When the Adjournment was moved last night I was dealing with Deputy Lemass's remarks relative to certain changes that had been made in the personnel of the Electricity Supply Board and I was criticising the remarks that he thought fit to pass with regard to these changes. The Deputy said that no statement could justify my action in this matter, and although the Deputy had gone in a very roundabout way to attack my action, I considered it a particularly peculiar thing that those remarks should come from a Deputy of Deputy Lemass's Party, because I rather gathered from the debates that have taken place from year to year on the Vote for my Department that that Party has a programme which includes the resuscitation of business in this country mainly through the aid and intervention of the Civil Service. In fact I have heard my Department held up to odium and contempt in this House on criticism relating entirely to the point that the officials were not doing enough to revive business in the country. There is also, of course, the peculiar viewpoint which at one time was held and that we heard so much about, but about which we do not hear so much now, that civil servants, of all members of the community, should not be paid beyond a certain sum, and we got to the point that civil servants are to be used as a medium for the resuscitation of business but at limited salaries that no business man would tolerate. Yet when it comes to putting civil servants into certain positions criticism is made that civil servants are people who are trained in subordination and are not men of known independence. I dealt with that point at sufficient length last night and I do not intend to deal further with it now.
The Deputy criticised the Electricity Supply Board accounts on one point, and arising from that point he asked me a general question as to whether I was satisfied that the information given of the Board's activities was adequate, and particularly if I was satisfied with the published reports. I am satisfied with the published reports dealing with the two years to which they refer. I have already dealt at some length with criticisms of a helpful nature that were passed in the Seanad with regard to both the accounts and the reports, and have agreed that the reports and the accounts could be enlarged and clarified in years to come. I also had the agreement of the Seanad that it would be unwise to press or to have pressed the Board to include in each volume particular material. As to the remarks that the auditor has passed with regard to house installations, it is not my business to decide whether that matter is satisfactory or not. All I can do is to set out the form of accounts. I cannot go into all the details that may be required in a big body like the Electricity Supply Board. If in years to come similar comments were to be passed with regard to the allocation of expenditure on a single item like house installations, I think there would be something unsatisfactory, something wrong, about the development of the procedure of the Board. But taking into consideration everything that the Board had to do in the period over which the accounts run, I think the fact that the two reports and the two sets of accounts are presented with only three comments by the auditor, adverting to three things that he considered worthy of comment, is in itself rather a striking tribute to the work of the Board.
I would have much preferred that if there was to be any discussion of the Electricity Supply Board's activities, as evidenced in the reports and accounts, it would have taken place on questions arising out of the reports rather than on this Estimate, because there has been a policy—a policy that has been very well adhered to, even when people asked questions in this House—of keeping apart as much as possible the Electricity Supply Board from the Executive Council, or even from the House, except on the yearly presentation of the accounts. Bringing this in on a Minister's Vote rather tends to give rise to the belief that the Board is like a State Department—under the control of the Minister—and that is not a fact. It is clearly not a fact as the law is at the moment. It cannot be established as a fact, and nothing should happen in this House to give rise among people outside to the unjustifiable belief that the reverse is the case. At any rate, I can say, with regard both to the Shannon Scheme project on the constructional side and the operations of the Board since, that there has been a very marked disinclination on the part of certain would-be critics to discuss these things here, where arguments could be dissected and met, and there is rather an inclination to have casual remarks thrown out thoughtlessly at hole-and-corner meetings in the country where no attention can be paid to them.
The Deputy referred to the Trade Loans Act. The Minister for Finance, in dealing with the Finance Bill yesterday, said that the extension of that Act for a further year was under consideration. The big fact that weighs against its extension is that there has not been a single application in the past twelve months under that Act. Nevertheless, the whole circumstances of the time will be weighed and a decision will be taken as to its extension.
