section as it stands.
What danger does the Deputy apprehend through having the section left as it is?
This section applies to the question of compensating persons who would be unemployed as a result of closing down. My point is that it requires the generating station in its entirety to be closed before compensation could be given, whereas it would not be given, according to the section as it stands, if only part of the station were closed.
That I admit, but there is a further effect, which I am not prepared to accept, that if portion of a generating station be closed down the employees in the portion which remains open should not have the option of choosing between a pension and remaining at work.
I am in agreement with the amendment to this extent, that if, by reason of a generating station being closed down in whole or in part, and employees are thrown out of occupation, the first schedule should apply. I do not want the section to be put in such a form that this interpretation could be put on it, namely, that where you close a generating station in part, the employees who remain and who can get occupation in the other portion should be able to elect between getting compensation and remaining at work.
We have not that in mind.
Very well, the amendment could be held over, and I will get the draft altered before the Report Stage.
Very well, I withdraw the amendment but will raise the question on Report.
Amendment withdrawn.
The following amendment stands in my name:
In sub-section (4), lines 44 and 45, to delete the words "in such generating station."
As the section stands, it means that compensation would be limited to persons employed in a generating station, whereas the intention of the amendment is to give compensation to persons employed on the premises generally. There may, for instance, be persons employed by a firm who are not actually employed in a generating station.
Does the Deputy agree that disemployment would have to be due directly to closing of portion of the generating station?
Then again it would be a matter of getting a draft to meet that point.
Very well. I will withdraw the amendment and will bring the matter up on Report.
Amendment withdrawn.
I have a similar amendment, No. 83, but as the Minister has undertaken to consider the matter before the Report Stage I am prepared to withdraw it.
This goes much further than the previous amendment. Deputy Nagle simply wants to wipe out the words which would limit the whole section to employment in the generating station, whereas Deputy Doyle goes further and wants to enlarge it so as to include everybody in the employment of the undertaker. I agree that if somebody not actually employed in the station, but whose disemployment is directly due to the closing of the station, such a person might fall under the section. I would not like to go so far as to accept this amendment as it stands, but if the Deputy is willing to hold it over I will consider the matter before the Report Stage.
I hope that as a result of this section we are not going to have further additions to the pension list, which is sufficiently lengthy at present. In considering this section, the Minister should bear in mind the provision of alternative employment for these men.
I think that would be agreed and that the Labour Deputies would admit that if alternative occupation could be found it would be preferable to giving compensation. The only people for whom the field of employment would be narrowed are those employed on a generating station which would be put out of commission. The employees in the generating station, of whom Deputy Nagle spoke, are provided for in the First Schedule. Where the Board does not take over control the Bill has no re-action on such employees. If the Board takes over control, it steps into the shoes of the previous employer, and whatever rights the employees had will still remain with them.
Where a number of skilled hands are unemployed, as a result of the closing of a generating station, why should they not be trained in some other department under the sphere of operations of the Board and be made useful citizens instead of giving them pensions? I hope the Minister will keep that point before his mind.
As the Minister is prepared to consider the matter mentioned in my amendment I withdraw.
Amendment withdrawn.
Question —"That Section 59 stand part of the Bill"— put and agreed to.
SECTION 60.
Notwithstanding anything contained in any Special Act or any provisional or other order in force at the passing of this Act, it shall not be lawful for any authorised undertaker to establish a new or extend an existing generating station or transmission system or distribution system without the consent of the Board.
I move: —
In line 49, after the word "lawful" to insert the words "after the Board has been established."
This amendment is merely intended to cover a possible interval that might occur between the date of the passing of this Bill and the establishment of the Board. It is quite likely that extensions might be going on when the Bill becomes law. According to the section as it stands, such extensions would have to cease until the Board was set up. I think that the amendment is necessary.
I do not think there is likely to be any gap. The Deputy's point is that the Board might not come into being until, say, a month or two, after the passing of the Act, and that that period should be looked to. I will examine as to the likelihood of what the Deputy fears occurring, and will see if I can meet his point.
I am satisfied. I think it is likely that extensions will be going on after the Act is passed. Under the section they would have to get the consent of the Board before they could proceed.
Amendment withdrawn.
I move: —
In line 52, after the word "Board," to add the words "provided that such consent shall not be withheld unless there shall be a bulk supply available at a price not greater than the cost of generation by the existing or extended station in the area served or to be served by the same. Any dispute arising out of this section shall be determined by an arbitrator appointed by the Chief Justice of Saorstát Eireann."
This amendment is on similar lines to that of Deputy Professor Thrift, but it goes a little further. I put this amendment forward so that there should be no restrictions by the Board as to natural development. I am sure the Minister will say that such a thing is impossible, but this amendment would leave the undertakers in a stronger position to carry on.
Another section, 66, makes provision for the rendering of mutual assistance. That was intended as one way of meeting a case that might arise in the interval. Section 66 was put in to enable plans to be laid for mutual assistance so as to prevent money being wasted on a generating plant which would hereafter be useless. I think it is necessary the Board should have a deciding voice with regard to extensions so as to ensure that nothing would be done which would injuriously affect the Shannon transmission, either immediately or sometime in the future. I cannot imagine the Board refusing consent if it had not the supply at its disposal to offer in order to make up for the new demand. I am not sure that there is any necessity, for the words in the last two lines of the amendment are in accordance with what we have just discussed, but, again, as a matter of trying to discover what is the likelihood of the point the Deputy fears arising, I will go into the matter and see if any amendment is required.
Amendment withdrawn.
Question —"That Section 60 stand part of the Bill"— put and agreed to.
SECTION 61.
(2) The Board may make contracts for the sale of electricity by an authorised undertaker and may, and if so requested by an authorised undertaker, shall supervise the making of contracts for the sale of electricity by and on behalf of an authorised undertaker and the execution of contracts so made.
(4) An authorised undertaker shall not incur any expenditure in respect of the construction, reconstruction, extension, equipment, or re-equipment of any works used by such authorised undertaker as part of or in connection with his undertaking save in accordance with such plans and specifications as are approved for the purpose by the Board.
I move: —
In sub-section (2), line 58, before the words "The Board," to insert the words "at the request of the authorised undertaker."
Would the Minister state what would happen in the event of a breakdown requiring immediate attention? Surely it should not be necessary for whoever was in charge of that undertaking to have to wait for plans and specifications to be passed by the Board? I think it would be in the interests of the citizens generally that whoever would be on the spot should have the power to carry on and put the machinery in proper working order, without waiting for sanction which, as we all know, is generally delayed by authorities.
The Deputy is moving to meet the question of a breakdown?
Mr. BYRNE
The section is not altogether clear as it stands. Perhaps the Minister would consider the point.
I will consider the point about an emergency, and the action that would have to be taken. Obviously there could be no intention of applying Section 61 to such emergency. This is a small point, but it may require a lengthy amendment to meet it.
Would the Minister say why the Board should make these provisions for the undertaker?
I will give one reason. It is all in the interest of trying to get everything done so that the consumer may get the cheapest possible supply. Say there is a town where a network has to be designed and carried out. It may be that a contract might be made which was not really in accordance with the needs of the little locality. I think it is necessary the Board should have some control and say "That network as designed is too expensive. You can get exactly the same service at less expense." It is necessary to have an over-riding authority to say "that design does not seem to fit the needs of the locality. It is more a contractor's design than in the interests of the consumer." The point Deputy Byrne has mentioned is one I can look into, but I am doubtful if the section can be made to apply to the point. It was never intended to do so.
Mr. BYRNE
Will the Minister give it consideration between this and Report?
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I take it there will be nothing in the way of maintenance or repairs in this section. Would these have to get the sanction of the Board?
That is dealt with in a further amendment.
It is a question of expense. We are considering what expense will be involved. Would the Minister say, for instance, if a necessary repair had to be immediately made would that involve getting the sanction of the Board before undertaking that repair?
I think the point the Deputy is dealing with might be taken when we reach amendment 86.
I move amendment 85: —
In sub-section (2), line 58, before the words "the Board" to insert the words "at the request of the authorised undertaker."
I think that my amendment has been put in the wrong place. I meant it to be to Section 1. I really think that the next amendment in my name should be where this one is. May I say I am quite satisfied with the Minister's statement on the point I raised about emergencies. With regard to the power given to the Board to make contracts for the sale of electricity from an authorised undertaker, I do not think that the Board ought to have the power to do that without the consent of the authorised undertaker. I think it should be at his special request that the Board should step in to make contracts. As a former member of the Electricity Supply Committee of the Dublin Corporation and of the Waterworks Committee, I am aware that Government departments stepped in and tried to make special contracts which really would not have paid the concerns at the time. The Board, or the Government, as it has been referred to, would, I imagine, be more or less disposed towards Government departments, and, therefore, I do not think they should be allowed to make contracts for the sale of electricity from an authorised undertaker at a price that would not pay. I am afraid that these amendments of mine have got a bit mixed up.
The Deputy has an amendment down to sub-section (2), and I gather that that is correctly placed. He made the argument to this effect, that he thought this clause should not have relation to a sudden emergency or a break-down. I said that the clause could not refer to that, but that at any rate I would take into consideration the drafting of an amendment to ensure that the section would not have application in the case of a contract simply made to execute repairs or deal with a break-down emergency. The Deputy wants to make some special argument in relation to sub-section (2) more than that relating to the break-down. I would like to hear that argument.
Mr. BYRNE
I hold that the Board is given the power to make contracts for the sale of electricity by an authorised undertaker. I do not think the Board should be allowed to do that without the invitation of the authorised undertaker. I think that the latter should be permitted to make his own contracts and that the Government should not interfere.
I presume, then, that what the Deputy wants is to have something like this inserted: "The Board may after consultation with the authorised undertaker." We are dealing with sub-section (2) now, and I would agree to consider an amendment somewhat on the following lines: "The Board may after consultation with the authorised undertaker make these contracts." That is lessening the matter a little, but is not going the full way with the Deputy.
Amendment 85, by leave, withdrawn.
Mr. BYRNE
I move amendment 86: —
To add at the end of sub-section (4) the words "Provided that this sub-section shall not apply to expenditure for purposes of ordinary repair and maintenance."
If what the Deputy means by this amendment are repairs and break-downs, then I am prepared to look into that. His amendment, however, also speaks of maintenance. I do think that there is a necessity for allowing power to supervise the execution of works which may be described as maintenance works.
I take it that the amendment means the maintenance of ordinary everyday work. I think that maintenance work of that kind ought not to come under the supervision of the Board.
If the Deputy will read the sub-section he will see that it only refers to expenditure in respect of the construction, the re-construction, extension, equipment or re-equipment of any works used by such authorised undertaker. Would re-equipment bring in what the Deputy means? I do not think so.
I think the amendment is only intended to give the authorised undertaker authority to carry out repairs from day to day on ordinary maintenance. Surely that is essential.
I do not think that is interfered with by Section 61.
There is some ambiguity about this and I think it would be as well if it were cleared up.
I do not see that it is so ambiguous as to cover the point raised by Deputy Byrne, or the point raised by Deputy Good when he speaks of ordinary day-to-day maintenance. I do not think that the sub-section touches these things at all.
Suppose the Minister brings us his considered opinion whether the words "repair and maintenance" are excluded from that sub-section.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question —"That Section 61 stand part of the Bill"— put and agreed to.
SECTION 62.
(2) The defrayal of expenses necessarily and properly incurred by an authorised undertaker in complying with a requisition by the Board under this section shall be a purpose for which such authorised undertaker may borrow under this Act.
I move:—
In sub-section (2), line 29, to delete the words "defrayal of" and to delete from and including the word "a," line 31, to the end of the sub-section and substitute therefore the words "paid by the Board, including the expense of altering and replacing plant belonging to the consumers."
Most of the plants in the Free State are direct burning plants, and where motors are used and certain other apparatus it will be necessary to change these when the main scheme comes along. I do not see how any of the Minister's previous arguments can come in, because he will have, in this case, to deal with hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of different individuals all working with different apparatus, and all requiring to be changed to the standardised working and system. My suggestion is that where the ordinary consumer is put to the expense of scraping electrical apparatus due to the change that that expense shall be borne by the Board.
There is another point; where an authorised undertaker is left to carry on, his stand-by plant would be useless, and perhaps it would pay the Board better to transform the current for him, to change it into a direct current. What I wish to bring out most strongly is, that the consumer is going to pay in every case where we change the system. The motors will be scrapped and the cost of that will fall on the consumer.
Again we get this peculiar view of the Board having money which it draws, apparently, from nowhere, and gets it without the cost falling on anyone. I do not care where this money comes from, the cost will eventually have to be paid by the consumer. It is only a question of the intermediate stage. Are these costs which the undertaking, as long as it remains an authorised undertaking apart from the Board, costs for which it may borrow from the Board, recouping itself by charges from the consumer, and the Board recouping itself by increased charges in the bulk supply, or whether the Board should pay and recoup itself at once by charges on the consumer? It is not a very material point. If there is going to be any increase by reason of the change over, incidentally the benefits that might not be felt at the time, but which would follow, are very much greater than the disadvantages of the change over. Who is to meet the intermediate stage of that charge? The intermediate stage does not seem to be worth much argument.
I am trying to assist the Minister, and I suggest this would only crop up in isolated cases among the general area of consumers. Take an average area. You will only find that this is cropping up here and there. You cannot put a charge on the area. You have to deal with the man particularly. Hundreds may be charged for the one man with the motor.
The section as it stands says:
"The defrayal of expenses necessarily and properly incurred by an authorised undertaking in complying with a requisition by the Board under this section shall be a purpose for which such authorised undertaker may borrow under this Act."
