When I reported progress last night I was referring to the strong case which has been submitted by the Waterford staff for an improvement in the classification of the office. I am glad that Deputy Little is in the House this morning.
Committee on Finance. - Vote No. 63—Posts and Telegraphs (Resumed).
Question again proposed:—
That a sum not exceeding £1,300,514 be granted to complete the sum necessary to defray the Charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1936, for the Salaries and Expenses of the Office of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (45 and 46 Vict., c. 74; 8 Edwd. 7, c. 48; 1 and 2 Geo. 5, c. 26; the Telegraph Acts, 1863 to 1928, etc.); and of certain other services administered by that Office.
He was.
If any more convincing evidence of the truth of my contention is needed, it is to be had in the early departure of the Deputy from the House. In February, 1933, the Government had apparently made up its mind that the classification of the Waterford Post Office was to be improved. There were only two conditions necessary, one, that the people of Waterford should return Deputy Little, and the other, that the Fianna Fáil Party should be returned to power. Both these conditions have been fulfilled. If anything has happened in the meantime it is that the Government have had abundant evidence to reinforce them in their decision to improve the classification of the Waterford Office. But notwithstanding that the conditions prescribed by Deputy Little in February, 1933 have been fulfilled, and the Government have been in office for a period of over two years since that declaration was made, no decision has yet been arrived at so far as the improvement of the classification of the office is concerned.
This claim by the Waterford Post Office staff for an improvement in their classification has been continued since 1908 and, if there is no favourable decision on their claim now, the agitation will continue as fresh as ever. I hope, however, that the Minister is by now convinced of the justice and the reasonableness of the claim, and I hope also that the decision, which I have no hesitation in saying I believe to be a Party decision, communicated by Deputy Little in February, 1933, to the people of Waterford, will be implemented without further delay. If there are any difficulties in the way of putting that decision into operation, I hope that the Minister, convinced of the undeniable justice of the Waterford staff's claim, will take off his coat, so to speak, and have these obstacles to improved classification speedily removed.
Last year I raised the question of the hours of work of certain Post Office grades. It is 26 months since the Minister was asked to reduce the hours of work of the staff employed in the Post Office Stores Department. Subsequent to that, he was asked to reduce the hours of work of the grades in the Post Office Engineering Department. There seems to be some inexplicable slothfulness in implementing those ideal conditions which Ministers are prone to envisage when speaking outside the House or acting in a non-Ministerial capacity. We have the spectacle of the Minister for Industry and Commerce going to Trinity College and telling the Fianna Fáil Cumann there that he believes in shorter working hours as one of the remedies for unemployment. We have frequent declarations by the same Minister that he has faith in the efficacy of a reduction of working hours as a means of lessening the unemployment problem.
Recently, in connection with a dissertation on his Conditions of Employment Bill, he said it was proposed to fix a maximum of 48 hours a week, but that he hoped that that would be the maximum and that the minimum would be much less than 48 hours a week. If the Minister for Industry and Commerce, the man charged with the regulation of industrial conditions in the country, believes that the working hours should be less than 48 hours each week—and presumably he speaks with the authority of the Cabinet in that respect—I would like to know from the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs what difficulty there is in implementing these conditions in the Post Office service of which the Minister for Industry and Commerce talks so glibly outside. If the Minister for Industry and Commerce believes that outside employers should reduce the working week below 48 hours, surely the Government ought to set an example in respect of their own employees. With regard to the Engineering and Stores Department grades, they have a working week which is four hours longer than that worked by employees in private industry. The Minister can have abundant evidence to prove that statement and it seems extraordinary that it must take 26 months for the Post Office Department to make up its mind to do what private employers have long since done and what the Minister for Industry and Commerce urges the remainder of private employers to do.
I hope the Minister will now set a good example and endeavour to get the Government as a whole to set a good example in respect to conditions of employment in their own Departments. It seems to be nothing but sheer nonsense for the Minister for Industry and Commerce to be asking private employers to reduce the working week to 44 hours while the Post Office continues to employ people for a period of 48 hours a week. I hope that in his reply the Minister will be able to tell us that he has made some move within the last 26 months and that we will not have to wait another 12 months for the implementation of very necessary reforms.
I referred on a previous occasion to the grave evil of part-time labour in the Post Office service. There are at present 3,800 people employed in a part-time capacity in the Post Office service, and a picture of their plight from a wage point of view can be gauged from the fact that 3,745 of them have wages not exceeding 30/- per week. Of that number over 3,000 have wages not exceeding 25/- per week. That is the spectacle of State service that we are presented with in this House—over 3,000 people with less than 25/- a week, and 3,745 persons with less than 30/- per week. These people are engaged serving the State. They are engaged in performing responsible duties for the State. They are entrusted with the custody of money, of negotiable securities and valuable articles sent by one citizen to another or one firm to another. And this is the rate of wages they are paid for discharging those responsible duties.
The biggest portion of that problem is that which concerns the auxiliary or part-time postmen in the country. While there are natural difficulties to be surmounted in dealing with and remedying that problem these difficulties are not by any means insurmountable. The Post Office is urged to amalgamate vacant part-time duties with surviving part-time duties and if that were done a considerable impression would be made in a short time upon the evil of short-time or part-time labour. The Minister has been urged to restore the daily frequencies of deliveries in cases where daily frequencies of deliveries were substituted by a two-or three-day a week delivery. But the Minister continues delivery services of that kind which were introduced 12 years ago. That was at a time when it was said that there was a deficit of £1,000,000 on the Post Office service. These circumstances have long since ceased to exist. The Post Office cannot now plead poverty and they cannot now plead the deficit as a reason for continuing a two or three-days per week deliveries, because the whole financial position of the Post Office has been completely transformed in the meantime. I suggest that the daily frequency of deliveries should be restored. In that way, not only will the community be assisted by more frequent deliveries but it will be possible to provide additional employment for part-time postmen as a result of the restoration of the daily deliveries.
What is the Minister going to do in respect of part-time employees? Is he satisfied that it is fair for the State to employ 3,000 persons at a wage of less than 25/- a week? Is he satisfied to employ 3,745 people at a wage of less than 30/- per week? Is that his conception of the Christian Social State that the Government stands for? I know the Minister will be advised to say, or that he will say of his own volition, that these are only part-time employees. What facilities will a part-time employee get in respect of purchasing bread, milk, meat or any other commodities? When his landlord comes for his rent on Saturday or Monday the part-time employee cannot offer him half the rent and say: "I am only a part-time employee, and there is half your rent." The part-time employee has got to pay rent the same as anybody else; and he has to pay the same price as other people for his foodstuffs and clothing. The Minister knows it is impossible for these people to secure employment in the outside labour market, because there are already 135,000 people registered as unemployed, and these people are available to render service at all hours of the day. What chance has the part-time employee of securing employment in competition with those who are available at any time at which the employer may need them? At any rate many part-time postmen are employed at any time from 12 to 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The only employment which they could accept outside would be a few hours in the morning. The Minister knows that it is impossible for them to get employment at that time. It is impossible for the part-time employees in the Post Office to get any sort of part-time employment now, especially when you have 135,000 people registered as available for employment. So convinced is the Post Office of the fact that these men cannot get outside employment, that they have now ceased to keep any record as to whether the part-time postmen have any outside employment. The Minister himself stated in reply to a question in this House last year that the Post Office had now no particulars of whether part-time employees had any outside employment. The Post Office is, therefore, sheltering behind the disgraceful subterfuge that these people can obtain outside employment. The Minister ought to realise the fact that the Post Office takes the best portion of the day out of these people's time, and that it is impossible for them to get outside employment. Since they are entitled to a living wage, and entitled to be able to provide for themselves, their wives and families, and since they serve the State faithfully, efficiently and zealously, the Minister ought to realise in respect of these people that there is a strong case for taking every possible step to abolish part-time employment by providing as much fulltime employment as possible.
The British Postmaster-General recently undertook to absorb 3,000 auxiliary postmen in London within three years. It may be difficult for the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to enter into keen competition with the the British Postmaster-General in that respect, but the Minister does not propose to absorb even one auxiliary postman into the establishment. The Postmaster-General in England is a Tory Postmaster-General, and the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs would be highly offended if I put him into the category of a Conservative Minister. The Minister would claim to be a Radical, if not a revolutionary, Minister.
Oh! after last Sunday.
I would like to see some of the mentality of a Radical Minister, if not a revolutionary Minister, being brought to bear on this problem of part-time labour in the Post Office. The Minister should not be looking on helplessly at what the Minister in England does as against what he is not doing here. If the Minister could only make up his mind to act with some courage in that matter it would be better for the country.
I noticed in the Press on Monday last that the Minister was in Boyle on Sunday. There he was confronted with a resolution from the Ballinameen delegates to the Fianna Fáil meeting in his constituency. There was a considerable amount of arithmetical extravagance in the composition of the resolution which was presented to the Minister. One portion of it refers to the fact that:
"Peace and content cannot be in this country while one section is working hard and cannot work out a living and another is getting 400 per cent over pre-war rates of pay."