That is to say, "borrow from the Board" from the moneys that it is now having placed at its disposal. That will not be a charge to the consumers in the area. It will mean, if you get an individual or a number of individuals with motors that have to be changed, that will fall as an extra charge on them for a period until the cost of replacement has been paid off but the Deputy does not change that in any respect. That still remains and the individual has to pay the cost. Where is the money to be provided from? The Deputy says it should be paid by the Board. If he says that the Board must recoup itself somewhere, either by insisting that the authorised undertaking should charge the individual a certain extra sum and repay the Board, or else the Board will have to spread it over the whole community and say: "Replacement costs have amounted to so much, we are increasing the unit charge by some fraction." The section is dealing with this set of circumstances where there is an authorised undertaker still being allowed to operate under the supervision of the Board, and certain expenses are necessarily incurred by reason of requisition under Section 62. What it says is that it will be seen to in the area by the local undertaker, who will charge that against the individual whose replacement expenses are considerable, or where there is no occasion to advert to that at all, and for the purposes of this expense the undertaker may borrow from the Board. Of course it may be that the Deputy and myself are in agreement that the consumer is going to pay.
It will be easier for the local undertaker to operate under this section as drafted and to make the individual pay rather than make the Board pay and possibly have the direct connection with the individual whose replacement costs are under consideration. The Board may not be able to get at the individual, and may have to charge an increase in the rate at which they are supplying in bulk. It is easier to get after the individual who is going to be put to some expense and to leave it as it is.
Would not the individual have a reasonable claim under all the circumstances not to be put to this expense, even though it is ultimately recoverable by the undertaking in the increased charge? I do not know what the amount involved is, but the whole thing seems to be very complicated unless it is of a considerable amount. If it is a comparatively small amount the Board, who ultimately would be dealing with the consumer, would be dealing direct with the transaction through the authorised undertaker. As to the amount of money involved in this, if it is small, it seems to me that the process laid down in the Bill is very complicated.
Apart from the amount involved, I very much welcome the last speech of the Deputy. It seems to me that Deputy Hewat is at last beginning to realise that the clean-cut is the best—to get rid of the authorised undertaking and do away with all this intermediary system.
The Minister is now raising a rather contentious point.
Perhaps we might adjourn before discussing this further.
It is quite true that owing to the wearying process we are going through in connection with this Bill we must realise that we are up against the inevitable. If that is what the Minister means, the discussions have brought me to a frame of mind not to agree with the Minister. Certainly I agree that with the phalanxes of the Dáil behind him he is in an impregnable position against any argument that I can bring forward. Having arrived at that condition of things, I say that the method by which he is going to deal with this is complicated.
This question of the alteration of the current is a very much more serious one, I am afraid, than the Minister contemplates. In the particular local area that I come from, I understand, in connection with the changing of the mains alone, that to change from the direct to the alternating current will mean an expenditure of £100,000. That is only what might be called the expenditure of the local authority. In addition to that you have the motors used in industries driven by direct current that will have to be changed to the alternating current. In addition to the outlay by the local authority, it means that there will be a large expenditure on the part of the industrial users. I had an example of that from an area on the other side where they changed quite recently from the direct to the alternating current. In that case it meant an expenditure of £15,000 on the part of one firm. Where it means the scrapping of all those motors there must be some compensation for the users. By whom is that compensation to be paid? Are they to be compelled to change over from the direct to the alternating current without any compensation of any kind? In Dublin alone two areas will be seriously affected by this — Rathmines and Pembroke. In both cases it will mean for the local authority a very large expenditure in the first place, and then for all the industries in those areas a further large expenditure. I should like to know from the Minister by whom those particular bodies are to be compensated.
The amendment does not state, if the section does not state, by whom the expenses are to be borne.
I am not fathering either the amendment or the section.
But we happen to be discussing the amendment.
It arises out of the amendment. If the amendment does not go far enough, we want to know who is going to foot the bill. Is the Board going to do it?
Does the Minister say that the amendment does not deal with it? It says "paid by the Board."
Yes, the amendment deals with it as far as it says that it is to be paid by the Board in the first instance, but how is the Board going to recoup itself?
There is a charge to be put on the consumer or put on somebody. If the Minister does not put it on somebody, who is going to pay it? If the Bill provides for compensation it is going to come from somewhere, and you must recognise your obligation to the individuals and the authorities concerned. If the Minister's statement really means that because he does not know who to charge it to, an injustice must be done, that is a very broad issue affecting the whole basis of the Bill. If the Minister does not recognise any obligation on the State to pay compensation because he does not know whose pocket it is going to come out of, I would ask whose pocket does any compensation come out of? Whose pocket did all the compensation for the damage done in the recent disturbances come out of? Are not the two things very much on a par? If by State intervention a man is prevented from carrying on his ordinary avocation in the ordinary way, and the State says that he must do this and that, the amendment says that the Board shall pay. The Minister asked how the Board was going to get the money. Surely that is the foundation of the Bill. Does the Minister mean to say that because the Board has not the money, or cannot get the money, therefore the compensation is not to be paid where it properly accrues? That is a very dangerous principle.
That is not our principle.
I asked a question. Where is the Board to get the money? Has the Deputy any answer to that?
Is there anybody that should be qualified to answer that question better than the Minister? Has the Minister had the Bill before him for the past two years, and is not able to answer that question? If so, we must go back to the very A.B.C. of the matter again.
I was asked a question. It is obvious what the answer is, but it is dangerous to ask a rhetorical question in this House, because you get a burst of rhetoric from Deputy Hewat. But I can answer this question if he cannot. The Board will get the money from the consumer.
Very well, I agree with the Minister. If he has got to get the money from some place, it is to be presumed that he gets it from the consumer. But what is this £2,500,000 for? I again ask the question I asked on the Money Resolution: Can you segregate in any way this £2,500,000, or say what it is for? If the operation of this Bill in connection with compensation required more than £2,500,000 to compensate all the interests interfered with, then the Money Resolution is wrong.
The Deputy is very wrong in that. He is apparently under the impression that the Board is given £2,500,000 and has not to repay it. The Board has to repay every penny of it, and from the consumer, too.
The Board has also to repay £5,200,000.
The Minister wants to differentiate between the £5,200,000 and the £2,500,000, and his ground is that the £2,500,000 has to be repaid. It is on no different lines as regards repayment than the original £5,000,000 provided which is to be placed with the Board and has to be recouped by the Board to the Minister, according to the Act.
If the Minister underestimated the amount required, surely he is not going to do it on the basis of doing an injustice to people who are compelled to undergo the charges. If the £2,500,000 was not enough, it is for him to say he wants more money and not to get up and say that because the Board has not been given sufficient money justice cannot be done.
I have not said anything of the sort; I made no distinction between the £5,000,000 and the £2,500,000. They are all sums to be raised by the State in a particular way. There are works, plans and operations the carrying out of which necessitates an expenditure of certain portions of £5,200,000, and work and operations to be carried out by the Board, bringing about an expenditure of £2,500,000; and some items of £600,000 as between the two parties, and every penny of both sums has to be repaid by the Board hereafter, with interests and everything else on them.
Why does the Minister say there is any difference between the two estimates?
I never made that statement. The Deputy suddenly brought out that and as if it were a statement of mine, but I never made it.
Most distinctly the Minister questioned my statement that the money going on the Shannon scheme was £5,000,000 plus £2,500,000, and said it was absurd to say that the £2,500,000 was the same as the £5,000,000.
No. I should like to get back for a moment to this point, to clarify Deputy Hewat, or at any rate make a last effort to do so. The Deputy talked about the price for bulk supply, and he talked about that price having to be based upon the expenditure not merely of £5,200,000, but of the sums here, and I said that was wrong. I said there were two items that will enter into the consumer's charge: the generating price, some item that is equivalent to the generating cost; and another item which is equivalent to the distribution cost; and that on the first will be charged a proportion of the £5,200,000, and that on the second will be charged the sums in this Bill. That was the distinction I made. But as to repayment by the Board eventually of the debt to the State, the whole of the sums advanced under the Shannon Act or under this Bill which must be repaid eventually.
Amendment put and declared lost.
How many Deputies are asking for a division?
Mr. Good, Mr. Hewat, Mr. A. Byrne and Major Myles rose in their places.
The names of the four Deputies will be recorded as in favour of the amendment.
An amendment of this character ought to have had a wider discussion.
I did not do anything to restrict the discussion.
I wanted to reply further on it.
The Deputy should have made that point before the question was put.
That is the reason why I suggested we might adjourn, because the amendment has a very wide meaning and is of very great importance both to consumers and to local authorities.
The matter may be raised in another way. The amendment is now lost. Deputy Good could raise his point on the section which has still to be put. As a matter of explanation, from my own point of view I should like to say that when Deputy Hewat raised this big question and Deputy Good suggested an adjournment I thought it was a jocose suggestion. I did not anticipate that we were going to discuss one of the main principles of the Bill again.
Sitting suspended at 6.45 p.m., and resumed at 7.30,
AN LEAS-CHEANN COMHAIRLE in the Chair.
Question proposed: "That Section 62 stand part of the Bill."
I think Section 62 was held over because Deputy Good wanted to express more fully and more forcibly the objections to it. However, our viewpoint has been put fully before the House on the amendments, and I do not propose to take up more time in discussing the matter, beyond saying that we must object to the section as it stands, and while it is, of course, within our province to divide the House on it, it would be useless to do so, and if you, sir, would take our dissent we will let it go.
I think the names of four of us are already recorded as dissenting from this section.
The fact that Deputies voted for the amendments would show that they are against the section.
Question put and agreed to.
I wish to join in that dissent.
Sections 63, 64, 65, 66 and 67 put and agreed to.
SECTION 68.
(1) Whenever an authorised undertaker has in his hands at the end of any year or, in the case of a local authority which is an authorised undertaker, at the end of any local financial year any surplus funds arising from the authorised undertaking after discharge of all liabilities in relation to such undertaking, such authorised undertaker shall not allocate or apply such surplus funds to any purpose save a purpose approved in that behalf by the Board.
On Second Reading attention was called to this section by, I think, Deputy O'Connell, and on examination it was found that it had not been properly placed. It was intended to have relation only to local authorities and to carry out the position that more or less exists at the moment. An amendment has been put down in my name — amendment 92 —"to insert before Section 77 a new section as follows"— and then follows this Section 68, limited in its application to a local authority which is an authorised undertaker. I would accordingly move to have Section 68 deleted now.
The section which the Minister suggests is equally bad from my point of view.
But we are not dealing with it.
In my view this section is the worst in the Bill, so far as it applies to Dublin. This is the section that robs the citizens of Dublin of their rights under an existing Act, the Corporation's Electric Lighting Order (No. 4) Act of 1892. At present an undertaking which is a local authority is entitled to apply a sum not exceeding five per cent. upon the aggregate capital expenditure on the undertaking, first to the relief of the rates or, second, to the improvement of the district, or, third, in the reduction of the capital moneys borrowed for electricity purposes. In the case of Dublin, this is set out in the Dublin Electric Lighting Order of 1892.
Might I intervene? I have made a suggestion — I believe it cannot be carried out at this moment — that Section 68 should, at some stage or other of the Bill, be deleted. Deputy Byrne is now speaking on that. Is he opposing my motion to delete Section 68?
But the Minister does not suggest what he is going to put in.
There is an amendment in my name — 92 — on which this speech which Deputy Byrne proposes to deliver would be appropriate.
Can the Minister not vote against the section, and get it out in that way?
If the section is allowed to stand it can be deleted on Report.
I merely intended to indicate my intention to move its deletion on Report.
But in the meantime the section stands, and I presume Deputy Byrne is within his rights in speaking against it.
But in view of the fact that for this evening the section is before the House, am I not in order in putting my views forward? I think, in view of the fact that the Minister stated that he may later move the deletion of it, I might assume he will propose to put something else in.
What I propose to put in will be in fact before the House to-night. It is amendment 92, on which the Deputy can speak.
In the meantime this section stands until we come to amendment 92.
It stands until such time as it is either withdrawn or defeated.
I suggest that the Minister should withdraw the section now and reserve to himself the right to move the amendment that he wants to insert.
That is what I proposed, but apparently it has not met with approval.
When there is no amendment to delete a section the usual procedure is to have it deleted on the next Stage.
But are we not in order? The Minister has said that he has a later amendment which has some concern with this section. But what is really before the House, I submit, is Section 68, and if Deputy Byrne wishes to make a statement on that section as it stands he is entitled to do so.
Nobody is questioning his title. The only matter is that if a speech has to be made on this point, would it not be more properly made on an amendment which it is proposed to insert what Deputy Byrne wishes to object to, rather than on a section that I have given notice I want deleted?
That is a matter for Deputy Byrne himself to decide. If he claims a right to speak on the section as it is I submit that he is in order in doing so. The Minister suggests that it would be more appropriate somewhere else. Whether that is so or not. I maintain that Deputy Byrne has a right to speak on the section if he wishes.
I think you have ruled, and I think the Minister has agreed, that I can speak now. But when I referred on previous sections to this confiscation of the rights of Dublin citizens I was told that it would come up on Section 68. Having made half my case for the removal of the section and of the objectionable proposal to confiscate the rights of the people of Dublin, I was put off and off. Now I am told that the Minister intends to move the deletion of this section later on. But in the meantime the section stands. I hold that I am entitled to make my case now for the removal of the section. Had I caught your eye, Sir, before the Minister stood up you would have ruled me in order. The Minister stood up to prevent — I will not say myself personally — anybody making a case for the deletion of the section. I have already on two or three separate occasions made an effort to remove this confiscatory method of dealing with Dublin, and each time I was told that the matter would come up on Section 68. Am I, because of something that the Minister says he intends to do in the future, to be debarred from drawing attention to the rights and privileges that Dublin citizens have under existing legislation dealing with electricity? If the Minister objects to my going on, very well——
There is no privilege which the Deputy is entitled to that he will not be allowed.
With your permission, I will make the case on this section as it now stands. I have stated that at present an undertaker who is a local authority is entitled to apply a sum not exceeding 5 per cent. upon the aggregate capital expenditure on the undertaking (1) to the relief of the local rates, or (2) to the improvement of the district, or (3) in reduction of the capital moneys borrowed for electricity purposes.
In the case of Dublin this is set out in the Dublin Electric Lighting Order of 1892, Section 53, and I understand there is a similar provision in other Electrical Provisional Orders.
In Dublin the aggregate capital expenditure is over £1,300,000. This would justify a payment to the relief of the rates of £65,000 per annum.
Up to the present the surplus in Dublin, which amounted for the last three years to £150,000, has not been applied to the relief of the rates but has been kept in the undertaking. But, notwithstanding the amount of the surplus, I find the following statement on page 163 of Report of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, First Report, 1922-25: —
"The undertaking has proved so successful as to reliability and economy that various public bodies such as the Port and Docks Board and several railway companies found the Corporation supply sufficiently attractive to justify them in closing down their own stations. In addition the Urban District Councils of Rathmines and Pembroke instead of extending their stations have taken supplementary supplies from the Corporation."
It is quite possible, therefore, without any hardship on the electricity consumers, to make a profit and set it to the relief of the rates. The consumer has got his supply cheaper than he could make it himself and the supply is also more reliable. I mention this point on account of the Minister's reference to municipal undertakings making profits. I understand that the new City Hall in Belfast was largely, if not altogether, built out of the similar surplus of the gas undertaking in Belfast. Why should not the citizens of other places look forward to a contribution to the reduction of the rates or towards some local improvement, such as additional housing, as of right and not subject to the veto of the Board? It will be noticed that no funds can be devoted to any purpose unless with the approval of this new Electricity Board.
The Minister in the course of the debate on previous sections has thrown doubt on the right of the local authority to any such contribution, but the section of the Provisional Order makes the matter quite clear. I will read it, but before doing so I want to emphasise the fact that in depriving local authorities of the powers it contains to apply surplus earnings in relief of the rates the Minister is repealing a provision that appears in every Electric Lighting Order since 1882 and is identical with Clause 7 of the Schedule of the Electric Lighting (Clauses) Act 1899 which is incorporated with every Electric Lighting Order made since 1899. The following is Section 53 of the Dublin Electric Lighting Order of 1892: —
"The undertakers shall carry the net surplus remaining in any year and the annual proceeds of the reserve fund when amounting to the prescribed limit to the credit of the local rate as defined by the principal Act or at their option shall apply such surplus or any part there of to the improvement of the district for which they are the local authority or in reduction of the capital moneys borrowed for electricity purposes.
Provided always that if the surplus in any year exceed five pounds per centum per annum upon the aggregate capital expenditure on the undertaking the undertakers shall make such a rateable reduction in the charge for the supply of energy as in their judgment will reduce the surplus to the said maximum rate of profit but this proviso shall only apply to so much of the undertaking as shall for the time being remain in the hands of the undertakers."
In this clause, as I stated, and in many other clauses it is suggested that all these powers of the Dublin Corporation to repay to those whom they took money from in the days gone by in order to make the electricity undertaking the success that it is, so that railway companies and big undertakings think fit to scrap their own plants and take their requirements from the Dublin Electricity Supply, are to be withdrawn. I think, now that it is a paying concern, that they ought to hold the right that I have quoted under this Order of 1892, to contribute to the relief of the rates in return for what the ratepayers did for them in the days gone by. Everybody knows that for practically the first twenty years the Dublin Corporation Electricity Supply was run at a loss. The ratepayers had to guarantee its success; their credit was pledged for that purpose and, as I stated previously, instead of paying back the moneys that the ratepayers were entitled to out of the profits, you are now making an effort under this Bill to make it possible to take from them what might be a contribution of £60,000 a year to the relief of the Dublin rates. You are going to devote it to some other purpose that your Electricity Board may think fit. The Corporation and those who helped to build up the undertaking will have no say in what the profits of the undertaking shall go to. I hold that the Government's action towards Dublin City in this matter amounts to nothing but barefaced robbery. Probably I will get very few Deputies to agree with me on that point, but I want you to understand that the electricity undertaking of the Dublin Corporation is a paying concern to-day. You may ask me why were not the rates relieved in the days gone by? Why was not some portion of the £60,000 put towards the relief of rates? It was because our worthy President and Mr. Kettle and the gentleman on the right of the President, who was Secretary to the Electricity Supply Committee at the time, thought that it was a wise policy not to contribute towards the rates, but to make improvements and build up a big paying concern. They withheld from the rates what the ratepayers were entitled to get when this concern began to make a profit.
Instead of devoting it to some municipal improvement or giving grants towards the relief of the rates, they made all the improvements out of revenue, and did not borrow for the purpose. At that time the President and some of the advisers of the Minister to-day thought that was good financial policy. The result is that Dublin City will suffer. Had it been known that when we got the right to manage our own affairs an Electricity Bill would be introduced and that Dublin City would get its supply of electricity nationally, every year since the Corporation started to make a profit — from 1911 onwards — they could have given anything from £5,000 a year to £60,000 a year towards the relief of rates. But they did not do it. It is the citizens' loss, because of the financial policy adopted by the Corporation at the time.
I hope that the Dublin citizens, the people who made the undertaking the great success it is, will be treated fairly. I have no hesitation in saying that it is the best managed undertaking in Great Britain or in Ireland. That can be proved. I believe the Ministers themselves are satisfied on that point. Now we are told it is proposed to take over surplus funds and the right to manage the concern as the Board desire without any complaint being made against those who are now running it. I have here some figures which will be interesting. From 1891 to 1910 there was a deficit in the working of the Dublin Corporation electricity supply. From 1911 to 1924 they made very handsome profits, as the following figures will show: — 1911, £6,458 net surplus; 1912, £11,607; 1913, £7,767; 1914, £4,000; 1915, £1,000; 1916, £8,000; 1917, a loss of £1,500; 1918, a profit of £4,000; 1919, £7,000; 1920, £14,000; 1921, £44,000; 1922, £62,000; 1923, £45,000; and 1924, £39,000. This represents the net surplus each year, allowing for everything. Now, with a stroke of the pen, our own Government is setting out to fleece the Dublin citizens of the privileges they held under existing Acts.
I ask Deputies, regardless of their constituencies, to do justice in this matter to Dublin citizens. I ask them, whatever happens the Shannon scheme, to see that Dublin citizens shall not be deprived of rights that they hold under various Acts that they worked their concerns under. I am satisfied a good case can be made out for Dublin. There are, I am sure, others who could handle the matter better than I. I do not feel capable of doing justice to the case that could be made for the Dublin citizens. I ask the support of the House in seeing that every justice shall be given to the citizens of Dublin.
I repudiate absolutely and entirely two terms used by Deputy Byrne and by some newspapers in connection with this controversy. The terms are confiscation and robbery. I repudiate both terms. There is absolutely no ground whatever to justify the use of either one or other, or both, of those terms. I am rather sorry for the sake of public life in the country and intelligent criticism of measures before the Oireachtas that people lose their heads to such an extent as to use such terms when, if they really understood the meaning of them, they would realise they are absolutely out of place in connection with a matter of this kind. I happen to be a Dublin citizen; I was born and reared here and I have spent very much the larger part of my life in the city as, amongst other things, a representative on the Corporation. I should be just as anxious and just as desirous of seeing any institution owned by the citizens getting its full measure of justice as anybody else.
This Bill, when the Minister's final touches are put to it, will give the citizens of Dublin the fullest measure of justice. With regard, to the statement made by Deputy Byrne that it is mentioned in an Act of Parliament that it is open to any municipal trading concern to contribute a portion of its profits in relief of rates, that is not the last word in wisdom upon that particular matter. It does not for all time stereotype the morality of that proceeding. I do not subscribe to that and I do not agree with it. I submit every municipal undertaking should stand by itself; that it should not impose upon the people who contribute towards its success, or who partake of its advantages, or who contribute in any way towards continuance, anything in excess of the cost of the particular facilities. We are told it is in an Act of Parliament that five per cent. could be payable in relief of rates or for local improvement. I do not subscribe to it. I am not taking my morality from that Act of Parliament. I pay no tribute to its wisdom and I give no consideration to the fact that if there are profits they should be used in that direction.
The citizens of Dublin are going to lose nothing by this Bill. I believe they will benefit very much by it, and such terms as confiscation and robbery are no contribution whatever to the settlement of a matter of this kind. If I assume that Deputy Byrne is correct and that the ratepayers should be paid back what they put into this concern, I would like to submit this particular matter for the consideration of the Dáil. Up to seventeen years ago the ratepayers contributed £46,000 or £50,000 to this concern. Is it to be the task of the Minister to find out the ratepayers who made the payments and hand back to them this £46,000 or £50,000? If I am to accept what the Deputy has said as correct, that should be the Minister's concern. He should discover them and hand them back the money, because it was they who paid it out. Some of them have gone out of business.
What about their representatives or successors?
That is out of the question, and the Deputy knows the position of ratepayers quite well. The ratepayer has a year's life. He starts life on 1st April and he finishes on 31st March of the following year. It was the ratepayers from 1892 or 1893 up to 1911 who contributed towards this Dublin municipal undertaking. A great many of those ratepayers are gone.
Does the President mean to say that the policy of the municipal authority is altogether confined within the year from 1st April to the 31st March?
The basis of municipal finance is to make the ratepayer every year bear his burden for that year. If, in the case of a capital undertaking, it has a longer life than a year, he bears his proportion of that life, and that only, and that is correct municipal finance. Anything else is raimeis and the Deputy knows it quite well.
I have had a considerable experience of municipal finance, and I am at a loss to know how we are to find the ratepayers who contributed this £46,000 or £50,000.
I should not think there is any occasion to. That does not affect the principle of the thing at all.
Of course not. We will take one particular case. There is at present in Grafton Street a very big firm that was not there 17 years ago. Messrs. Woolworths were not there then, and they paid none of that £46,000 or £50,000. Another firm, Messrs. Selfridge, are there for the last ten or twelve years. They were not there 17 years ago.
Is the President not dealing with individual ratepayers now? Is not the individual ratepayer of to-day paying for acts of the Corporation many years ago? Is not the rate in Dublin a comprehensive rate, that does not apply to a particular year but covers up a large number of years?
Apparently the Deputy realises that I am getting him into a tight corner. He would like to free himself a little, but I am going to bind him down to the cases I have mentioned. These firms are ratepayers at present. If the Deputy wants other cases I might mention the Imperial Tobacco Company, which has three establishments in Dublin at present. They were not here 17 years ago.
On that ground they should not be paying the rate charged them to-day for operations that took place antecedent to their arrival.
I have been listening to the Deputy, and now I am bringing him up against the fact that, in essence, the Minister is asked to give back the £40,000 or the £50,000 paid by ratepayers 17 years ago, and by some as long as 37 years ago. He is to pay it back to the Imperial Tobacco Company, to Selfridge's, and Woolworth's, as well as to people who contributed the money. When they bought these concerns did they buy that interest?
I submit that is raimeis. They did not.
Did they buy the premises—bricks and mortar—or the goodwill as well?
They bought the goodwill, but none of the other things. They did not know about them. There was no item on the balance sheet in respect of them. We are asked to give these people that particular item now. Let me put another side of the question. When I first became a member of the Corporation of Dublin my recollection is that there were 35 miles of streets with electric mains, I think that in only 14 miles of these streets were there customers, so that there were 21 miles of streets, or some considerable number, in which there were no customers for electricity. Those streets were lighted by electricity, and they were well lighted. I have not looked through the Corporation accounts for a long time, but I believe that the price of public lighting, so far as electricity is concerned, was cheaper than the price to ordinary customers of electric light. Supposing that the £46,000 or the £50,000 was divided between the years 1892 and 1912, approximately 20 years, it would amount to about £2,300 a year. That was not a very large sum to pay for the better lighting of the streets. I am putting it in this way: that the ratepayers at that particular time got some advantage from this concern.
The principle of this Bill and what attracts me is that electricity is to be provided at the cheapest possible price, with all the best modern advantages, and that Dublin, which has contributed considerably by putting down mains, will have less to pay in the way of generation and transmission costs than places in which there has been no capital expenditure at all, or that will now have to provide mains or the other necessary equipment inseparable from the distribution of current.
Does the President say that is in the Bill?
I say that the Minister has made the position so plain that even I, who do not regard myself as a particularly astute person, can understand it. I looked upon this matter with very considerable concern for Dublin, because, as I said, I am first a citizen of Dublin; secondly, I have been a member of the Dublin Corporation, and, thirdly, I have some concern with the particular policy adopted. the fruits of which will be realised when this Bill is passed.
I do not intend to go into an argument with regard to Section 68 as to whom benefit will accrue, as that will come on when I move amendment 92, which is designed to prevent the fleecing of Dublin electricity consumers for the benefit of the general ratepayers. The amendment is rendered necessary by the talk that was put forward here and comments in the Press for a week past. When I come to move that amendment, I will deal with this question of surplus allocation. I had intended at the beginning to agree to the deletion of the clause. It is quite clear now that it should not be deleted until amendment 92 is dealt with, and until the House is in a position to see what happens. If amendment 92 is passed I will, on the Report Stage, move to agree to the deletion of Section 68. For the time being I abide by this, and I hope the Committee will agree with me.