That arithmetical wizard ought to be brought to the Department of Statistics as soon as possible. He should not have his mental energies wasted in Ballinameen working out the percentages that he presented to the Minister at Boyle on Sunday last. I do not know whether the Minister was in sympathy with that resolution or whether he was resisting that resolution. At all events the Ballinameen delegates either by persuasion or coercion succeeded in extracting from the Minister a declaration that the scales of salaries in this country were too high for an agricultural country. So that we have the Ballinameen delegates telling the Minister that there are certain people in this country receiving an increase of 400 per cent on their pre-war rates of pay. I wonder did the delegates tell the Minister who these particular people were. It looked from the Minister's reply as if the delegates thought everybody in the Civil Service and the Post Office was getting an increase of 400 per cent. over pre-war rates of pay. Apparently, they succeeded sufficiently in upsetting the Minister to get a declaration from him that the scales of salaries for civil servants were too high for an agricultural country. I do not know what grades the Minister had in mind when making that declaration.
Possibly the Ministerial grades.
I do not know whether he had the Post Office in mind. But the Minister might have told the Ballinameen delegates that nobody in the Post Office service can get an increase of more than 55 per cent over his basic pre-war rate of pay; that grades with a basic wage of £3 or £3 10s. per week get an increase of only 40 per cent. over pre-war rates of pay, notwithstanding that the current cost-of-living index figure is returned at 55 per cent. over the July, 1914, level. If the Minister had told the Ballinameen delegates that, I must say that at least one "0" in any case would have dropped off the 400 per cent. referred to in the resolution. I should like to know from the Minister what grades he had in mind when talking at Boyle about the scales of salary being too high for an agricultural country. I want to know whether the Minister's declaration in that respect is to be taken as superseding the Fianna Fáil manifesto of February, 1932.
That is only a statement.
And whether it is to be taken as substituting the President's Rathmines Town Hall speech in 1932.
Play fair.
Mr. Boland
Leave him alone. He has to make his case.
The Minister should have taken down the Fianna Fáil manifesto to Boyle last Sunday and also have read for the Ballinameen delegates the President's declaration of 9th February, 1932, as follows:—
"We do not propose to seek economies by restricting the social services or by cutting the salaries of the middle and lower grades of the civil servants. These salaries are in most cases barely sufficient to meet the costs of maintenance of a home and the support and education of children."
Could there be any more convincing answer to the Ballinameen delegates than to tell them of the President's declaration of February, 1932? Part of the Fianna Fáil programme on which it was claimed they were returned, and have now a mandate, according to the President, was to implement this declaration, namely, no cuts in the salaries of the middle or lower grade civil servants. Speaking at the Town Hall, Rathmines, the President made this statement:
"It is not our idea to start cutting the lower salaries. I have often expressed the view that £1,000 was the limit, but with regard to the smaller salaries of £300 and £400 I hold that those in receipt of them are getting nothing excessive. These are not the salaries I had in mind for the cut. We could always feel certain that these smaller salaries were being spent inside the community, and for necessaries, while much of the larger salaries were spent outside the community and often on luxuries."
These are two sensible declarations by the President. What I am concerned about, however, is whether the Minister's speech at Boyle on Sunday is to be taken as a cancellation of these two sensible declarations, because we are entitled to know whether the manifesto is being corrected, whether there is any change of policy, and what grades the Minister had in mind when making his speech in Boyle last Sunday. Had he in mind, for instance, people with £300 and £400 per annum and less— of course, the bulk of them have very much less—the people whose salaries, as the President stated, are barely sufficient to meet the costs of maintenance of a home and the support and education of children, or what kind of salaries had he in mind? I should like to have some information from the Minister on that aspect of the matter, so that we can see this Boyle speech in proper perspective and realise whether there has been any fundamental change in the Fianna Fáil Party's attitude towards civil servants' salaries.
The Minister had presented to him on 24th September last year a wage claim on behalf of the staff employed in his Department. It is now nearly eight months since that claim was presented and, in view of the evidence submitted in the claim of widespread poverty and underpayment of the Post Office staff, it ought not to have taken a well-organised and well-staffed department like the Post Office eight months to make up its mind to remedy the obvious injustice which was pointed out to the Minister in that claim. The Minister knows that the whole of the Post Office staff is seething with indignation at the delay on the part of the Department in coming to a decision on the claim presented. I tell the Minister that there is grave and growing unrest amongst the Post Office staff at the failure of the Department adequately to meet the case presented to the Minister for an increase in wages.
That is why they are increasing the police force.
They rightly pay the police force 150 per cent. over pre-war rates, but the Post Office staff only receive 40 per cent. over pre-war rates. Apparently, so far as the Government are concerned, policemen are much more important to them than postmen. I should like to know from the Minister what are his intentions in respect of the claim submitted to him; when does he hope to give a decision in the matter; and what does he propose to do to relieve the obvious poverty and distress which abounds in the Post Office to-day as a result of the low-wage policy of the Post Office Department? After all, there is need for an expeditious consideration of the claim submitted, because Post Office wages have shown a constant downward tendency since 1921, and even since 1932 the income of the Post Office staff has been substantially reduced.
If one wanted further evidence of the condition of Post Office employees one might get it by a reference of the Irish Press of 11th May, 1934, where it was stated that an auxiliary postman in the Blackrock area, whose wages were only £1 0s. 7d. a week, applied to the Rathdown Board of Assistance for home assistance to supplement his Post Office earnings. He had a wife and seven children to support, and his wages were £1 0s. 7d. per week. So poverty-stricken was this unfortunate public servant that he had to go to the Rathdown Board of Assistance and ask for home assistance to enable him to supplement the niggardly wages which he received from the Post Office. He so convinced the Rathdown Board of Assistance that he was in urgent need of some form of financial aid that they gave him a weekly allowance of 10/-, one member of the Board remarking that it was shameful that a public institution like the Post Office should pay such starvation rates of wages. I do not think the Minister or the Post Office Department could find any consolation in having a case of that kind reported in the Press, where a Post Office official, engaged in handling cash, negotiable securities, acting as a servant of the community, should be compelled to go to a board of assistance to try to get something to supplement the starvation wages which he received from the Post Office. There is another case which I should like to quote for the Minister and the House that is indicative of the underpayment of the Post Office staff. Recently an auxiliary postman employed in a city office wrote to the Post Office Workers' Union as follows:—
"I beg to put this case before you and to know could the Union do anything on my behalf. I would also like you to treat the matter as very urgent. I am an auxiliary and a member of the Union since I took up duty nearly four years ago. I have a wife and five children to support, and the pay on my official walk amounts to 21/9 per week. I pay 7/6 a week for an unfurnished room and when there is coal, light, milk and other necessaries I have nothing left for food and clothes. I have tried by every means to better myself and have failed. My children are ill-fed and ill-clad. My wife has been sick for the greater part of the year. Poverty and suffering have nearly made an invalid of her. I have one little girl of four on the declining list for the past six weeks, and at present she could not be worse. My wife is also sick. I cannot do anything for them as there is nothing to give them. They cannot get any nourishment. My pay every week does not take me past Monday and we are starving the remainder of the week. The few pounds we get during the Christmas go to pay for bills which have been incurred since I became an auxiliary postman, and which I was not able to meet due to my low wages. I am in dire circumstances with two sick people on my hands and nothing to give them and nowhere to get anything. I think I have suffered enough on behalf of the Government, and human nature cannot stand it any longer, so I hope you will take up this case for me and try to get something done on my behalf. I cannot leave the service as I have nothing to fall back upon and would not get relief unless through dismissal."
There is the plight of a person employed in a city office, and in the public service, one who serves the community faithfully and zealously. The plight of that unfortunate man, after paying 7/6 weekly for an unfurnished room, is that he has to try to maintain his wife, himself and five children on 14/3 per week. That is the problem the Minister is asked to remedy in the wage claim presented to him. I hope the Minister will remember cases of that kind; and remember that they can be multiplied by the thousand, if he wants evidence of the same widespread poverty.
Mr. Boland
By the thousand?
By the thousand.
Mr. Boland
Draw it mild.
Yes, by the thousand. Has the Post Office any rebutting evidence regarding the problem typified in the Galway case? I should like to know from the Minister whether the rate of wages paid in the case I quoted is a rate which can come into the category of a living wage.
Is the Deputy against the part-time system of employment?
I am against the part-time system of employment at the rates of wages at present paid under that system. I should like to know whether the rate of wages is regarded as a living rate of wages, because the State has no right to pay anything less than a living rate of wages. The Minister will hardly contend that the rate of wages quoted by me is too high for an agricultural country. He will hardly contend that to depress still further the sweated rate of wages paid to these people is calculated in any way to help the agricultural industry. I cannot see how the agricultural industry can be made rich by making its potential customers poor. Even if the Minister were to divide the existing low rate of wages in the Post Office by ten I cannot see in what way he could help the agricultural industry, because many people of the class I have quoted in Blackrock and elsewhere are not able to buy agricultural produce because of their low rates of wages. If they had decent wages they would contribute more to the economic rehabilitation of the agricultural industry than they could possibly do with the existing poverty-stricken rate. The Minister was concerned at the idea that these cases could be multiplied.
Mr. Boland
I am quite certain they could not, and so is the Deputy.
I am perfectly positive that they could, and, if necessary, I will quote abundant information to prove my statement.
Mr. Boland
I defy the Deputy to do it.
To get a picture of the wage groupings in the Post Office, there are 8,400 persons employed in what are generally called the manipulative grades. When we look at the wage groupings of persons in that category, probably the Minister will realise that much more evidence can be produced than he thinks is available. There are in the Post Office 4,131 persons with a wage not exceeding 30/- per week. Is that a living wage for these people? If over 4,000 people are paid a wage not exceeding 30/- a week, is it not obvious to everybody that the plight of such homesteads is not one to be envied? Is it not quite obvious that 30/- is incapable of providing a decent standard of living for a family?
Are they scattered all over the country?
Yes. Of the 4,000, 3,000 have a wage less than 25/- a week. What condition, other than a poverty-stricken condition, can prevail in families where a man, wife and children have to try to live on less than 25/- weekly? But there are over 2,000 of these people with wages less than 20/- per week. One can just picture the comforts of a homestead into which not more than 20/- per week goes. Altogether, out of a total personnel of 8,411 employees there are 4,131 in receipt of wages not exceeding 30/- weekly. If the category is extended to 40/- a week, an extra 500 are added to the 4,000; if you extend the amount to 60/-, an extra 2,281 persons are added; and if you extend it to 80/- a week, an extra 1,000 persons are added. These figures—they are official figures—show that out of a personnel of 8,411 only 358 have combined wages exceeding 80/- weekly. But again, let us remember that over 4,000 persons have less than 30/- a week. I challenge the Minister and I challenge the Post Office Department to find any industry, any commercial establishment, or any other Department of State which employs a personnel of 8,411 persons, paying only 358 officials wages in excess of £4 a week. In every other Department there has been much more generous recognition of the claims of the staff to decent wages. As Deputy O'Higgins said last evening, the Post Office has always been regarded as the Cinderella of the services, not merely in respect of showing the services which it has for sale, but it has been the Cinderella also in respect of the low rate of wages which it has paid to the Post Office staff. In my opinion, the condition of affairs disclosed in any impartial examination of those wages ought to make the Post Office very uncomfortable indeed, because that state of affairs would be a reflection on the most greedy and grasping private employer. When the State enters into competition with individuals of that kind and pays rates of wages which would merit strong condemnation if they were paid in a private firm, the State has good reason to feel unhappy. I have told the Minister of the plight of this unfortunate man in Blackrock—forced to apply for home assistance to supplement the sweated rate of wages which he receives from the Post Office Department. I have told him also of the case of a family of seven trying to exist on 14/3 per week. The information that £35,000 was the surplus on the Post Office last year, and that for the year 1934-5 the financial position had considerably improved, makes strange reading in contrast with the plight of those unfortunate people who are compelled to work for a sweated rate of wages.
I say definitely to the Minister that it is nothing short of a crying shame against all justice and equity that the Post Office should have made a profit of £35,000 for 1933-4 and a still greater profit for 1934-5 in face of the plight of this unfortunate person in Blackrock, and of the plight of the other person whose case I have quoted. The Post Office ought to be ashamed to make a profit while it exploits its staff at low rates of wages as it does to-day. Such efforts as have been made to balance the Post Office Budget, as compared with the position in 1922, have been made largely at the price of horrible sacrifice by the Post Office staff.
We recently had a declaration from the President that it was one of the cardinal principles of the Government's policy to improve the conditions of the workers, and to give them a reasonable measure of comfort. Is it not time that the man in Blackrock whom I have mentioned got a reasonable measure of comfort? Is it not time that the other people whose cases I have quoted got some taste of the cardinal principle of improving the conditions of the worker? If that is really intended to be a serious declaration of policy by the Government, then I suggest that they ought to start at once on the Post Office service; that they ought to do something to improve the notoriously low rate of wages which obtains there; that they ought to do something to remove the rightful reproach at present levelled against the Post Office that it pays its staff lower than any other branch of the State service— that it employs persons under conditions and at rates of wages which would be rightly condemned if they were paid by a private employer. If, as the President says, it is one of the cardinal principles of the Government's policy to improve the conditions of the workers and to give them a reasonable measure of comfort, then there is abundant opportunity for the immediate application of that policy to the underpaid staff of the Post Office. I hope the Minister, when replying on this Estimate, will give some indication to the House that it is proposed to remedy the underpayment which at present exists, and that some serious steps will be taken to improve the wage position of the Post Office employees. I can assure the Minister, from close personal contact with them and an intimate knowledge of their grievances and of their conditions of living, that widespread poverty abounds amongst the Post Office workers; they measure their official lives in terms of poverty and not in terms of the comfort to which the President refers. The Minister would be doing a good day's service for the Post Office administration, a good day's service for the community, and doing much to indicate that he has no sympathy with the present wage rates, if he could tell the House to-day that he hopes at some date in the near future to be able to substantially to increase the present low rates of wages which are paid in the Post Office service.
This is the morning on which Deputy Norton does his stuff. He comes in here and for 45 minutes repeats himself about the rates of wages which are being paid by the base and bloody Fianna Fáil Government, which is sweating and grinding down the working man. But every fortnight he is having consultations with the Fianna Fáil Government. Every week he is out clamouring in the country that the Fianna Fáil Government should be kept in office, and that they are the noblest, finest and most patriotic Government that ever existed, but once in the 12 months he comes in on Friday morning and for 45 minutes tells the boys at home: "I am looking after your interests. Watch me wallop Jerry Boland." I am suggesting that this is the language Deputy Norton would use at a trade union meeting. I need hardly say that when referring to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs in the House I would appropriately describe him. Is it any comfort to hear Deputy Norton wailing about the iniquities of the Post Office when he himself is largely responsible for the maintenance of the present Government?
It was your Government fixed the rates of wages.
To-morrow morning Deputy Norton could make an end of that Administration by voting against the Government, but for two weary years he has sustained them in office. He clamours that he had been given promises three years ago which have been ruthlessly broken; that the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs had shown contempt for the undertakings given by President de Valera at Rathmines and elsewhere. Does that provoke the genuine indignation of Deputy Norton? Not a bit of it. He knows the whole thing is a gigantic fraud, and he is co-operating in the fraud, but once a year he gets up to wrap himself in a white sheet and say: "I am not responsible for it; the person responsible is that awful rascal, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs." I thoroughly agree with Deputy Norton that many of the rates of wages paid in the Post Office are too low, but I can assure him that he does not wring my withers when he talks of the appalling scandal of having 4,000 men in the employment of the Post Office with wages not in excess of 30/. There are 40,000 small farmers in this country who, as a result of the activities of Deputy Norton and the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, have not got 15/- a week, and it is those farmers who are being asked to pay the very Post Office employees on whose behalf Deputy Norton is speaking.
The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs is at last awakening to the fact, as he did at Boyle, that if the farmers are beggared not only must he cut the civil servants' salaries but he will have to cut his own salary, reduce the social services, and eventually reduce the standard of living of everybody in this country to that which was so aptly described by Deputy Norton as a standard of living which would disgrace Babylonian slaves. I have been trying to make that clear to the Minister for three years. I have been trying to make it clear to Deputy Norton for three years, but both of them seem to think that you can trample the agricultural community into the dust, reduce them to a standard of living which is far worse than that of slaves, and at the same time, get out of their pockets the wherewithal to pay everybody else in the State a living wage. When I see Deputy Norton getting up here and dragooning the Minister for Agriculture and the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs for betraying the promises made by Deputy de Valera, I think of the language Deputy Norton used in March, 1932. Bear in mind that in 1932 Deputy de Valera was not the only person who was making promises. Deputy Norton was making a few promises down in Sligo. "During the next five years," says Deputy Norton in 1932, "Labour will be the ginger group in the Dáil." This morning, we had a sample of the annual ginger. For the remainder of the year, it is a very insipid kind of watery gruel. "During the next five years, Labour will be the ginger group in the Dáil. If Fianna Fáil forgets its promises, out of office it will go in 24 hours." I ask Deputy Norton now if Fianna Fáil have forgotten their promises. Is what Deputy Norton said this morning a fraud or is it true that they have forgotten their promises or gone back on them? If that be true, is Deputy Norton the same kind of fraud that he charges the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs with being? If he is not, when is he going to join with us in throwing that incubus off the backs of the Irish people or does he, in fact, want it to stay on the backs of the Irish people? Does he, in fact, want the system that has reduced the postmen in Blackrock to starvation and misery? Does he want that standard maintained in the country? If he does not, what about the Sligo promise?
May I remove a misunderstanding——
I decline to give way to Deputy Norton. I am quoting from his speech in Sligo. He spoke for 45 minutes this morning and I am going to analyse what he said.
It was your Government fixed the Blackrock rate of wages.
Deputy Norton is indignant at the rates of wages being paid in the Post Office. He is by way of being a Socialist economist, and he will tell you that what really matters is not money wages but real wages. Deputy Norton has for three years been engaged in a conspiracy with the Government to reduce the real wages of the wage earner in this country by a system of wild and irresponsible imposition of tariffs. Practically every manufactured article that it is proposed to make in this country has been raised in price by the present Government to the detriment of real wages in the Government service and every other service.
Mr. Boland
Nonsense.
Deputy Norton conveniently forgot that.
Where are the shades of Griffith which were referred to on those benches a few days ago?
Let Deputies remember that, if you want to raise the cost of living on the people, you must take steps to provide the people with the wherewithal to pay these costs or else you will reduce the standard of living. The case I have made to the Government and to Deputy Norton is that, if common sense prevailed in this country, we would be the best off country in the world and provide the Post Office employee and every other employee with a decent wage. We could do that if we could only succeed in restoring some element of commonsense to the country and some realisation of responsibility to individuals like Deputy Norton.