Is it clear that it is the wish of the Minister to delete this clause, seeing that the whole matter will be under discussion again? I would not like to pass it without some comment on the President's observations. However, I do not want to duplicate any statement I may have to make. As far as I am concerned, it will be as convenient for me to comment on the Minister's amendment when it comes on later.
Question—"That Section 68 stand part of the Bill"—put.
Division challenged, and it being found that there were only four Deputies in opposition, it was ordered that their names be recorded.
Motion declared carried, Deputies Hewat, Good, A. Byrne and Myles dissenting.
Question—"That Section 69 stand part of the Bill"—put and agreed to.
SECTION 70.
(1) Any expenses incurred under this Act by a local authority which is an authorised undertaker and not otherwise provided for may, with the consent of the Board given after consultation with the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, be defrayed—
(a) in the case of an urban sanitary authority out of the rate applicable to the general purposes of the Public Health (Ireland) Acts or any other fund or rate applicable to lighting under any Local Act, and
(b) in the case of a rural sanitary authority out of the rate out of which special expenses incurred in respect of the contributory places comprised within the area of supply of its authorised undertaking are payable under the Public Health (Ireland) Acts.
(2) Every sum advanced under this Act to a local authority by the Board out of the funds at its disposal and all interest and every sinking fund payment payable on or in respect of such sum shall be a charge on the rate out of which expenses incurred under this Act by such local authority are payable under the foregoing sub-section and shall have priority next after the charges on such rate existing at the time such sum is advanced.
I move:—
In sub-section (2), line 44, to delete all words after the word "sub-section" to the end of the sub-section.
Under the provisions of the Act at present in force dealing with borrowing by local authorities, all loans rank equally and the security of the last lender is as good as that given to the first. The form of mortgage schedule in the Public Health Act of 1878 gives to each mortgagee such proportion of the rates as the sum borrowed shall bear to the whole sum borrowed on the credit of the rates.
If by any chance default was made in payment of the amounts due each creditor or mortgagee would have an equal right to payment and the last lender would not have to wait until all previous loans were paid before he could get anything. Therefore it is possible to borrow easily and at a reasonable rate of interest, but if priorities are to be established between the various loans, it would become very difficult as the security would be affected. I therefore wish to move the deletion of these words, as they are in conflict with the Public Health Act provisions. The amendment simply means that all Corporation loans are to rank equally and none is to have preference over another. The section as it stands would establish a preference for the electricity loans and would disturb the general finances of the Corporation. For that reason I would ask the Minister to accept my amendment now or give it some consideration for a future Stage.
I might point out that the Deputy is quite wrong in his last statement. These loans would have priority only "next after the charges on such rate existing at the time such sum was advanced." They would not have complete priority.
How would they stand in regard to the other loans?
With regard to other loans they would have priority in preference to any loan that came later in date.
Does the Minister mean that they will not have any priority in regard to existing loans?
I think that is the meaning of the two lines "shall have priority next after the charges on such rate existing at the time such sum is advanced."
We are passing an Act of Parliament and the Minister should explain it. We want to know what we are doing.
We are passing an Act of Parliament but we are not passing it on my interpretation.
The Minister is here to explain the provisions of this Bill.
I cannot explain this statement: "These sums shall have priority next after the charges on such rate existing at the time such sum is advanced." Does that require explanation?
It does. I want to know from the Minister if this particular loan is to have any priority in regard to existing loans?
I answer in the words of the section that they "shall have priority next after the charges on such rate existing at the time such sum is advanced."
That does not answer my question.
I think it is a complete answer.
Does not that mean the Minister is interfering to a certain extent with future loans to be raised by the Corporation? Is he not giving priority to one over the other? If ordinary Corporation Stock goes out the electricity undertaking will have preference over it and will have preference on the market. As the Bill stands now he is to have priority for his own undertaking.
Is that fair to Corporation Stock and stockholders?
Will the Deputy consider the other side? There are consumers in all parts of the country, and the consumers' interests are to be protected. If they are not protected the debt has to fall on them. The Deputy is apparently considering some place where a local authority is going to be in default. If it is going to be in default surely the Board's concern for other consumers in all parts of the country must be considered.
I think the President is taking a wrong view of Deputy Byrne's amendment. The question of priority does not anticipate any failure by the local authorities to pay. One must always recognise and I am sure nobody recognises it more than the President does, that the value of stock issued to the public is affected by the position in which it stands in relation to other stock of the same company. Supposing a company was issuing ordinary stock and preference stock, the preference stock would have higher value because it would have higher security. The proposal in this section is that certain stock issued by the Corporation must be earmarked. It is under different conditions from the general consolidated stock because it obviously carries a priority charge which makes it more valuable. If it makes it more valuable it ipso facto makes the other stock less valuable.
This differentiation is not quite the small matter that the President would seem to think. It has a considerable bearing on the borrowing powers of the Corporation. I think the President and the Minister might take that section into consideration and see if it is really a fair thing to a local authority to make prior stock with prior security to the perfectly secured stock which the authority issues, because, after all, there cannot be any greater security than a municipal undertaking. The borrowers have the whole community as a security, both collectively and individually, so that the security is ample. I think it would be undesirable to make a differentiation in a case where money is raised on behalf of an undertaking which, according to the Minister's forecast, is going to fall ultimately, not on the undertaking at all, but on the Board as a separate concern. If the Board goes to an undertaking and requires them to borrow money I think the ordinary security under that authority should be sufficient.
I should be prepared to consider the point Deputy Hewat has raised, but that is completely different from the issue raised in the amendment. The amendment simply proposes to delete the portion saying that priority shall be given to certain charges "next after the charges existing at the time such sum is advanced," and it does not say how the loan is to rank. Deputy Byrne refers to some Public Health Act, but there is no reference to that in his amendment. It would simply wipe out the provision contained in the last few lines and say nothing about it. The point Deputy Hewat has raised has some relation to what Deputy Byrne was trying to argue. That is a different point from the amendment. The amendment could not be accepted in its present form, but the point raised by Deputy Hewat is one which I could look into.
I am not quite sure whether or not this point was referred to before, but I asked the Minister on a previous occasion when the Bill was under discussion whether the local authority having to borrow in accordance with certain Acts of Parliament, those Acts would not have to be repealed in order to alter the method of borrowing. The Minister could not answer that question. There is nothing in this Bill repealing those previous Acts under which the local authority must borrow. If these Acts are not repealed we must borrow in accordance with them. If this Bill repeals those Acts then we need not necessarily borrow in accordance with them. If the Minister makes it clear that the Bill repeals those Acts and that we will not have to borrow in accordance with them, then there is no necessity for the amendment, but if there is not such repeal there is necessity for it.
It is my intention on the Report Stage to move an amendment of this type:
Page 35, before Section 76, to insert the following new section:—
(1) Whenever a local authority which is an authorised undertaker borrows under this Act any sum from the Board for any purpose, the purpose for which such sum is so borrowed shall be deemed to be a purpose for which such local authority may borrow under the Public Health (Ireland) Acts, 1878 to 1919, and the said Acts shall apply to such borrowing in like manner as they apply to any borrowing thereunder by a local authority with the modification that the sanction required by the said Acts for any borrowing thereunder by a local authority shall for the purposes of the borrowing under this Act of any sum from the Board by a local authority which is an authorised undertaker be the sanction of the Board.
(2) Any sum borrowed under this Act from the Board by a local authority which is an authorised undertaker shall not be reckoned as part of the total debt of such local authority for the purpose of any limitation on borrowing imposed by the Public Health (Ireland) Acts, 1878 to 1919.
There is no such amendment on the list of amendments. The Minister tells us now that he is going to move that amendment on Report, but it is the absence of such an amendment that makes the amendment in the form before us necessary. The President will agree with that, having some considerable knowledge of the work of local authorities.
This amendment of Deputy Byrne is probably the most unacceptable amendment put down, because it leads us nowhere. It wipes out a certain provision of the section and leaves us nothing in its place.
The terms contained in the section were absolutely necessary in the absence of the Minister's proposed amendment. That clarifies the position beyond all doubt.
This amendment, without that further amendment would be necessary.
I cannot imagine any amendment hereafter which would render this amendment of Deputy Byrne a useful or reasonable one.
The point I make is that the amendment proposed by Deputy Byrne would be necessary if that other amendment, which the Minister has quoted, and which he proposes to bring forward on Report Stage, were not incorporated in the Bill.
No. This amendment of Deputy Byrne, if passed under any circumstances, would be bad.
I am not going to take the Minister as an authority on municipal finance.
We will have an opportunity of considering the Minister's amendment on Report.
I ask leave to withdraw my amendment, in view of the undertaking given by the Minister that he will introduce an amendment on Report Stage.
Let us be clear as to that. My promise was to consider a point raised by Deputy Hewat which, I think, is a different thing from what the Deputy referred to in his amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Section 70 agreed to.
Sections 71 and 72 agreed to.
SECTION 73.
Any local authority which is an authorised undertaker may (subject to the provisions of this Act which relate to expenditure incurred by an authorised undertaker in respect of the construction, reconstruction, extension, equipment, or re-equipment of any works used as part of or in connection with his undertaking) contract with any person for the execution and maintenance of any works needed for the supply of electricity by such local authority in accordance with the order or special Act by which it is authorised.
I move amendment 90:—
In line 7 to delete the words "of electricity," and in line 8 to insert after the word "authority" the words "of electricity," and in line 9 to delete the word "it" and to substitute therefor the words "such supply."
This is really a drafting amendment. It makes the effect of Acts dealing with electricity more precise.
Amendment agreed to.
Section 73, as amended, agreed to.
Section 74 agreed to.
SECTION 75.
Amendment 91.—In line 40 to delete the word "Minister" and substitute therefor the words "Chief Justice of Saórstát Eireann."— (Deputies Hewat and Myles.)—Not moved.
Sections 75 and 76 agreed to.
SECTION 77.
I move amendment 92, which is as follows:—
Before Section 77 to insert a new section as follows:—
Whenever a local authority which is an authorised undertaker has in its hands at the end of any local financial year any surplus funds arising from the authorised undertaking after discharge of all liabilities in relation to such undertaking, such authorised undertaker shall not allocate or apply such surplus funds to any purpose save a purpose approved in that behalf by the Board."
This is an amendment previously referred to as an amendment to prevent the "fleecing" of the electricity consumer in the interests of the general ratepayer. It is an amendment which I would not have considered absolutely necessary but for the outbreak here and in the Press with regard to certain conditions that may be set up under certain provisions of this Bill. No matter what one might have thought of the protection of the electricity consumer in any area previously, founded both on the theory of municipal trading and on the practice of authorities, so far, it is quite clear that—no matter what the theory may be—the practice is going to be changed hereafter and the electricity consumer, in fact, is going to be fleeced—I am using the words of Deputy Byrne—for the benefit of the general ratepayer. It is absolutely necessary that this section should go in, so that the Board will be enabled to prevent such charges being made for electricity as will allow profits to be made, and these profits to be applied to the benefit of the general ratepayer. I do not intend to traverse all the ground I traversed before——
Will the Minister refer to the second portion of his amendment? The undertaker, according to that portion, is not to apply the surplus to any purpose save a purpose approved by the Board.
That is what I am specially adverting to. That is the principal part of the provision which is rendered absolutely necessary by the revealed intention of the various people concerned, with electricity supply to charge electricity consumers more than the service is worth and to apply the surplus to purposes outside electricity undertakings. Even though it may be repetition, I propose to refer to evidence given before the Private Bill Committee in connection with the Liffey Bills. I want to make the point, however, in connection with these quotations, that the circumstances were these: you had three applications put forward with regard to the development of the Liffey and the supply of electricity therefrom. Two were on behalf of companies and one application was on behalf of the Dublin municipality. The Dublin municipality were making the case that the right with regard to electricity-undertaking in the development of the Liffey should go to the municipality and not to the companies. The sole case put up by them, in opposition to the two companies, was that the companies would make profit out of the electricity consumer in the area, whereas the municipality would not. When giving evidence on oath before this Private Bill Committee, Mr. Kettle, City Electrical Engineer, said:
My opinion is that all profits should be reinvested in the undertaking itself. In other words, as we are getting the profit from the electricity user, it ought to go back to the electricity user.
Later, during cross-examination by Mr. Jellett, Mr. Kettle was asked:
I understand you are not in favour of money going to the ease of the rates?
Mr. Kettle replied:
No. I am in favour of its going back to the electricity consumer.
That was Mr. Kettle on oath before the Private Bill Committee.
Would not that be the natural view of an electrical engineer?
If the Deputy will allow me to go on, I will show that Mr. Kettle was backed by a person who is not an electrical engineer. On the same application, Mr. Murphy, Town Clerk, gave evidence. He was asked by Senator Barrington:
Is it not obvious that your profits must be a great deal more if you (the Corporation) generate this electricity by means of water?
Mr. Murphy replied:
No. We will reduce the price. We do not want profits. Profits are absolutely contrary to the principle of municipal trading. The object of municipal trading is to provide services for the citizen at the lowest possible cost. The Corporation would have nothing to do with the profits.