It is true that a great many of the employees of the Post Office are getting very small wages. That ought to be looked into with a view to effecting a more equitable arrangement in the many cases where the temporary system of employment could be reduced. It is merely injuring the case of the Post Office employees for Deputy Norton to get up and suggest that the temporary employee, working part-time, should get the same wages that a man working whole-time receives. So long as you have the part-time system of employment you cannot expect the part-time employee to get the wage which would clearly be a full living wage for a full working week. I agree that it would be much better if we could get rid of the part-time system altogether and ensure that everybody in the public service would get a living wage for whatever work he did. But Deputy Norton knows as well as I do that, in many rural areas and in the circumstances that arise in the Post Office, it is virtually impossible to provide full-time work for every individual. You have got to resort to the system whereby a man who has spare time over from agricultural occupation or employment of that kind does part-time work as a postman or some minor postal work of that kind. The Minister will, I think, agree with me when I say that in the City of Dublin or places of large population, where a man will not find it easy to get alternative occupation to fill up the remainder of the day, the less part-time work the better for everybody. The Minister ought to address himself vigorously to the abolition of part-time work in urban areas, but in rural areas it may not be possible to get rid of it at all.
To depart for a moment from Deputy Norton's fraudulent froth of this morning, I want to object to a note I have heard sounded on this side of the House as well as on the Minister's side of the House in regard to the Post Office service. It seemed to me that, as this debate went on, the Minister's economies and his desire to spend as little money as he could in providing us with the best service was a thing which was to be decried. It is becoming fashionable both in this country and elsewhere to implore Government Departments to spend all the money they can. "Pour the money out. Is it not a grand thing to spend money?" That is the idea. In my opinion, that is an entirely false philosophy.
I congratulate the Minister on his endeavour to economise in the administration of his Department, but I think it is fair to sound a note of warning. You can go too far and you ought to balance very carefully the demands of a service like the Post Office with the demands of economy, because the Post Office is more or less of a social service. Its social character ought to be kept in mind when you are thinking of it as a commercial unit. But I do not for a moment subscribe to the general condemnation of the Minister for any economies he has effected. On the contrary, I think it is very desirable that the Minister should be constantly vigilant to secure that no waste of public money takes place. He is, I think, deserving of congratulation when it is apparent that he is exercising that vigilance to the limit.
I suggest that there is a danger in the Post Office system here of lying down on the question of development and innovation. I suggested to the Minister 12 months ago that the telephone system throughout the country was inadequate from more view-points than one. The existing trunk service is extremely dilatory. If you book a call to Glasgow, it takes an unconscionable time to get through. I have had occasion to ring up Dublin and Ballaghaderreen from Glasgow and I got through in a few minutes. As the Minister probably knows, in America, if you ring up a city 2,000 miles away you get your call through quicker than you get a local call in the City of Dublin; but if you ring up Dublin from any place which is the distance of a trunk call from this city, it will be anything from 15 to 45 minutes before you get through. Deputy O'Higgins has directed the attention of the Minister to a comparatively short call which took over an hour to get through.
That is one of the objections I have. The second objection that I have to the existing telephone service in rural Ireland is that at the hours when it is most necessary it is not available. Now, here, I think, is a case where the Minister would be justified in asking the sanction of the Dáil for what might appear to be an uneconomic service, and that would be an all-night service in any town with a population of, say, over 1,000, because you must fix some limit, provided you bear in mind that the telephone is available always in the Civic Guard barracks, even in a village. I admit that to do that would be uneconomic and that it would be a charge upon the Post Office Vote, but I believe that its social value would be very great indeed and that it would command the consent of every side of the House to whatever additional expenditure was necessary.
Lastly—and this, to my mind, is the most important of all—I suggested to the Minister twelve months ago that the whole system of charging for trunk calls should be recast. At the present time, no ordinary citizen of the State knows what it costs to call up any town from another town. The result is that a lot of people think that if you want to call up Dublin from the City of Kilkenny it is going to cost, perhaps, 3/-, and they do not bother to enquire what it will cost, and therefore abstain from using the telephone.
When they do find out the cost, they are very often more likely to abstain.
It is quite true, as Deputy MacDermot interjects, that very frequently when they do go to enquire the cost, their determination to abstain is amply confirmed by the information they get, because the charges are prohibitive for the longer calls. I put it to the Minister that in redrafting the scale of charges he has two things to do. One is to popularise the telephone by making it cheap, and the other is to simplify it in order to bring home to the minds of everybody the cheapness you are providing. I ask the Minister to adopt the following rough-and-ready scheme and give it a trial, even though the departmental chiefs will say that it is illogical owing to the way the existing telephone lines run. I ask the Minister to lay it down in future that any call in a city or town where there is an exchange will cost 2d; that any call within the county border will cost 3d; that any call within the provincial borders will cost 6d; and that any call within the jurisdiction of Saorstát Eireann will cost 1/-. If he will give that scheme a trial, I am perfectly certain that he will virtually wipe out the telegraph service, which I am sure he will be very glad to get rid of, and he can use what he will save by the reduction of the telegraph service, or perhaps by its abolition, to help in paying the initial losses in which the Department might be involved by adopting my scheme. I am also perfectly certain that in due course it would prove a remunerative scheme. It may not be possible, at first, to reduce the charges as low as I have suggested, but, if so let it be on a scale of 4d, 6d and 1/3, or something of that kind. The important thing is that the charges should be standard, cheap and attractive.
I would remind the Minister in that connection that it is a scheme of that kind which the Postmaster-General in Britain adopted about three months ago in respect of calls after 7 o'clock at night. Mind you, that arrangement has resulted in certain of the merchants in England calling us up in the country here and abandoning the telegraph. We have had cases of merchants calling us up at 7 o'clock at night and discussing prices and quotations, and doing business with us generally, on the telephone from Glasgow and Liverpool to County Roscommon. So that, the amenity is a valuable one and I have no doubt whatever it would be a great advantage to the trade of the country if these reduced charges were provided and if a rule-of-thumb were laid down by which everybody could ascertain, by a moment's reflection, what any particular call they thought of making would actually cost them.
If you are not going to do something of that kind, you must consider the delivery charges for telegrams in rural Ireland, because they are a most intolerable burden at the present time. However, I do not want to dwell on that, because I am going to stake my money on the Minister taking a bold stand in the matter of the telephone system. But I urge that something should be done in that regard if he is not prepared to do something about the telephones. There is another question I want to ask the Minister. In principle, does the Department prefer to have its own post office, with its own officials in it, in rural towns, or does the Department prefer the system of giving out the post offices in rural towns on contract? It seems to me to be very much preferable to have a post office, with servants of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, administering the system in any town where it is possible, but I suggest to the Minister that there is wide scope for development along those lines. I know of a number of rural post offices at the present time which are understaffed and in which, very frequently, the staff is unskilled. While they are getting along as best they can, great inconvenience is being caused to the public. I think that postmistresses, who take their post offices on contract, have to purchase the stamps from the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. The result is that it is frequently very difficult to get supplies of National Health Insurance stamps and Unemployment Insurance stamps from the postmistress, because she does not care to have in large quantities of these stamps. It is possible that that is not the explanation.
Hear, hear!
Well, I do not know what the explanation is, but I hold that if these post offices were under the direct control of the Minister and his Department, these faults could be much more readily remedied than at present. You frequently find a small telephone exchange in a post office and the postmistress is trying to deal with telegraph work, old age pensions, insurance stamps, and so on, as well as the ordinary post office routine, and the result is that the service is far from satisfactory. Does the Minister propose to extend further the system of offices under his own control and to abolish gradually offices which are set on contract? I strongly urge him to do that.
If the Minister would take his courage in his hands about the telephones it would be a great thing. I do not wish to delay him unduly, but I do respectfully submit to him that he assured me 12 months ago that he was going to examine the scheme which I then outlined to him, but we never heard a word about it since. I submit to him that the lead of the Postmaster-General in Great Britain ought to be followed, and further that, in regard to the wages and conditions of employees in the Post Office service, he ought to set his face against the system of part-time service in towns and cities. Most of us will understand that its abolition in the rural parts of the country is something that cannot reasonably be asked for.
The discussion on this Estimate has taken a wide and peculiar turn, involving major policy. In these debates, when we get an opportunity of reviewing policy and administration, we should endeavour to be as little contradictory of ourselves and of our position here as possible. We should remember that in any criticism we have to offer, we cannot blow hot and cold. Speaking on the general policy of the Post Office itself, I was amazed to find that a profit is made out of it. I do not think that is the British view of the Post Office, and I do not think it is a sound view of Post Office administration. The Post Office is a Department of the Government service, and I think the best view to take of it is that of an auxiliary service for all Government Departments. Therefore, I submit it should not be looked upon as a profit-making concern.
I agree with the principles laid down by Deputy Norton, that a living wage should be paid to Post Office employees. I would be glad if the statistics that the Deputy read out could be contradicted. It was certainly a revelation to me to learn that 4,000 employees in the Post Office are in receipt of under 30/- a week. If any reasonably informed person outside this House had said that I would not have believed it. The Deputy told us also that 3,000 were in receipt of under 25/- and 2,000 in receipt of under 20/-. I quite agree that, apart from the larger principle, the Post Office should aim at giving service to the country rather than at making a profit. I think it is almost criminal to make a profit on sweated wages, as given here by Deputy Norton. I hope that the Minister will be able to contradict those figures, though I accept them until I hear his reply.
They are official figures.
I am not doubting the Deputy's word, but I hope that for the sake of the service the Minister will be able to contradict them.
The Minister supplied them.
Mr. Boland
They are for part-time men.
I hope, at any rate, that the Minister will be able to qualify them in some way. I think that even if the Minister is going to run the Post Office as a profit-making concern, of trying to balance expenditure with income, he should first of all consider reducing postage costs to the level that prevails in Great Britain and in Northern Ireland where the letter rate is 1½d. Here it is 2d. Their charge for telegrams is much lower than ours. I understand that the minimum charge for telegrams, in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, is 6d, while here it is 1/6. I admit that a person may be able to telegraph two or three more words for the 1/6, but most business telegrams never exceed six or seven words. If a minimum charge of 6d. for telegrams were introduced here it would be a great help to business and that would be much better for the country than the making of a few pounds profit on the working of the system over the whole year.
Telephones are dear. I use two, and I cannot agree with the criticism that has been made in this debate about delay in getting my calls through. My telephones are not automatic. I am at the mercy of the lady in the exchange, but I have no complaint to make about the expedition with which I can get my calls through. The unfortunate girl at the exchange has a kind of clamp on her ears, and of course everyone making a telephone call is in a hurry. I quite admit that very often if the ladies in charge of the exchanges at Clontarf or Drumcondra were asked about the mildness of my language they would hardly say it was mild. Sometimes these things happen. I appreciate the nerve-racking position of these ladies having to deal with numerous calls, and, as I have said, every person making a call is in a hurry. In view of that people are not always very tolerant of anything that comes in their way. I think that in the privileged position in which we are here we should be very slow to make complaints about the slowness of the officials in answering our calls at the exchanges unless we have very good grounds for doing so. My own opinion is we should not air our grievances very much here.
I would appeal to the Minister to consider the question of reducing charges. It does not follow that, if the letter rate is reduced from 2d. to 1½d., the Minister is going to lose money. I am sure he appreciates that the reduction would probably lead to an increase in correspondence. Similarly I believe that more telegrams would be sent if the present charges were lowered. The erection of these telegraph wires involves big capital expenditure. The cost of their maintenance is also very heavy. After a storm it is considerable. These wires have to be put up whether one telegram or ten goes over them. I put it to the Minister that a reduction in charges would very probably lead to an increase in the revenue from these services. It might lead to that. I had a telephone prior to the Treaty and, speaking from memory, the cost of it was not a quarter of what it is now.
You had more money then, and you did not notice what you were paying.
Mr. Boland
The Deputy paid more then.
I paid it then so generously that I did not mind. Deputy Norton referred to a case in Blackrock of a postman with £1 0s. 7d. per week, and six or seven children, who applied for help to the Rathdown Board of Assistance. He condemned the miserable wage that the Post Office is paying him—in which condemnation I join —but, unfortunately, this poor postman had to apply to the Rathdown Board of Assistance, which gets its money from the agricultural labourers of that area. I have drawn Deputy Norton's attention several times to the fact that his attitude in this House is responsible for the low wages of agricultural labourers—wages in some cases not as much as the £1 0s. 7d. received by this postman—and yet these agricultural labourers, in their little rates and cottage rents, pay into the Dublin County Council what the Dublin County Council has to dish out to finance the Board of Assistance in Rathdown. Are not the chickens coming home to roost with Deputy Norton?
I sat back in my seat when Deputy Dillon got up to castigate Deputy Norton. I thought we were in for a good, slashing speech from Deputy Dillon in which he would pillory Deputy Norton, but I regretted very much that Deputy Dillon spoiled his speech, which looked so promising in its opening, by making a veiled attack on the protectionist policy of the Government, in saying that real wages are reduced by every tariff that goes on. I challenge Deputy Dillon, or any member on those benches, to deny that 95 per cent. of the electorate of this country—no matter to what Party it gives its allegiance—stands for a protectionist industrial policy in this country.
To a certain extent.
I expressed my view on that when the appropriate Vote was being discussed. The only fault I had to find with the Department of Industry and Commerce—if I may mention another Department—and its tariff policy was the manner in which it is worked, but not the principle of the policy itself. I took it that Deputy Dillon challenged the principle of that policy in his remarks.
Do tariffs reduce real wages or do they not?
Do tariffs build, and have tariffs built, up every country in the world?
The Deputy should answer my question.
This country has to be built up. Tariffs do add a bit to the cost but they are the way to make——
Mr. Boland
On a point of order, might I ask what has this got to do with the Post Office? If we are to discuss free trade and tariffs, where are we going to be?
Deputy Dillon made a passing remark on the effect of tariffs. Deputy Belton has replied and he might let it rest there. Instead of discussing the rebuilding of this State industrially, he might refer to the rebuilding or erection of Post Office buildings and services.
The one in Pearse Street.
I will leave it there. I felt elated when Deputy Dillon made the case that President de Valera two or three years ago made a promise as to the wages of postal servants. He asked Deputy Norton if he was as big a fraud as President de Valera and asked why he did not join with this side of the House in putting out the Government. The answer is contained in Deputy Dillon's next sentence. The country does not want a free trade Administration here and it is advocacy of free trade that keeps the Government in. To quote Deputy MacDermot in Boyle, a couple of months ago: "The greatest support the Government have is the Fine Gael Party." Now, I will pass away from that. Unfortunately, the two Deputies I have mentioned cannot pass away from what they have said.
The Deputy finds some difficulty, too, apparently.
Not a bit of difficulty.
In getting away from that line of argument.
I submit that that is the limit of the passing reference I can make. I asked Deputy Norton, when he was giving the figures as to the rates of wages, whether those employees were spread all over the country and he said they were. I should like a comparison made between the low wages paid with the rate of wages paid in the areas in which they work. The Deputy knows very well that postmen and others throughout the country are drawn from the class of agricultural workers and small farmers' sons and corresponding classes in the towns. Would these people who are paid these small wages have a better wage on the land or in the small towns in employment arising out of the agricultural industry? Do they go into the Post Office because they could not get as good wages on the land? If the Deputy wants to raise the wages of rural postmen and rural postal employees of the class I have referred to, he can only make a case by raising the level of wages in their locality and he will have to examine his conscience as to how far he and his Party are responsible for the low wages in the rural parts of the country.
That is not so. We are not responsible.
Entirely.
I am afraid the Deputy had a finger in the pie and still has a finger in the pie. However, if the Deputy is not responsible, he is not responsible, and there is no point in my argument, but it will be very difficult for the Deputy to convince himself that he has a clear conscience in this respect.
It will not be hard to convince himself but to convince his neighbour.
I convinced my electorate to the extent of getting a bigger vote than the Deputy. He is pretty near the end of the plank by now.
I hope he will tell the agricultural worker in Kildare that he can carry on on a lesser wage than postmen in the country.
I do not say he can.
Has he as good wages as postmen in Co. Kildare; and if he has not, how much has the Deputy contributed towards having the agricultural worker's wage in Co. Kildare below the postman's wage, and how much has he contributed towards disemploying agricultural labourers in Co. Kildare? After all, even trade unions recognise——
The matter before the Committee is the policy and administration of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, not the policy of Deputy Norton.
I am only criticising the criticism of Posts and Telegraphs by Deputy Norton in relation to the low-paid staffs of the Post Office.
The Deputy is trying to find out where the ginger has gone to.
There are no ginger, sweetmeats or confections in this Estimate.
Deputy Norton, to use the picturesque language of Deputy Dillon, was trying to ginger up the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. I am just reminding Deputy Norton that he would want a little bit of ginger himself, in order to try and have his wishes carried out in obedience to generally accepted trades union principle, by having a scale of wages in different parts of the country according to the recognised standard of wages. The recognised standard of wages in the rural parts of the country compares unfavourably with the wages paid to postmen in the rural parts of the country, so that if they are to be lifted up the others must be lifted up also. In lifting the others up a case will be made for lifting the postmen's wages, so that in Deputy Norton's hands more than in any others depends the improvement which may be made by raising the standard of living. Will Deputy Norton do that without in any way compromising the protectionist policy?
I desire to ask a few questions. I differ somewhat from the attitude adopted by Deputy Belton. He addressed most of his questions to Deputy Norton, and indulged in a dialogue with him during most of his speech. I want rather to ask a few questions of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. First of all, I ask him whether he would not consider the advisability and desirability of extending the telephone service by way of cheapening the installation and maintenance of the service. He must be aware that in other countries a big drive is being made in that direction. I understand from those conversant with the history of telephones that many years ago in the United States of America, in order to get telephones into general use, a big drive was made to attract users. I am aware that the cost of installation and maintenance of telephones is relatively high, nowadays, and that on account of the relatively limited number of users the cost could not be reduced. But if a drive was made by the Post Office to double or treble the number of users in the country, then these costs would be considerably reduced. If that were done, I feel that the telephone branch of the service would be a very big asset to the Post Office.