Again, in reply to a question by Senator Irwin, Mr. Murphy said:
The word "profit" is frequently used with regard to municipal undertakings. It is entirely a misnomer. The word is "surplus," and the fact that you earn more than you expend only proves that the price you charged was too much for the service rendered. It is an estimate for each year and the practice of the Corporation, in my opinion, ought to be to balance income with expenditure as regards any particular service.
Chairman: To do more than that is really immoral?—Yes, as you are drawing money from the smaller body to spread amongst the larger.
Those are very sound sentiments.
Would the Deputy think it right that the Corporation should set out to make a profit on the supply of water so that they could distribute the profits to the general ratepayer?
Then I do not know what the meaning of the Deputy's interruption is.
There was never a profit made on water or on markets by the Corporation during the years I was a member of it.
The sentiments I have quoted are very sound sentiments with regard to municipal trading—that there should not be profits made, which profits would go to persons other than the persons from whom the profits were made. What you get from the electricity user should go back to the electricity user. The idea of profits, according to the Town Clerk, is absolutely contrary to the principle of municipal trading. That is what I read before. I think it was relevant to the argument I put up here before. I wonder whether anybody who got his information as to what was happening in connection with this Bill from the newspapers would gather that that quotation was ever used—that any argument had been founded upon quotations made from responsible people in the Dublin Municipal undertaking. Strangely enough, I discovered myself described as having used two arguments which were contrary to each other. In the first part of an editorial at the end of last week, I was described as having said that it was immoral to make profits on municipal services and to dispose of those profits to some other body. That having been my quotation from the Town Clerk directly, in the first part of the editorial, the newspaper went on to say that I advanced to another stage and said that municipal trading was immoral. I wonder did anybody here remember me using those words. I certainly have no recollection of using them. I founded myself entirely on that quotation from the Town Clerk, that it was immoral to do more than earn what you expend.
I think the Minister will have to nationalise the Press.
On this point, I have got a further quotation. It is from the City Electrical Engineer, who read a Paper before the Irish Centre in December, 1926, in which he dealt with State ownership. At one point in his speech he said:
If there is any business in which nationalisation is justified it is certainly that of electricity supply. Electricity supply is not properly an industry, in the generally accepted interpretation of the word. It is far more; it is the life-blood of every industry, and cheap and abundant power will assist every national activity. Apart from the question of industrial power, light and heat are a necessary of life for every individual citizen, and electricity is the ideal medium for giving him light and heat in the cleanest, healthiest and most convenient way. Nationalisation is only an extended form of municipalisation, or, as those who do not favour it would say, an "aggravated" form. The battle of municipal versus company administration has already been fought out in the sphere of electricity supply, and no unbiased critic can say that the municipalities have not more than held their own in point of efficiency. If a State scheme be as well run as the municipal schemes, there is no reason why it should not prove a success."
Nationalisation, according to Mr. Kettle, is only an extended form of municipalisation. The municipality is a trustee. The municipal authorities are the trustees for the consumers out of whose charges they have built up certain undertakings. It is proposed now that the trustees shall be changed and, instead of them being the municipal authorities, they will be the Board. Despite Mr. Kettle's statement that nationalisation is only an extended form of municipalisation, we are being asked to pay something between £1,300,000 and £1,500,000 for the undertaking.
No. I cannot say that Mr. Kettle asked it. I do not know who asked it, but various prominent gentlemen have been going into newspaper offices recently and delivering themselves of weighty comments as to what should be done. Certain influential gentlemen in the commercial world, I understand, have almost been living in newspaper offices for the last three days writing up these articles.
I hope the Minister will be able to identify them. Personally, I have not been in a newspaper office, I might almost say in my life. Does the Minister say that I visited the offices?
Does the Minister refer to me?
Does he refer to me? I have had full opportunity here, and I think I availed of it during the past week.
Obviously when Deputies tell me that they are not the people to whom I refer, I am bound to accept their statements.
If I was there I would not deny it.
No. But we have somebody inspiring the campaign that in the future there are going to be extra charges made, more than what the service warrants, on the consumers, and whether it be surplus or profit it is going to be disbursed in the interests of the general ratepayers. Deputy Byrne asked what can the consumer complain about—he is getting his electricity generated more cheaply than if he generated it himself. That is not the point. The point is, is he having to pay more than the service entitles him to pay? The fact is that he is. That is the policy which renders absolutely essential the insertion before Section 77 of this new section which I propose, namely, that if there is any surplus it shall not be allocated to any purpose save that approved on that behalf by the Board. We hear a lot of talk about moneys that were lent on undertakings, moneys gathered on the credit of the general ratepayers, and the obligations of electricity undertakings towards these people. The President's argument, which is accepted by a great many people, is sound, namely, that you strike your accounts in a municipality every twelve months and then close them, and there is a fluctuating mass of ratepayers, so that it is impossible to give a return to those who provided the funds at first. Leaving that out of consideration, I guarantee that whatever outstanding sums there are the Board will repay them to the particular district on the basis of interest and sinking fund, spread out over a period of years. Let me take Dublin. In Dublin, I read in the newspapers to-day, the ratepayers supplied £46,000 or so, and the statement is made that the ratepayers have been recouped that sum, and, in addition, money was carried from time to time to the credit of the general ratepayers.
That statement is false. The moneys have not been recouped. There is still £22,000 or £23,000 outstanding. I cannot conceive how money could be carried to the easing of the general ratepayer before the liability of the general ratepayer was paid off. When it is admitted that sum is outstanding it is futile to argue that money was carried to the easing of the general ratepayers. In fact there was no payment made out of profits or surplus, or whatever they are called, carried to the credit of the general ratepayers. Following on the very good theory announced by Mr. Kettle and the Town Clerk, if one thought these two were to be put in control and their point of view, as placed before the Private Bill Committee, were carried out, one would have very little use for this in reference to Dublin. But we have seen in the last few days a new attitude towards electricity, and that is that the consumer is going to pay a little more for the service given, and the profit to be carried to the benefit of the ratepayers. Owing to that campaign having been started by certain people this amendment is rendered absolutely necessary.
The arguments put forward by Deputy Byrne are not quite fair to the electricity users in the city. Was it not enough in the past for the electricity users to pay for electricity? The argument of Deputy Byrne and others is that not alone should the users in Dublin pay for the light, heat and power, but that they should pay £50,000 a year towards the rates. I think that is a very unfair proposal as regards the users of electricity. It is founded on a wrong principle, and it is particularly cruel to advance it here on behalf of electricity users.
You must not have heard me.
The Deputy must address the Chair.
You said that the electricity works in Dublin at present not only supply light and heat, but make a profit of £50,000 a year.
I said no such thing. I never mentioned the sum of £50,000.
You read out a list of profits made by the electrical works in Dublin for 10 or 15 years. You quoted that in one year a profit was made of £60,000, another year £50,000, and another year again £23,000, and so on. If I am inaccurate in anything to the extent of quoting these figures, I make a present of the amount of that inaccuracy to the Deputy. But he is running away from the point he was making——
It is something like it. I submit that the users in Dublin were doing a fair thing when they paid for the electricity. There should not be any liability on them to pay anything towards the rates. The case in opposition to this Bill is based on the assumption that they are liable. With regard to the question of compensation, it seems to me, as an outsider, that the user in Dublin will look at the matter from this point of view, "Am I to pay more or less for my electric light in future; am I to get the same advantages, the same amount of light, or more?" and he will consider the question of compensation does not arise unless something is taken from him, and that the advantages that he enjoys are not lessened in any way. In anything that has been published by authorities on electrical works for the last 20 or 30 years in England and other countries the conclusion arrived at was that electrical schemes must as far as possible be concentrated, because the more they are divided the less chance there is of profits. They all urge unity of generation as far as possible. If you go to any Dublin citizen and say to him: "It is open to you to continue to have your electricity generated as at present, or to come under the Shannon scheme, where you will have better and cheaper light," what would be his decision? Under the present scheme, if there was a coal strike, as there was last year in England, he might have to pay a double price for his electricity, and the whole concern might even have to be shut up, whereas under the Shannon scheme, the only possibility he has to dread is that some day the Shannon might cease to flow. In my opinion the average citizen of Dublin would be quite satisfied to come under the Shannon scheme, and would regard with anxiety the possibility of being excluded from it.
When this general question came up on Friday last I voted against the amendment which was moved. There are one or two objections I have heard regarding this question, and I think it is only right to give the Minister an opportunity of dealing with them. There is, as the Minister said, and I agree with him, an extension of municipalisation in this case, but there is this point to be considered. The citizens of Dublin have an undertaking which is held in trust for them, and if we leave out for the moment the fact that we have Commissioners instead of an elected corporation, it would be within the control of the citizens, as the trustees would be elected by themselves. Is there anything in the Bill guaranteeing that the citizens will get as good or a better or cheaper service than at present, seeing that they will not henceforth have that same measure of control they now have? There will, I grant, be new trustees, but the citizens will not have the same measure of control over them as they have had.
It has also been pointed out, no matter how fantastic the idea may appear, that it would be possible under this Bill for the Board to take over this undertaking and run it for three, or four, or five years and then sell it to a private company. I am not saying that is possible, but I am pointing out to the Minister that that suggestion has been made to me. These are objections that are being made by the man in the street, and I think the Minister should deal with them.
The arguments that have been running through the criticisms of the Bill seem to concentrate on how it will work as regards the Dublin station, and rightly so, I think, for Dublin as a municipal electricity undertaking is of pre-eminent value as compared with other electricity undertakings in this State. The Minister has searched all the archives for statements that would help his case. He relied on statements made by Mr. Kettle and the Town Clerk under totally different circumstances. One must admit that these statements were made on the personal authority of the individuals concerned. I do not think that they could be taken as more than an expression of opinion at that time, and it was not an unnatural position for them to take up in connection with the conflict which was waged before the Private Bill Committee, where the Corporation were up in arms against other undertakings which were making proposals for doing the same work as themselves.
Circumstances, of course, alter cases. Obviously, whereas the Town Clerk and the City Electrical Engineer may have been expressing opinions which they thought at the time were their opinions, the circumstances were altogether different from those which arise to-day and which present a different aspect to their minds. It is a grand debating point for the Minister, excellently prepared for him by his opponents, because I do not think it can be said that either Mr. Kettle or the Town Clerk is in favour of the proposal embodied in the Bill. The President, intervening in the discussion, said that the basis of municipal life was comprised in the period between the 31st March and the 1st April of the following year. In other words, that the whole of the municipal structure is of a butterfly nature, and that an act done on the 1st April has no bearing on an act done on the 31st March. That, of course, is absurd and you cannot look at the subject in that light. I suggest that the proper light to look at it is this: that the citizens of Dublin, through their elected representatives, decided they would organise and institute a system of electrical supply for themselves. There is no use in talking about the consumers paying the bill in the sense that the starting of the station was the action of the elected representatives; that some of the ratepayers took the electric light and that in the earlier stages of the undertaking the big majority of them had no interest or concern in it as consumers.
In the course of time losses were made and paid for, profits were made and dealt with, but in each year, whether they had losses or profits, the whole position was reviewed by a Committee of the Corporation, which then decided what it would do either with the surplus or the deficit. There is no use in the Minister getting up and stating that the policy of the Corporation was to make a surplus and pay off the rates. The underlying principle involved in the carrying on of the municipal undertaking was to provide electricity for the consumers at a price which, on a commercial basis, was competing with other forms of energy and light. Considering the municipal undertaking during the years that it has been in operation, the substantial profits arising from it were only made in recent years. I am sure that the Corporation, as the elected body, representing the citizens, would, in the event of the station making any substantial profits recognise that the surplus remaining over should go in the direction of reducing the rates to the consumers. One must remember, as in the case of any trading body, that you may lay down what you think are the rates which will come out of either profits or losses. In the course of the ups and downs of the year it would never be possible for an undertaking such as this to base its operations in such a way that it would come out a line ball. Therefore, any accusation against the intentions of the Corporation would have to be based on an unreasonable amount of profits being developed in the course of operations during the year. In any commercial concern starting at zero and working on to a certain point of prosperity, the whole outlook as regards the future is in the nature of creating a definite interest in the concern. What I complain about is that while the Dublin station was working and extending, growing in importance and usefulness and creating a really valuable asset, that when, as I think the Minister expressed it, the extended municipal idea of nationalisation comes into operation, due regard must be had to the value of the undertaking that is taken over from the citizens of Dublin and at the time that it is being taken over.
It is not right, in a transaction of this kind, to ignore the commercial value created any more than it would be in the amalgamation of certain companies. The Minister has laboured the idea that the municipal authorities, from statements that have been made, were prepared to go out to make a substantial profit on the undertaking. I think that is a travesty of any intentions or expressions that were given on behalf of the contention that Dublin was being treated unjustly by the Bill. There was no such intention on the part of the municipalities as far as anybody knows. That does not justify the Minister in not recognising the value of the asset that is being brought into the pool, according to his view, in the national interest. We are talking here about the return to the ratepayers— this point has really been laboured—of sums of money that were paid by sets of ratepayers who have disappeared. That, I think, is hardly the point. I would rather put it this way: Supposing a man, by the exercise of his industry and ability, creates an asset for himself, would it be just or proper that somebody else should come along and say to his son "You did not create that asset and must be deprived of it altogether"? Broadly speaking, that is what we object to. As regards comparing a national undertaking with a local undertaking Deputy O'Connell must recognise in connection with this criticism that the people of Dublin will not be satisfied or jubilant even, apart from questioning the value of what was taken over, if they have no say in the administration of their own affairs. You may as well come down to rock bottom and recognise that the policy in this Bill is to deprive citizens of Dublin of the right to manage their own property and control their own affairs. The Government may just as well say that they were going to nationalise municipalities as a whole and create a body or Board, perhaps situated in Limerick, to manage the affairs of the township or city. I think if the citizens of Dublin were asked to express an opinion on that point they would be strong in saying that they would prefer to have control of the management of their own affairs.