I want to give my personal experience in reference to trunk calls. Trunk calls from Dublin to Cork have been found to be a rather annoying experience to many of us. I want to get a connection, say, with the Department of Agriculture in Dublin by trunk call. The common experience is this. You ring up the Government Department; you have to get the extension number and so on, and by the time you have got into touch with the branch you want, you are politely informed that your time is up, and you have the pleasure of paying over the same amount again. What happens in many such instances is nothing short of a scandal. I suggest to the Minister that he might consider, with other Departments of State, the advisability of issuing a small booklet giving the telephone numbers and extension numbers of the different Departments of State. That is a matter which any ordinary business house would put into practice immediately. If that was done, I might be saved many a 3s. 6d.—a not inconsiderable amount of money at the present time when, as Deputy Belton told us, people in Kildare are working for 7s. or 8s. a week. That is a common experience of others in regard to the telephone as well as myself. By the time you have got the Department you are told that your time is up, and you have to undergo another expenditure of 3s. 6d. I do not want to offer any further comments, except to express the hope that the Minister will look into this matter seriously.
One other matter. We heard a good deal yesterday and again this morning about postal deliveries in rural areas. I do not want to localise this matter but perhaps it is as well that the Minister's Department should be aware of the fact that the postman in charge of the delivery at Blarney has a very big area to cover. He possibly takes three or three and a half hours to go his rounds and he is not allowed to touch the village of Grenagh except on particular days of the week. A very little expenditure on the part of the Department of the Minister would allow a postman to visit that area more frequently. I am aware of the expense that might be involved in giving a reasonable service to those rural areas but, as some Deputy has said, the Post Office cannot be regarded purely as a profit-making concern. It is a public utility and I do not think it was ever intended to be looked upon as a commercial proposition. The Minister has some eye to improvement and I think he could well afford to forget somewhat about profit-making and pay better wages to auxiliary postmen in rural areas. I do not suggest that the Minister should be extravagant, but at the same time the wages paid to some of the auxiliary postmen are simply scandalous. When comparison is made with the wages paid in the agricultural industry we must have regard to the fact that agriculture is in a very depressed condition, due to causes that I am not going into now except perhaps to say mainly due to the policy of the Government. The Minister might consider the position of those postmen in rural areas. Some of them, I am aware, are only part-time servants. But I am speaking rather of the rural postmen who are whole-time servants, and I say it is a remarkable tribute to the integrity and honesty of our rural postmen that leakages by way of petty larceny or theft are very rare. It is poor encouragement that these men should be paid in the way they are paid. I suggest to the Minister that the next time he brings his Estimates before the House he should have regard to the criticisms made on the payment, or rather the underpayment of postmen in those rural areas. I do not expect impossibilities and I do not expect to get blood from turnips, but I expected some improvement might be made in the wages of postmen in rural areas. Before I conclude I would again press upon the Minister the desirability of cheapening and making more attractive the telephone service. I am sure he will agree, and his official advisers will agree, that if we could quadruple the number of telephone users in the country the cost of erection and other expenses could be reduced by half.
I want to say a few words on this Estimate. I want to draw the Minister's attention to the question of night telegraph-letter service. It is in existence, as far as I understand, only in very limited areas in Dublin, Cork and Cobh and I am anxious that it should be extended to Limerick. Some very representative merchants in my constituency have been trying to get an extension of this service to Limerick. They do not see any abiding reason why they would not get the same facilities as are made available in Cork, Cobh and Dublin. We have not been able so far to make much headway with the Department, evidently because anything that involves additional expenditure must be treated as a practical impossibility from the point of view of Post Office policy at the moment. Of course I could not guarantee that the projected service would be an economic service, and neither would the people who have been asking for the extension. As has been stressed by various speakers, there really ought to be some vision in the Post Office and they ought to afford opportunities for extensions of the kind I have suggested where the costs would not be so very considerable. There is every possibility that such a service might develop when improved. As a matter of fact, some of the merchants have informed me that they consider that it is highly essential to their business to be equipped with this form of telegraphic service. Perhaps the Minister will have the matter looked into and perhaps he will consider it himself sympathetically and so help to bring us into line with modern developments in the business world.
Deputy Anthony and other Deputies have referred to the inadequacy of the service in some rural areas. We must, of course, always be reasonable and recognise that it would not be feasible to have frequent services in sparsely populated districts. But there are exceptions, and I fear that the Post Office attitude in too many cases is, "Does it entail additional expenditure?" and, if it does, that is the end of it. There are in my county districts in which creameries are situated and obviously they need a regular and frequent service, particularly if they have orders coming from different parts of the country and also from across the Channel. In some cases they are dependent upon an alternate day service and sometimes they might have deliveries at a late hour.
In one particular instance it was estimated that there could be a regular service established for very little expenditure, about £30 a year. The letters could be delivered at a certain hour in the morning. So far, no effort has been made to establish that service for the convenience of the people in the area concerned. They have been agitating for that service for the last three or four years and I expect they will keep on agitating for it for another couple of years if they do not succeed in having it established in the meantime.
I did not think that it would be necessary for me to make reference to the important question of the payment of Post Office staffs. One would have thought that this matter would have engaged the attention of the Department long ago. There is ample evidence available for a condemnation of the conditions under which some Post Office employees are working and when Deputies address themselves to this matter they are merely voicing the common comments all over the country. It is really deplorable to see the number of men engaged in a responsible service like the Post Office working for the scandalously inadequate pay they are getting. There is really no justification for the way in which the rural postmen and auxiliaries are being paid. Even the part-time workers are wretchedly treated. Their work is such that they are not able to take on other employment and they are mainly dependent on what they get from the Post Office. There is hardly a man in the postal service in the country who is paid a wage that the Minister or the Government could honestly justify.
All the comparisons made here to-day are working back to the agricultural basis. It is remarkable the ingenuity with which the agricultural position and the economic war are brought into almost everything that is discussed in this House. Some Deputies have a facility for relating everything to agriculture and taking agricultural wages as basic. We have every reason, of course, to deplore the low rate of wages paid to agricultural labourers, but at the same time we must take into consideration the relative importance of Post Office work. We must realise the responsible duties which are entrusted to the bulk of Post Office workers. Even the youngest worker is entrusted with the highly responsible duty of carrying the private correspondence of citizens of the State. As a matter of fact, it is a fine tribute to their honesty and integrity that they have carried out their work so efficiently for years under the most harassing conditions.
I welcome the volume of criticism that has been directed to the low wages paid in the case of many grades in the Post Office. I welcome particularly the intervention of Deputy Dillon and I earnestly trust that his contribution to this debate was sincere. I may be pardoned if I feel inclined to challenge the sincerity of Deputy Dillon's interest in Post Office workers. He is not slow in placing some responsibility for low wages on the Labour Party by reason of their assistance to the Government in carrying out their agricultural policy. I would like to remind Deputy Dillon that whether President de Valera or Deputy Cosgrave is head of the State, the Labour Party have always been behind the workers. I would also like to remind him that when the Cuts Bill was going through this House the Labour Party went into the Division Lobbies to vote against it while Deputy Dillon and Deputy MacDermot supported it. I would be quite prepared at any time to welcome the support of any Deputy who comes to the rescue of the unfortunate people who are badly hit, but candidly I do not believe in this imposture on the part of Deputy Dillon. I do not believe there is any sincerity whatever in the statements he has made on behalf of the Post Office workers. If another Cuts Bill were to come in to-morrow I know he would be in the same Lobby as he entered the last time, irrespective of whether the wages of the workers would be economic or not.
Deputy Anthony has correctly described the Post Office service as a public utility, but a public utility is not the same thing as a social service, nor as a benevolent institution, and I think it would be very unfortunate if the idea were adopted by any considerable section of this House that the Department should be run on other than business-like lines. It must be run on business-like principles if it is to be any good. Curiously enough, it generally turns out that an institution that is run on business-like principles is better for all concerned in the end than a service that is run on purely bureaucratic principles, leaving business out of the picture. The telephone and telegraph services in the United States of America, for instance, give about as good service to the public as you could expect any such institutions to give, and yet they are not Government services. They are run by private companies which, year after year, pay good dividends to their shareholders and at the same time contrive to give excellent conditions of employment to the persons employed in those services and to give the most admirable service to the public. Therefore, I do not think that we ought in principle to be shocked because in any given year the Post Office shows a profit. On the contrary, I think the Post Office should try within reason so to conduct their business as to show a profit rather than a loss. You can hardly expect them to have an absolutely even balance; if there is not a profit there is likely to be a loss and if the Post Office is run in a spirit of rather feeble benevolence it will year after year show a loss.
When it does show a profit I cannot take it as a matter of course that the whole of that profit should be immediately expended in improving the wages of auxiliary employees. I cannot pretend to be as familiar with the subject of the conditions of postal employees as Deputy Norton is. I am not prepared to say that cases of hardship do not exist. But I am struck very much by this fact: If it is true that the conditions, say, of auxiliary postmen are so bad as Deputy Norton says, is it not very remarkable that these posts are as eagerly sought after as if they were High Court judgeships? I arrive at that conclusion from the letters I get from constituents imploring assistance whenever there is a vacancy, or whenever there is likely to be a vacancy for an auxiliary postman. That is testimony as to the poverty that now prevails in the country under the benevolent administration of this Government—if the conditions of service are as bad as Deputy Norton maintains.