Mr. O'CONNELL
What objection did they make when the Corporation was abolished?
I think there was a great deal of objection from various sources.
Mr. O'CONNELL
Not from the people objecting to this proposal.
Does Deputy O'Connell maintain that the same causes that operated in the appointment of Commissioners apply to the electricity concern of the Corporation?
Mr. O'CONNELL
It took control out of the hands of the representatives of the people.
They did not hand it over to someone in Limerick.
Mr. O'CONNELL
They were not asked to whom they were to hand it over.
I think that is another red herring and that Deputy O'Connell is taking a leaf out of the Minister's book.
Mr. O'CONNELL
The Deputy is taking a leaf out of ours.
This is the blind leading the blind in the matter. If there were any reasons for the Commissioners being appointed it was on the score of mismanagement. Right through the Bill they recognise the obligation to submit to the control of the Board if inefficiency is disclosed in any direction. The Minister says: "I do not care whether it is inefficient or not." That is not the purpose. I say, as far as the views of the citizens of Dublin are concerned, if you ask them whether they are content, or will be content, for any length of time to continue the operation of the affairs of the city by three Commissioners or to have the control and administration of their electrical light distribution taken over by a Board, they will not agree to either one or the other.
What would the electricity consumers do?
In this matter there is no difference between the electricity consumer and the ratepayer; as far as the electricity consumer is concerned, the only thing is that at present there is no obligation on him to take the municipal supply. He has an alternative. Certainly any alternative he has of supporting any measure that would give him relief is done away with by the establishment of the Board.
We can narrow down the discussion to this point, if we can get this understood. Is the dispute between us that the electricity concern owned by a local authority should make profits and distribute them to the ratepayers?
I have a suspicion that we discussed that already.
The Minister said it was immoral.
The President does not want an answer.
Deputy Sears referred to the fact, and I think the President indicated something of the same kind, that the consumer in Dublin, if offered better light at a lower price per unit, would be willing to accept it. I think it is plain that he would, as an individual. On what basis do you say in this Act that a consumer in Dublin is going to get better or cheaper light? Is there any guarantee whatsover that in giving up the right to manage their own affairs they are, in fact, going to get cheaper and better light? If we have a guarantee of that it will help the citizens of Dublin to be satisfied with the position before them, that what they have built up in value in connection with the establishment of the electricity undertaking is to be handed over, without any compensation, to the Board that has been set up.
Deputy Hewat may play with the idea that it is impossible to get a line-ball situation with such an undertaking as electricity. I have never asserted it is possible. What I am against is the declared intention of having profits made and distributed to other people than those from whom the profits are got. That is the clear case, apart from the idea of always being on the right side and not having a loss, and the declared proposition of the last two or three days is that the township here has a right to make extra charges to get in more money than what the service costs, and to distribute that surplus; that is what this amendment is designed to prevent. The Deputy has spoken of red-herrings. I have not seen one yet to equal, in its diverting powers, any red-herring like the one the Deputy introduces of handing over control to a body in Limerick. That is the first time I have heard of the body in Limerick. I do not know where that emerges from except it be the Deputy's excited imagination. That is equal to the rest of the Deputy's statements, and this is an amazing thing: The ratepayers and the electricity consumers in Dublin are the same people: When you are talking of one you are talking of the other. Let us take the numbers. There are about 50,000 ratepayers and 12,500 electricity consumers; yet the 50,000 is the equivalent of the 12,500.
It was by the sale to the bigger number that the assets were created.
The Deputy should have made his own argument at the right time. The statement was that you were talking of two bodies, but really they were the same one. They were the same crowd. Fifty thousand is equal to 12,500. If that is the sort of calculation as to the cost of generation, bulk price, etc., there is to be more argument than I have looked forward to.
Deputy O'Connell asked me two questions that require an answer. The second, which I will put first, is as to control—as to the possibility of the Board at some time after it is established and having acquired a number of undertakings, handing over the amalgamated undertakings, or some section of them, to a company which might operate for gain. I do not think that is possible under the Bill. Certainly we will see that it is rendered absolutely impossible. Section 8 rather has a small bearing on it. Section 8 says:—
The Board may exercise any of the powers and perform any of the functions and duties (other than the making of orders) conferred and imposed on the Board by this Act through or by any of its officers or servants authorised by the Board in that behalf.
Mr. O'CONNELL
I said selling to a company—disposing.
That is the only power that the Board has got by way of divesting itself of certain duties and functions excepting this: that where it takes control of a particular undertaking it may hand back, after a five year period of control or a lesser period, that undertaking to the original owner. Those being the only two ways in which I see the Board could dives itself of any of those duties or any property which comes into its hands. I think the point raised by the Deputy really is not one we need fear. If there is a gap I certainly will stop it, because it is not part of my intention. unless there came about such a situation, such a state of things, that application were again made to the Oireachtas, and the Oireachtas decided that in some new state of things the best thing to do was to abolish the Board and let some private company take over. But until that day, and without specific approval by legislation almost of the Oireachtas, I do not think what the Deputy envisages should be allowed to occur. If there is the slightest fear of it, I will guarantee that that fear will be removed.
On the other point: Is there anything to guarantee a better or cheaper service than now?—the answer to that point must be taken in relation to what I have already said on Section 37, where I have already indicated to Deputy Thrift that I would get an amendment phrased in some way to achieve this: that that portion of the charge which relates to cost of distribution will have a relation to the liability taken over by the Board in taking over the particular district. In other words that when one comes to make up the rate at which Dublin consumers will have to pay for electricity, there will be, as I said, four items to be considered (a) generating costs, (b) costs of distribution. That cost of distribution will have to include whatever be the extra liabilities imposed on the Board in taking over the Dublin undertaking, but will not be allowed to include the liabilities incurred by the Board in taking over some area down the country. I have to include in Dublin the transformer district of Dublin. Let me put it that way. There can be no discrimination afterwards as between Dublin and Pembroke and Rathmines. They will be served from one transformer station, and it will be the addition to the cost there that will include the distribution cost.
Having said that, I put it to anybody that we have to consider four items in making up the final account that any electricity consumer has to pay. He pays (1) generation and transmission costs; (2) costs of the local network— the cost of the local distribution; (3) the wiring of his premises or house; (4) his appliances. On the appliances, undoubtedly, the Board will be able to give him cheaper material. On the matter of wiring, the Board will be able to give him facilities. I do not insist at the moment on cheaper wiring although I think that will come—I think it is bound to come. At any rate, there will be better facilities in the way of spreading out the costs. The mere fact that we have been told that over a period when the Dublin Commissioners were, on the Dublin undertaking, only able to make £60,000, a Finance Corporation could be found to offer £1,500,000—the ordinary amount to be looked for to recoup that would be on the eight per cent., as taken as the ordinary return on an electricity undertaking, £120,000 —shows there is any amount of money to be made in economies and in better management and in distribution in Dublin with an efficient system.
Does the Minister make the accusation that the Dublin undertaking is in an inefficient state?
The people who have been writing in the papers and talking about the £1,500,000 offer have made that charge, not I. They have, by implication, made that charge. If you take that £1,500,000 and invest it and take the ordinary return looked for on an undertaking, and take it, as Deputy Byrne said, that that one-and-a-half millions was offered in relation to all the charges, then if the Commissioners were only able to make £60,000 and somebody else says that this is able to make £100,000 or £120,000, there is a necessary implication. I have not made it—I am calling attention to it.
Was there ever a one-and-a-half million offer?
I do not think there was, but Deputy Byrne said there had been.
He must have made a slip of the tongue.
There must have been a great many made in the course of the last few days. I do not want to make for Deputy Byrne the excuse that Deputy Hewat has made for Mr. Kettle and Mr. Murphy, that they put up arguments that were not facing the circumstances that are facing us to-day, and consequently their words are not to be taken as literally true. I would hesitate to have a defender like Deputy Hewat when he puts up a defence of that sort. On generating costs, I ask Deputy O'Connell and anybody else interested to consider that the experts' estimates on the sale of a particular number of units, on the costs as estimated for the building out of the scheme, run to 53 of a penny at the outskirts of Dublin, or to 8 all over the country, and that it is necessary for that scheme to advance from being a five million scheme to being a fifteen million scheme before the generating costs are going to come to what we are told, and have not yet examined, are the generating costs in Dublin at the present moment. On all four items, generating cost, cost of local distribution, wiring of houses and appliances. there is no guarantee; nobody can give a guarantee, but there is every likelihood that the consumer is going to be benefited in each of these ways. I have been asked by Deputy Myles if I could give a guarantee, and I replied in a casual way: Is a guarantee from me worth anything? It has to be dealt with in the light of all the circumstances. I will not be driven into making futile efforts about guarantees that mean nothing, but I have said to the Dáil that when the scheme looks to me to be going to cost more than £5,200,000, that is, adding in interest and loss on working, I feel I will be bound to come to the Dáil and announce that. I had not made any announcement up to date on that point. I have no evidence that the scheme is going to cost more than the original estimate. That means that the cost of generating still stands at the estimate of the experts at 53 outside Dublin and 8 all over the country and, that being so, there is an undoubted benefit going to be given immediately to the Dublin consumer. The Dublin consumer will have to pay for the local distribution liabilities he is under at the moment and there is a question: Will better management or other management get him any benefit? There is, however, a very obvious benefit he is going to get through the sale of appliances at a cheaper rate and definite facilities by way of wiring of houses or getting money advanced for various purposes. It does not amount to a guarantee, but it is the most moral certainty that ever there was.
Amendment 92 put and declared carried, the names of Deputies Good, Hewat, A. Byrne and Myles being recorded against the amendment.
SECTION 77.
I move amendment 89:—
In addition to the power conferred upon the Board by this Act to make advances to local authorities it shall be lawful for local authorities to borrow for the purposes of this Act subject to the provisions and restrictions contained in sections 237, 238 and 240 to 243 (both inclusive) of the Public Health (Ireland) Act, 1878.
I leave the matter in the hands of the Minister.
I do not know what that means. If the Deputy likes to leave it for my consideration or rejection well and good.
I leave it in the Minister's hands in this way. I do not want to prolong the proceedings. The Minister understands the meaning of the amendment perfectly well, and if he says he is not going to accept it I shall withdraw it.
I would like to get an opportunity of examining the-particular sections of the Public Health Act referred to in order to make it clear to myself.
As a matter of fact, I feel some embarrassment because I do not know the sections myself.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed—"That Section 77 stand part of the Bill."
I should like to be taken as dissenting.
We shall take Deputy Byrne as objecting to Section 77.
Question put and declared carried.
Sections 78 and 79 agreed to.
SECTION 80.
I raised a question earlier in the evening in regard to standard poles, and perhaps I might get some information on the point now. I asked the Minister whether in the event of the land on which standard poles were erected being available for building, these poles would be removed, and he said "No." Then I asked him if he would not remove the standard poles from land which could not be let if they were continued there, whether compensation would be paid to the owner, and he said "No." That seems an extraordinary situation. I do not know whether the owner of the land has a right to object to the position in connection with the standard poles. But if this land should become valuable for building purposes the Minister refuses to move the poles. Might I point out to him what happens in connection with another department of the State somewhat analogous. We have telephone poles and poles carrying wires in connection with telegraphs set up in the country. They are frequently erected an positions from which they have to be removed by reason of certain developments, and that particular Department, when it is pointed out to it that these poles are causing obstruction, makes no difficulty whatever in having them moved. Here is a parallel case, but the Minister refuses to remove the poles. He thereby does injury to the owner of the land and refuses compensation. That, in my view, is a most unfair and unreasonable position. I ask the Minister if he has considered that answer in the meantime and if he cannot see his way to insert something in this Bill that will meet, what is admitted to be, unfair to particular persons.
The Deputy has brought up an analogy which is by no means perfect. He says because the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs has removed poles that may interfere with a site that is going to be built upon, I should be able and ready to move poles or towers erected for the transmission system. There is no analogy between the two types of poles. If he asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to remove the Post Office, would the Deputy get a favourable answer? That would be more of an analogy with my transmission towers. It is not possible to remove the transmission towers, and if it was possible it could not be done under Section 80.
Section 80 gives me, if anything, a little more leave in that regard, because it says that these pillars, poles and stands "so erected as aforesaid shall be and remain the property of the Minister." But that has no reaction upon the particular points to which the Deputy is referring. I gave him the other day not merely an answer, but I gave him a reason for the answer, that wires for communications and wires for electricity are entirely different things. The thing to avoid in the transmission system is any diversion which would prevent the line from running in as straight a course as possible. That would entail the erection of strain poles. These in themselves are much more expensive than any of the other type of pole, and in addition there is a danger to the whole system by these strain poles and by making the line run in a crooked way, and consequently there is no analogy. On the matter of compensation, I said that I did propose to pay compensation for the erection of the poles in the ordinary way, but, following the Continental practice, that would be merely nominal and would have no relation to the damage done But here this special point of compensation for poles is on the assumption that they would prevent lands otherwise useful for building ground from being so used, but that is a special point that we cannot deal with here.
Will the Minister consider it?
Certainly. I think it would mean an amendment of the 1925 Act. I do not know whether it is possible to bring in other amendments to the 1925 Act, in addition to what was first stated. It would mean a special amending section.
This admitted grievance possibly arose from an oversight. Could we not insert something in this that would meet that grievance?
I do not think it is possible to do so, but if it is a grievance it is still prospective. No case of it has yet occurred.
Will the Minister see that in the case of entry on private property some application will first be made to the owner of the house, garden, field, or whatever it is, for permission for the men to go in and select the places for the poles? To go in without first receiving permission would not be at all courteous to any citizen.
It has to be proved that it is being done.
It is no harm to mention it.
I would like Deputy Myles to intervene and say that Deputy Byrne does not mean what he said.
I do not want any Deputy to make an apology for anything I say in this House.
Will the Minister say that the people on whose lands these poles are to be erected have a right to object, and that their objections will be considered?
That matter is dealt with in a particular section of the 1925 Act. The procedure was laid down, and I presume that that procedure will be followed. But also the contractors, acting under authority from me, have certain powers with regard to the erection of these poles, and these will also be exercised. But, of course, every effort will be made to have regard to existing circumstances in particular localities and to see what can be done.
If the Minister would recognise the necessity for safeguarding the rights of the people I think he would deal more fully with the point as regards making everybody alive to the fact that it is desirable not to put poles in that position at all. In other words, in consideration of the position in which the poles will be erected, due consideration should be given to the fact that they may be injurious to certain property, and that that injury might be avoided by altering the sites of the poles.
Obviously the poles will be put in positions that will entail the least possible payment of compensation.
But will the owner of the land be consulted to make sure that the poles are being put in the least objectionable positions?
I am afraid I have not made myself clear. Once the line is established there really can be very little diversion from the course settled upon. In a matter like the digging of the canal we could swing about to avoid disturbing this, that and the other thing, and in the matter of telegraph wires that could also be done to a great extent. But in the matter of these transmission lines it is a question of getting the straightest course possible, and once we enter upon these transmission lines it is only within very narrow limits that any changes can be made.
Question—"That Section 80 stand part of the Bill"—put and agreed to.
Sections 81 and 82 put and agreed to.
SECTION 83.
(1) Subject to the provisions of this section, no customs duty (whether imposed before or after the passing of this Act) shall be charged or levied on any dutiable article imported into Saorstát Eireann (whether before or after the passing of this Act) in respect of which the Minister certifies that such article was or is imported and is being or is intended to be used solely for the purposes of or in connection with the Shannon works.
(2) If any article which is imported under this section without payment of duty is not removed from Saorstát Eireann within one month from the date on which such article ceases to be used solely for the purposes of or in connection with the Shannon works then and in every such case customs duty shall be charged, levied, and paid on such article at the rate at which customs duty would, but for the provisions of this section, have been charged and levied on such article at the date of its importation into Saorstát Eireann.
In sub-section (1), at the end of the sub-section, to add the words "or was or is apparatus for electrical cooking or heating."—(William Hewat, James Sproule Myles).
Amendment 93 is to exempt from Customs duty matter "which was or is apparatus for electrical cooking or heating." The section aims at exempting articles which are intended to be used solely for the purposes of or in connection with the Shannon works. I think that the extension aimed at by the amendment is not in order here. It would, of course, be quite in order on the Finance Bill, which will be coming before us shortly.
It is a question of the application of Customs duty.
To electrical appliances that concern the Shannon scheme.
Perhaps it is a little presumptive for me to indicate to the Minister for Finance what he ought to do.
Of course, the Deputy will have opportunities after Easter to indicate that to the Minister for Finance on the Finance Bill.
Amendment not moved.
Question proposed: "That Section 83 stand part of the Bill."
I think that this section is open to serious objection, because it leaves a loophole for possible irregularities. There may be a gain under it, but I think that that gain would not justify it. I think if it could be avoided it would be better.
The point has been made to me that the section, as drafted, is far too wide, and that although there is a definite limitation in it to articles imported that are being, or are intended to be, used solely for the purposes of or in connection with the Shannon works, that it might apply not merely to the original Shannon works, but to articles required in the way of maintenance and repairs, and that it might be held to cover a very wide variety of articles. Any examination I have been able to make has not led me to believe that a great variety of articles which might be covered are now liable to Customs duties, but inasmuch as the number of articles which it was desired to exempt is very small and will have no appreciable effect on the scheme, in order to avoid any confusion or any heartburning on the matter I was prepared to withdraw the whole section. I will move that on the Report Stage.
Then the Minister intends to delete this section altogether?
I would only like to express my approval of his action. I think it is very undesirable to raise the question of preferential treatment in the event of there being any competition in the matter of electrical appliances.
Question put and agreed to.
Section 84 put and agreed to.
Question proposed—"That Section 85 stand part of the Bill."
Amendment 94 is taken as decided.
Always subject to consideration by the Minister as to its application in any particular section. Would he agree to adopting it where it is applicable?
I have urged very strongly against the appointment of the arbitrator being taken out of my own hands and put into the hands of the Chief Justice on the clause dealing with evaluation on acquisition, and it was definitely defeated there. What I am prepared to do is to move an amendment on these lines: That wherever there is a legal question as the outstanding point to be determined, the arbitrator would be a legal man and would be then appointed by the Chief Justice. In other words, the Chief Justice, being the obvious person to appoint legal people and having the best idea as to who would be the proper legal person for a particular legal point, I would certainly bring him in in such a case. But it would be a matter of finding out where that would occur. It would not occur on the matter of value on acquisition, or on any of these value points. There it would be somebody like an engineer with a finance outlook who could estimate what the value of the plant was, how much depreciation there had been, and so on, and definitely value a certain amount of plant and prospects. Where it is a legal matter I would look into it and see that a legal person would be appointed, and that would be under the Chief Justice.
Not necessarily a legal matter, but where ordinarily a legal person would be appointed to the position of arbitrator the Minister would be prepared to do that?
Yes, I will try to bring in an amendment along those lines.
Question put and agreed to.
SECTION 86.
(1) The Minister may appoint a fit and proper person to be an arbitrator to determine any matter which is by this. Act or any order or regulation made thereunder directed to be determined by an arbitrator appointed by the Minister.
(2) Every arbitrator appointed under this section shall have power by notice in writing signed by him to summon witnesses and to require the production of books and other documents, and any person so summoned who fails to attend or refuses to give evidence before such arbitrator and any person who fails or refuses to produce any book or other document the production of which is so required of him shall be guilty of an offence under this section and shall be liable on summary conviction thereof to a fine not exceeding ten pounds.
(3) All evidence given before an arbitrator appointed under this section shall be given on oath which oath such arbitrator is hereby empowered to administer, and any person who gives false evidence before any such arbitrator shall be guilty of perjury and punishable accordingly.
(4) An arbitrator appointed under this section shall have power in his discretion to award to any party to the arbitration his costs and expenses in relation to the arbitration or any part thereof to be paid to him by any other party to such arbitration, and whenever any such arbitrator so awards any such costs or expenses he shall have power to fix the amount of the costs and expenses so awarded.
(5) An arbitrator appointed under this section shall have power to adjourn the arbitration as he thinks fit and shall also have power to inspect and examine and for that purpose to enter upon any lands and premises the subject of the arbitration or in relation to which the arbitration is held.
Amendment 95 not moved.
I move:—
To add at the end of sub-section (1) the words "an appeal from the decision of such arbitrator may be made to the Circuit Court Judge."
I want to impress on the Minister the desirability of an appeal from the decision of the arbitrator. It is the custom in all legal institutions; there is an appeal from the District Justice to the Circuit Court, and so on. I ask for the same treatment under this Bill. If the decision of the arbitrator is not satisfactory, the undertaker should have the right to appeal, that he should have some safeguard to fall back on, some rock to steady himself on. I think the Minister might give in on this point.
The point that strikes me is this: If there is going to be any appeal at all, say on such a matter as the amount to be paid on acquisition of an undertaking, I cannot imagine any two people agreeing on the same sum down to the last penny. You will have some difference of opinion; there are bound to be some little points here and there which will not appear in the same light to any two individuals. It would be very hard to get exactly the same sum decided on. Why have two methods of procedure, going first to the arbitrator and then going to a Circuit Court Judge? If there was some legal point in dispute, and if there was a reference further wanted with regard to the legal point, I would not have any objection to it. There are so very few legal points arising in connection with this; it will be simply a matter of valuing property and prospects.
Take the case of a malicious burning. What special knowledge has a Circuit Judge to assess damages? This is a similar position.
Exactly, but the way the Circuit Judge arrives at an opinion is that he gets in assessors or expert witnesses. It was thought that arbitration proceedings would generally be cheaper than court proceedings. There is a scale of court fees, and all the rest, and there would be an array of counsel, solicitors and others. It was thought better to try to avoid that. The whole aim and object is to have agreements come to in the cheapest way, because eventually, whatever be the cost of proceedings, it will, in some way or other, be borne by the electricity consumers. The thing is to have one procedure, either court proceedings or arbitration proceedings, and when one comes to determine on that, I think there is no doubt about it that arbitration proceedings are much the better type for the settlement of the problems that will arise, and there is no necessity to involve it by having, first of all, arbitration, trying to get cheapness, security, ease and determination, and then having an appeal to the Circuit Court, having additions by way of costs to the whole proceedings, these costs being eventually borne, either by the Board or by the undertaker, and in any event paid for by the consumer. If a legal point was involved I could see a certain amount of reason for an appeal to a legal man from one who is not a legal man, but not under any other considerations. I ask the Deputy to think of it from the point of view of the costs that might be piled up.
I think the Minister should not anticipate such enormous costs in the Circuit Court. We passed rules here the object of which was to give cheaper law to the people. I would remind the Minister that in the cases I have in mind the men concerned would be fighting for their life's savings, their life's work, and they would like to have some final court of appeal. It will mean absolute ruin to the people concerned if a mistake should be made, and I think it would be only fair to give them a chance of going further. The Circuit Court would not be so expensive in cases of that kind.
Any expenses are additional to the arbitration expenses. Unless there is a big necessity for these expenses being added, I would ask that the matter be reconsidered. Certainly one could not have it that in every case that goes to the arbitrator there should be an appeal. There may be a limited number of cases, which the Deputy can pick out between now and the Report Stage.
Will the Minister undertake to make provision on the Report Stage that in the case of the compensation to be awarded to a private undertaker he shall have the right of appeal to the Circuit Court?
That is the very point on which I would not like to have an appeal; at least I would not like to have double procedure. If the Deputy does not like the arbitrator let him move to substitute the Circuit Court.
In this matter the Minister is thinking too much of economy. I suppose he is fortified by the Minister for Finance, who has come in and sat beside him. I think a very much more important point has been raised by Deputy Myles, that is, the feeling of security of the litigant, who will really be the defendant, in this matter. I think the Minister might really take a less serious view of the cost that will be involved in taking a case before the Circuit Court Judge, in view of the greater confidence that will be engendered in the mind of the person whose property is to be the subject of assessment.
May I make a suggestion to the Minister that in the case of an appeal to the Circuit Court, if the party aggrieved shall show cause to the Minister, the Minister may allow an appeal to the Circuit Court?
I would not care to have that jurisdiction thrust on me at all or on any other layman to follow me. What I can do is to consider this further with a view to allowing the undertaker in certain instances to opt for the Circuit Court Judge or for the arbitrator. I do not like this idea of appeal. I would prefer to have the case tried in a single way.
The Minister will remember that the cases I want particularly considered are those whose whole means of livelihood may be taken away by this measure.
The Deputy is not pressing the amendment?
No. I desire to withdraw it.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
I move amendment 97:—
Before sub-section (2) to insert a new sub-section as follows:—
"(2) There shall be paid to every arbitrator appointed under this section such fee in respect of every arbitration held by him under this Act as shall be determined by the Minister with the approval of the Minister for Finance and such fee shall be paid by such party to such arbitration or by the parties to such arbitration in such proportions as the arbitrator in his award shall determine."
This is a point which I consider very necessary. It is to make allowance for the payment of fees to an arbitrator and for the division of the fees between the parties to the arbitration, leaving it to the arbitrator to decide the proportion to be borne by the parties.
Amendment 97 agreed to.
Section 86, as amended, agreed to.
SECTION 87.
The Board and also any authorised undertaker with the consent of the Board may contribute such sums as (in the case of the Board) the Board and (in the case of an authorised undertaker) such authorised undertaker thinks fit to any associations of persons engaged in the generation, supply, or distribution of electricity founded for the promotion of their mutual interests and to any societies formed for the promotion and encouragement of the development and use of electricity and for the improvement of knowledge and education in respect of electricity.
I move amendment 98:—
To add at the end of the section the following new sub-section:—
"(2) The Board and also any authorised undertaker with the consent of the Board may pay the reasonable expenses of the attendance at any conference or meeting of any such associations as aforesaid of (in the case of the Board) any member, officer or servant of the Board and (in the case of an authorised undertaker) of any person appointed by such undertaker to be his representative at such conference or meeting."
The section allows contribution to be made to certain associations which are described. The amendment is a necessary addition.
Amendment 98 agreed to.
Section 87, as amended, agreed to.
Section 88 agreed to.
SECTION 89.
(1) Where in any case previous to the passing of this Act any electric line or other work shall have been constructed in, over, along, across, or under, any street or open space for electrical purposes or shall have been constructed in any other position for such purposes in such a manner as not to be entirely enclosed within any building where any electric line or work so constructed may be used for such purpose, such electric line or work shall be continued and used only in accordance with the regulations prescribed by the Board under this Act for the protection of the public safety and of other electric lines and works lawfully placed in any position.
(2) From and after the passing of this Act it shall not be lawful for any authorised undertaker or other person to commence any such work as is mentioned in the foregoing sub-section without the consent of the Board.