It is all nonsense to talk of the duty of the Government to give a living wage, in loose terms without differentiating between part-time and full-time employees. It may be desirable to eliminate still more the part-time system. I think probably it is. But so far as the part-time system continues to exist, it is inevitable that the wages paid for part-time work should be considerably lower than the wages paid for full-time work. It does not follow as a matter of course, that if a profit is shown by the Post Office, it should immediately be expended on raising the wages of the employees. The question of raising wages should, of course, be examined on its merits, but other matters should be taken into consideration too. For example, in the speech made by the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs at Boyle, which has been referred to several times to-day, he said, in answer to the famous Ballinameen resolution, that the time would come soon when there would have to be a better balance struck with regard to the imposition of the sacrifices demanded by the economic war.
That always comes in.
In other words, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, according to Deputy Donnelly, deviated into Imperialism and treason for a moment. But when his Department does show a profit there is no doubt he must bear a situation of that kind in mind, and reflect whether that money should not be used in lessening the burden on the farmers, and to that extent taking them out of the front line trenches and putting others in.
Year after year I have complained to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs that the telephone service in this country is generations behind the telephone service in other civilised countries. His invariable excuse is that we cannot expect to give the same service in a little country like Ireland as is given in Great Britain. My invariable reply is that I am not asking him to compare us with Great Britain. I am asking him to compare himself with the Minister for Posts in other small countries. I should like if the Post Office would use a little portion of the profits it has made this year to send off the Minister to such countries as Denmark and Sweden to ascertain what has been accomplished in those countries in extending the telephone. I think on purely economic grounds, apart from public service grounds, that it would be thoroughly wise for the Government to plough back their profits into the telephone service for the purpose of improving, cheapening and popularising it. I would appeal to the Minister to initiate an energetic campaign for popularising the telephone and explaining its advantages to the people of the country. The Minister has two or three times asserted that such a campaign would shortly be started. I think he asserted last year that it was in progress, but if it exists it is conducted in such a hush-hush fashion that its advertising value must be open to doubt.
Its advertising value is like that of the Republic. They are constantly advertising its value but we never get it.
I suggest that the postal services should be run on business lines, including of course proper and Christian treatment for employees. But I also suggest that profits can be advantageously used for advertising the telephone service and that these, if they are so used, will lead in the long run to further profits. In so far as there is any profit available for distribution in the form either of increase in salaries to employees or in the form of increases to the Agricultural Grant or in the form of reduction of general taxation, I would plead that the necessities of other classes of the community besides postal employees should be kept in mind; and that while the rate of wages paid to auxiliary postmen may be low we should not forget the fact that the poverty of the agricultural community under the present dispensation is so great that these jobs are eagerly sought for by large numbers of people whenever they are vacant.
Deputy MacDermot's final remarks are a proof of the progress that the Post Office has been making. It is an unusual thing in any debate on the Post Office to hear Deputies talking about the distribution of profits. Deputy MacDermot's remarks on that subject must be satisfactory to the Minister in so far as they admit the improvement that is being made in regard to the balancing of revenue and expenditure on the Post Office service. But with regard to the very big question of the auxiliary postmen I do not think that the Minister has got much assistance from the debate. Everybody seems willing to talk around it and around it but nobody seems able to say whether the system of auxiliary postmen should be abolished and the expense of letter carrying increased. Even Deputy Norton fought shy of saying what his attitude is in regard to auxiliary postmen. He seems willing to use the figures with regard to their wages in a general way to show that the average wages of the Post Office servants all over the country are very, very low. But he does not for a moment say "do away with part-time employment." In my opinion it is a problem that the Minister will have to face very soon. Theoretically it is the case that these men are only acting as part-time servants of the Post Office and that in many cases they are able to supplement their earnings from the Post Office either by keeping a small farm, a shop, or being partly employed at some other local labour. But, in practice, I think, it is the case that a great many of them are depending upon the wages they get from the Post Office. I hope the Minister will take care, if he continues in the future this system of employing part-time men, to indicate to new entrants that there is no prospect of giving them the remuneration they would get if they were full-time employees and even indicating to them that their services may be dispensed with under a re-organisation scheme which may be necessary. As I said, while theoretically they are only part-time, in fact a great number of them are depending entirely on the wages they are getting from the Post Office. When they marry on that money and find they are not able to support their families on it, there is often a rather serious position because, of course, in the public eye a Government service is not paying them sufficient to maintain their families and to keep a household.
I think it would be worth while considering whether the system of part-time employment should not be ended and an effort made to depend entirely on full-time employees, even if it meant a dearer service for the public. There are very many complaints of that kind reaching every Deputy. The Minister knows that there are men, for instance, who have been 30 years employed as auxiliary postmen, who have never done any other work, whose wages are still on a part-time basis, who are not entitled to any pension and who, generally speaking, are in a position that is not any great credit to the State. So that I suggest the question is one for immediate review by the Post Office authorities.
There is just one other matter which has not been touched upon in this debate and that is the utilisation of the moneys of the Post Office Savings Bank. I think it is admitted that there is a very peculiar anomaly in connection with these funds. Under the system that governs the use of that money the funds have to be invested in certain trustee securities, and I understand the accounts show that a large amount of that money is invested outside the country. At the same time, other institutions, partly Government institutions, where the capital and interest are guaranteed by the Government, have to raise money publicly at a comparatively high rate of interest. It is, of course, rather a matter for the Government as a whole than for the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, but I suggest that there is something anomalous about that position. You have the Agricultural Credit Corporation, for instance, which when its first issue was made was unable to get money from the public even at the high interest of 5 per cent. and at the same time you had public money in the Post Office on which only 2½ per cent. was being paid and which, under the rules governing the control of the Post Office Savings Bank, could not be applied to a purpose of that kind. I believe it was suggested by the last Banking Commission that there should be legislation or, at all events, consideration by the Government of the question of the reorganisation of the Post Office Savings Bank and, particularly, that the Trustee Savings Bank should be brought directly under Government control. I may be a little out of order in suggesting something that requires legislation, but, even if I am, I hope the Minister will make a statement on the matter.
Further, I would be interested to know how far the Minister has succeeded in getting the large amount of money deposited in the British Post Office by Saorstát nationals transferred to our Post Office. At the time the Free State was established I think the amount ran into millions; but since then I understand there has been, to some extent, a transfer of that money to the Post Office here. I should like to get particulars as to the amount still outstanding in that respect, and whether any special effort is being made to induce those who have money deposited in the British Post Office to transfer it to their own country.
I should like to ask the Minister what is the procedure in regard to the filling of part-time vacancies in the Post Office. It has come to my knowledge that certain appointments have been made recently, and that the people appointed could do very well without that work while other people more in need of it were passed over. I am always very slow to interfere in matters of that kind. If the Minister looks up the records I think he will find that he has not got a single communication as far as I am personally concerned in connection with the filling of vacancies in the Post Office. But I have heard so many stories recently of things occurring each week that I think it would be well for the Minister to state whether it is he makes these appointments, or the officers in charge of the areas in which the appointments are made. I am not going to single out individual cases but, certainly, one or two which have been brought to my notice were really unjust, if you look at the matter from a humane point of view. One young man with a family was passed over for a part-time job at about 18/- a week, and it was given to a young man of 18 or 19 whose father had a constant job at something like £3 a week, while other members of the family were also earning.
Is this in Dundalk?
Outside it. I would disdain to put that down to political influence. I am not built that way, and I just leave it to the Minister to make inquiries.
I hope he will make inquiries in the neighbourhood of Ballyshannon.
I never took any part in recommending anyone for a job, and up to the present I have sufficient confidence in the Minister and his Department to think that they will do the right thing.
Where innocence is bliss 'tis folly to be wise.
As to the post office accommodation in Dundalk, I think, owing to the very big increase in the volume of business done there, the accommodation is becoming somewhat cramped. I would suggest to the Minister that possibly this would be an opportune time to have a consultation with the Minister for Industry and Commerce and the Minister for Finance as to acquiring a site convenient to the post office on which could be erected general offices which would provide adequate accommodation, not alone for the Post Office, but for the officials of other departments who are at the moment housed in temporary premises in the town. I throw out that suggestion to the Minister in the hope that he may act upon it.
As regards the big question raised by Deputy Norton of the wages paid to part-time officials, it cannot be denied that what it states is true. While I agree that the wages paid are very inadequate, when I consider the condition of this country and the way in which people are placed, I think it is possibly not fair to criticise unduly the Minister and his Department. This is a small country, very sparsely populated, and that being the case it is very difficult to have everything in apple-pie order. If we are to have additional services we must pay for them. There again I can see the Minister's difficulty in finding the money. It is either a question of dispensing with part-time postmen or making permanent whatever number is required. When speaking of the remuneration of these auxiliary postmen it is well to remember one fact, that this is part of the price we have to pay since we set up our own Government. I do not say that from any slavish point of view, but it is well to remember it. I am sure Deputy Norton and Deputy Donnelly will agree with me in this, that when we were connected with Great Britain the Post Office made a profit each year, for the simple reason that Great Britain is thickly populated and is a great industrial country, and as a unit of a great system we shared in the profits, although the working of the service in Ireland showed a loss——
Do you want to go back?