I move amendment
In sub-section (1), line 42, to delete the word "space" and substitute therefor the word "place."
I am doing this on behalf of Deputy Cole, in whose name the amendment stands. This is dealing with a matter I raised the other day. It touches upon the definition of a place. What I want to make clear is that the words "place" and "space" are used a bit loosely. It may happen that a man, in his private grounds, will be prevented from bringing electricity from, say, his house to his garage by the use of these words here.
I am not sure yet as to what the change involves. Can the matter be held over until I further consider it?
I am quite satisfied, and, therefore, I will withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
The following amendment stands in my name:—
In sub-section (2), line 52, after the word "lawful" to insert the words "after the Board has been established."
There is the same point in this section as I raised on a previous section. and the Minister said he would consider it. In the circumstances I will not move the amendment.
Amendment not moved.
Sections 89 to 94, inclusive, agreed to.
Amendment 99 not moved:—In sub-section (3), page 41, line 14, to delete the word "Minister" and substitute therefor the words "Chief Justice of Saorstát Eireann."— (Deputies Hewat and Myles.)
That matter has already been dealt with.
I will ask that amendments 99 and 100 might disappear for ever, because wherever there is reason for the Chief Justice to be substituted for the Minister, surely it is not in this matter of deciding whether or not trees should be lopped.
A work of supererogation.
Sections 95 and 96 agreed to.
Amendment 100 not moved.
Section 97.—In line 35 to delete the word "Minister" and substitute therefor the words "Chief Justice of Saorstát Eireann."—(Deputies Hewat and Myles.)
Sections 97 to 101, inclusive, agreed to.
SECTION 102.
(1) The Executive Council may by order divest the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland of all or any of the powers, functions, and duties relating to the care and conservancy of the navigation of the River Shannon and of the rivers flowing into the River Shannon and of the works from time to time constructed for the improvement of such navigation conferred and imposed on the said Commissioners by any statute, and the Executive Council may by the same or any subsequent order confer and impose on the Board all or any of the powers, duties, and functions aforesaid.
(2) Upon an order being made by the Executive Council under this section divesting the said Commissioners of all or any of the powers, functions, and duties aforesaid the said Commissioners shall as on and from the date of such order or the date appointed in that behalf in such order (as the case may require) cease to exercise the powers and functions and to perform the duties to which such order relates and the said powers, functions, and duties shall as on and from the date of such order or the date specified in that behalf in such order (as the case may be) cease to be exercisable and performable by the said Commissioners.
In amendments 101 to 107, inclusive, there are really two points and I think I might move them all together:—
101. In sub-section (1), page 42, in line 57, after the word "divest" to insert the words "the Minister or."
102. In sub-section (1), page 42, line 60, after the word "navigation" to insert the words "and of the drainage works."
103. In sub-section (1), page 42, line 62, after the word "navigation" to insert the words "and drainage."
104. In sub-section (1), page 42, in line 63, after the word "said" to insert the words "Minister or the said" and after the word "by" to insert the words "or under."
105. In sub-section (2), page 43, in line 2, after the word "divesting" to insert the words "the said Minister or."
106. In sub-section (2), page 43, line 3, after the word "aforesaid" to insert the words "the said Minister or."
107. In sub-section (2), page 43, in line 10, after the word "by" to insert the words "the said Minister or."
It is merely to put in every place where the "Commissioners of Public Works" occur the words "Minister or" in front and to add on the word "drainage" in addition to "navigation." The point about the first amendment is that there were certain functions which, at one time, were carried out by the Commissioners of Public Works and which really belonged to them. These were transferred to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and have not since been re-transferred. Some of the functions of the Commissioners of Public Works remain with the Minister and, so far as these relate to navigation or drainage, we want to have power to divest both the Minister and the Commissioners of the functions and hand them to the Board. The other point involved in the amendments is to transfer to the Board these functions at present under the authority either of the Commissioners of Public Works or the Minister for Industry and Commerce in relation, not merely to navigation, but also to drainage works around that area.
The new Board will take it over?
Yes. It is necessary that they will. The executive Council may by Order divest either the Minister or the Commissioners of such function relating to these matters and transfer them to the Board.
What will the position be in regard to navigation? The Board gets control of all questions in connection with the navigation of the Shannon?
In place of the Board of Works?
What will the attitude of the Board be on that matter? Is it purely for the protection of the works that you prefer to do this? Why can it not remain as it is? So far as navigation is concerned, why should it not remain under its present control?
No; because the one point essential to the navigation is the question of the water levels. The Commissioners of Public Works are bound to keep the level to certain heights. This does not mean that the Board, on getting the powers, will simply neglect to keep the water at different levels. It is quite obvious that the Board, having complete control of the Shannon for power purposes, and having control of the level of Lough Derg—unless this proposal is carried out there is going to be a conflict of authority. The Board of Works are trying to navigate on certain levels. It is not proposed to interfere with the levels. Instead of having one Board dealing with navigation and another Board dealing with pretty well everything else, in which connection there will be a conflict of authority, it is proposed that the one Board should deal with all. Otherwise there would be two bodies looking after what one can do quite easily. There is simply an amalgamation of duties, and it seems these duties could be better carried out by the Board. There will be no interference with the rights or obligations existing, except those are modified by Order.
But the Board would have power to disregard the importance of navigation?
No, they will be bound by what the Commissioners of Public Works do.
They transfer the obligations?
Amendments 101 to 107 inclusive agreed to.
Section 102, as amended, agreed to.
SECTION 103.
(1) At any time before the handing over of the Shannon works to the Board under this Act is completed, the Minister, notwithstanding any enactment declaring the River Shannon to be a public navigable river, made by order, if the Minister sees fit so to do for the purposes of the operation of the Shannon works or of the doing of any matter or thing which the Minister is authorised to do by the Shannon Electricity Act, 1925 (No. 26 of 1925), prohibit navigation in or upon the River Shannon or any particular part thereof specified in such order for the period of time specified in that behalf in such order.
I move:—
In sub-section (1), page 43, in line 31, to delete the word "made" and to substitute therefor the word "may."
Amendment agreed to.
Section 103, as amended, agreed to.
Sections 104, 105 and 106 agreed to.
SECTION 107.
I move:—
To insert before Section 107 a new section as follows:—
The Board and any authorised or statutory undertaker may, if they think fit, adopt and any such undertaker shall if so required by the Board, adopt the provisions of Part IV. of the Local Government Act, 1925 (No. 5 of 1925), in the same manner as if the Board or such undertaker, as the case may be, were a local body within the meaning of that part of the said Act, and upon such adoption the provisions of that part of the said Act shall apply as if the Board or such undertaker were such a local body as aforesaid.
I have no hesitation in putting forward this amendment as a reasonable one, because not only the Government and public bodies but all well organised private undertakings have pension schemes for their employees. The result is that better service is given by employees. If that were not so, I do not think so many large private undertakings and companies would have established these schemes. The amendment does not impose a superannuation scheme on the Board, but authorises it, if it wishes, to establish one. It is only right that the Board should have authority to do so, if it thinks that as a result better service will be given. I do not agree with the cry that is sometimes heard about giving pensions to everyone. Pensions form a part of employees remuneration, and they are entitled to get them. After all, pensions are deferred pay. I hope the Committee will adopt the principle of the amendment and give the Board power to set up a superannuation scheme on the lines laid down in the Local Government Act.
I could support this amendment in a general way, but I think it is difficult to understand why a certain section of people should be pensionable and others not. I think the Labour Party would be doing a better service if it produced a scheme that would have general application rather than one dealing with particular cases. If the Minister is right this is not a State scheme but one based on commercial lines, so that the application of the clause for pensions would refer just as much to other undertakings of a similar kind. I do not think the Executive Council would be prepared to advance the proposition that all commercial undertakings should provide pensions for their staffs.
Mr. O'CONNELL
Should they prevent them doing so?
My attention has been drawn to the fact that the amendment seems to be a little out of place, because it follows Section 106, which deals with the prohibition of discharge of corrosive matter into the River Shannon, and comes before a section referring to the Conspiracy and Protection of Property Act.
At one time I had in the section a phrase which would have allowed the Board to pay its officers and servants not merely remuneration and allowances but pensions and gratuities. I took the words out for this reason: that I thought it was better not to have them in for the first period of the Board, because the first five years is going to be somewhat of an experimental period. One cannot foresee exactly what changes may have to be made in the attitude of the Board towards the employees after the first five years are over. One would not like to have the second Board coming along and finding itself involved with a tremendous number of officers, who had obtained pensionable rights from the start of the Board's operations. I believe that a Board such as this, operating such an undertaking, should eventually establish a pension system for the officials. In fact, I have a certain idea that there might be a pensions scheme for members of the Board, because they will be taken from fairly lucrative occupations, so as to get the proper men, and they are given a very small tenure of office. They may have lost their own business and wasted the best years of their lives in the service of the Board and then be suddenly flung out. It might be desirable to have some pensions scheme arranged hereafter out of the revenue of the Board for people who served, say, two periods of five years. I think eventually the Board should be instructed to make provision by way of pensions for its employees.
I doubt if it is wise to insist upon that or even to give them that power for the first five years, which is going to be largely an experimental period. The whole thing might have to be recast after five years. I have no suspicion that that will occur, but it might occur, and one would not like to have to face up to a situation in which there were people taken on and assured of pension rights from the start. We would have a new army of approved pensioners to deal with and, possibly, we would have to find other occupations for them. I approve of the sentiment behind Deputy O'Connell's amendment, but I do not think that amendment is appropriate until the first period of office of the Board has terminated. That has reference to the Board's staff.
The Deputy's amendment says, further, that any authorised or statutory undertaker may adopt these provisions. The reaction of that on the Board is this: The Board might acquire, say three years hence, an undertaking which, in the meantime, had established a pension scheme for all its officials. The Board might find itself with two groups of employees—(1) employees taken over from a local authority, or authorised undertaking, which had adopted a pension scheme under-which all its servants were pensionable, and (2) its own servants, specially recruited for its own purposes, without pensions. That would be an invidious position in which to place the Board. I do not know whether this suggestion would meet the Deputy—that we would try to forecast that after the first period of service of the Board this amendment might begin to run. That could be done, but it is hardly the thing to do. It is really a matter that should be left over and argued later, when one sees how the Board is operating, or when the question of the setting up of the second Board arises at the end of the five-year period. That would be the appropriate time to consider an amendment of this sort.
Mr. O'CONNELL
The Minister must realise the difficulty involved by the fact that, if no provision is made in this Bill, it will be almost impossible to get legislation passed with the special object of providing a pension scheme for these people later. I have had personal experience of that difficulty in another connection, as the Minister for Finance is aware. I appreciate the point made by the Minister, but I should like to know if some provision could be inserted in the Bill which would compel the Board to produce a pension scheme not later than, say, five years after establishment.
We could reinsert in sub-section (2) of Section 7 the words which were previously there —"There shall be paid by the Board to its officers and servants out of the funds at its disposal under this Act such remuneration and allowances as the Board shall determine"—and then make it an instruction to the first Board that they shall not establish a pension scheme to come into operation earlier than five years after the date of their appointment.
Mr. O'CONNELL
If something of that nature were done, it might meet the case.
I want to ask the Minister to pay attention to one point when considering this matter. Even in the first five years, this new Board will have to make a number of appointments to its staff. If it is without any such powers as the Minister has mentioned, the selection by the Board of its officers will be made much more difficult. It will affect the class of applicant that will be got for the different posts. I do not think the Minister can satisfactorily divest the Board of some such power, even in the first five years.
I think if the Board is asked more or less to take a risk for the first five years the employees should be willing to take a certain amount of risk also, having in view that if the scheme runs successfully they are bound to benefit. In fact it is rather an incentive to the whole body, the Board and employees to work harmoniously together to achieve good results.
I do not think the Minister understands the point I made. My point is that any person applying for appointment as an employee of the Board would consider what is going to happen him if he became unfit for work. It would be much more attractive if he knew that after a service of some time he would have a pension.
Would the Minister bear in mind that he will have an enormous staff for five or ten years and that some of the staff will be redundant after ten years? A great many of them will be temporary. It might be ten years before he is able to get the staff down to normal proportions.
I think whoever will be on the Board after the first five years will be in a position to determine what proportion of the staff is likely to become redundant after two or three years, and they would not obviously put these members on a pensionable basis.
Recollect you will have a manufacturing staff.
We discussed that at considerable length.
I hope that will not add a further difficulty to the question of the distribution of work. I hope the Minister will bear that point in view when considering this matter.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Sections 107 and 108 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
SECTION 109.
Nothing in this Act shall deprive the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs of any rights and remedies under the existing Telegraph Acts or any statutory adaptation thereof or substitution therefor made by or under the authority of the Oireachtas.
In regard to Section 109, I would like to make this statement. The section can by no means be regarded as conclusive of the dispute that is likely to arise as between the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and whatever Department that hereafter will have anything to do with this Board or with electricity and its development. This section sets out the rights of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs as they are at the moment, but some time during the next three or four months, there has to be a definite thrashing out of the respective priorities of communications and electricity —the powers that the Minister for Industry and Commerce now has on the one hand with regard to electricity undertakings and the powers of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in regard to communications. The conflict there is will have to be resolved in some way or other, and undoubtedly there will be amending legislation required either to increase the power of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs under this Section 109 or to diminish it.
Sections 109, 110 and 111 put and agreed to.
Ordered that progress be reported.
The Dáil went out of Committee.
Progress reported, the Committee to sit again to-morrow.
The Dáil adjourned at 10.30 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 6th April, 1927.