——just as a big business might show a profit in most departments and a loss on one particular section. I am mentioning that to show the difficulties of the Minister in administering the Department at present. It would be very easy to get up and criticise wages. I am not going to do that, as I prefer to consider the difficulties under which the Minister is labouring. Having set up our own Government, and cut ourselves adrift from Great Britain, a rich and highly industrialised country, we cannot have the same services, and the sooner that is realised the better it will be for all concerned. I would like to see these men well paid. I agree with what has been said about the rates of pay of part-time postmen but the question will eventually depend on whether the only solution is to dispense with them altogether or to make permanent whatever number is necessary to deliver letters throughout the country. As far as I can see, that is the only way out of the difficulty. I realise that it is practically impossible for the men to exist on the wages paid. I know of one or two cases where the men are only paid 7/6 weekly and only work every other day. The unfortunate thing about it is that while they are receiving 7/6 they are ineligible for benefit under the Unemployment Assistance Act. That position may be looked into in the near future. Many of these men have a good deal of responsibility placed upon them, in seeing that the letters are delivered in time, so that while the job may be only part-time it is a responsible one. I am sure the Minister will give serious consideration to the suggestions that have been made in regard to the service and the payment of auxiliary postmen. It is a question that requires serious consideration. There have been arguments for and against. There are many men glad to get this work at present. That is evident from the number of applications but it would not be fair for the Government to take advantage of their circumstances. The large number of applicants should not act as an incentive to the Department to pay whatever wages it chooses. I hope the Department is not taking advantage of that fact and that it will do what is fair, by taking into consideration the present position of the employees of the Post Office.
I want to refer to a matter that was introduced by Deputy O'Higgins last evening concerning delay or interference with letters passing through the post. It is a most aggravating and despicable form of interference. Some short time ago I received a letter and from an examination of the date inside, as well as the postmark on the envelope, it was clear that the letter had been tampered with. I would not mind that, as one swallow does not make a summer, and one letter does not condemn a whole system. However, in face of something else that happened in the case of another letter coming from within a radius of 10 miles, I thought it my duty to the public service to protect correspondence from interference when passing through the post, to write to the postmaster in Lifford. I asked him to make inquiries or to get some explanation if he could of what occurred and why the letter was opened. I got a reply from the Minister at Leinster House last week. I was so indignant with it that I tore it up and threw it into the wastepaper basket. The reply pointed out that after full inquiries had been made at Leinster House the Minister was convinced that no unnecessary delay was caused in the delivery of the letter. I did not address that query to the Department. I did not ask the Department why the letter was tampered with at Leinster House. I did not suggest that it was. I suggested that the letter was tampered with elsewhere. When I received the reply I saw the superintendent at Leinster House, Colonel Brennan, who explained to me that it was possible, when the letter was sorted, that it was handed to another Deputy who opened it by mistake, kept it perhaps for a day or two and then returned it. That is a reasonable explanation.
In the case of the other letter it was not opened here because it was delivered at my house. I received a letter last September from an eminent firm of solicitors in County Donegal in which they referred to a letter that they had written to me about a month earlier asking me if I had done anything about the subject mentioned in it. It was not a professional letter but was with regard to a Departmental affair. Knowing that this is a very eminent firm of solicitors that I have known for years, I jogged my memory to see if I had not attended to their request. I had a search made at home to see if such a letter had been received and I could not get any trace of it. I returned the firm's letter as well as the envelope and assured them that I had not received their previous letter. About a month afterwards I received the first letter that had been addressed to me. I sent it back to the firm and they agreed that it had been addressed to me. I sent it back to the firm and they agreed that it had been tampered with. I loathe to raise this matter but, as Deputy O'Higgins referred to it, I think it only right that the Minister and the Department should be made aware of what happened. I have the utmost contempt and horror of any interference with correspondence. It is a horrible, a despicable and a contemptible practice, especially if there is any basis in what Deputy O'Higgins said last night. Apparently, he made a very serious charge. I substantiate that by what I am telling the Minister.
With regard to the letter he wrote to me last week, I want to tell him that I did not submit a query as to the delay of the letter. I do not care how long a letter is delayed, although it is a matter to be regretted, but what I do take exception to is that a letter should be tampered with. I would rather it was delayed for two years than be tampered with in the course of post. When poor people send up letters to Deputies some curious person in the post office must open them to see what those poor creatures are writing to Deputies about.
You do not suggest that your letters are being opened?
I have stated it here and am making that charge. I think it is my bounden duty to do so. I do not ask the Minister about the delaying of the letter; my query was in regard to the letter being tampered with.
There has been a regular tirade against the Minister about wages and conditions of labour. All those statements are true. Deputy Belton appeared to be astonished when Deputy Norton told him there were somewhere about 2,000 people in the Post Office drawing wages under 20/- per week and 2,000 more drawing wages under 30/- per week. I wonder where Deputy Belton spends his time. Everybody knows that rural postmen are paid under £1 per week, and even a wage as low as 7/6 per week. Of course, the official answer to that is that they are only part-time workers. Deputy Norton, who is, I understand, an ex-official of the Post Office, and who is, of course, the official spokesman of the Post Office workers, told us that they are part-time officials because they work only from 12 o'clock to about 3 o'clock or 4 o'clock. I wonder where Deputy Norton got his official information? Those rural postmen have to be at the post office about 10 o'clock or earlier. What have they to do before that? Some of them have to come three or four miles to the post office. They have to be washed and shaved and be just as clean-looking as a person who works in the post office. That takes another hour. They leave home about 9 o'clock. They are generally timed to return to the post office between 2 o'clock and 3.30, according to the districts they do. Is that man a part-time official? What can he do before nine o'clock in the morning, when he has to wash and shave and be respectable-looking for his journey around the country? I think it is playing with words to say that that man is a part-time official.
I admit it is a problem to discover how to put those people on a basis that would pay them. It is all right in the case of a young fellow who is working at home, and can help with the turf, or the hay or the oats, but in many cases those rural postmen are married men, and their wages are so low that they are not enough to maintain them. This Department can be twitted with the fact that here they have men with wives and children getting this miserable wage. Those married men have no other form of employment. You can call them part-time officials a thousand times, but they are really whole-time because they cannot get any other employment. There was a long tirade by Deputy Norton about the classification of the payment of those men. He twitted Deputy Little here for about half an hour. I was wondering could Deputy Norton not look at himself and spend his time impeaching himself instead of Deputy Little, because he would have dismissed this Government from office in 24 hours if they had not played the tune he called. I wonder would he look at the reports of the divisions which took place in this House, and tell the House how many times he has supported the Government in the divisions, and how many times he voted against them? Surely if the Minister is guilty in regard to the conditions of labour, Deputy Norton is equally guilty.
With regard to the administration of the Post Office, I think it can be accepted that the development of the telegraph system is a thing of the past, and we must turn to the development of the telephone system. Many suggestions have been made here as to the way to popularise the telephone system and make it a success. There is only one way to approach a thing like that; it must be done in a business way. It must be carried out in the same way as any business concern would carry it out. You want to popularise the telephone. You want the people to use it. How can you do that? You can do it by giving service. That is the only way. Is service being given? If it is not, how can it be given? The charge for trunk calls is absolutely prohibitive, and makes it utterly impossible for any ordinary person with ordinary means to get trunk calls. I will give a concrete example. Within the last few days there was a rather important matter in which one of my constituents was concerned. He lives about ten or 15 miles from the borders of County Donegal. I think a trunk call in that case costs 3/4. How is anybody to be expected to support the telephone system when a trunk call to one of his constituents costs a Deputy 3/4?
I submit that even if it involves a loss on the telephone system for the year the Government should fix a price which the public can pay. They should not consider whether or not it pays the Post Office, but should fix a charge which the ordinary man can pay without any qualms of conscience or any feeling that he is robbing himself and paying too much. When it is a case of going into a telephone booth and paying 3/- or 4/- for a trunk call during the day, you might as well close up the telephone. You must bring the telephone charge down to a popular figure. What is a popular figure? Deputy Dillon gave quotations here. Generally, I agree with them, but I would say that the maximum charge for any ordinary call of three minutes should not exceed 1/-. Make the charge for a trunk call to any part of the Free State 1/- or your telephone charge will never become popular. If the charge were known to be 1/-, a person would ring up frequently, but when the charge ranges from 2/- to 3/4 or 3/6 it is prohibitive.
There is another defect in the telephone system which I referred to two years ago. I did not refer to it last year because one gives up hope of getting a Government to move when it gets into a rut. I raised the question two years ago of the extension of the telephone and how extension charges are allocated. If a man lives a quarter of a mile beyond the existing line, the cost of the cable is charged to him. Why is that done? Is it not positively ridiculous to charge a man with the cost of laying cable when the people who come to that district, when it is built up, will have to bear only a nominal charge? The business side of the Post Office should have sufficient vision to pick out a district which is bound to be built upon and lay the cable to it at their own cost, depending on subsequent development to get a return for their money. It is absurd to charge either me or Deputy Donnelly if we happen to build a house a quarter of a mile outside the present telephone area with the cost of laying the cable to that area when other people will come to live in the district and will receive the full benefit of the extension. If the business manager of the Post Office—whoever he is—had sufficient vision, he would choose districts which would be built on and lay the cable at the expense of the Post Office. To charge one man £10, £12 or £14 for the laying of the cable to his house is absurd. So much as regards extensions.
As regards telephone charges, they are, as I said, prohibitive. In England they provide a 1/- service at night. Here many of the exchanges are closed at night. The Post Office should remember that people do not become mute or dumb at night. Oftentimes they are sitting at home on Sunday night and, if telephone charges were reasonable, they would ring up friends to make appointments for the following day. During the idle hours facilities should be provided to enable people to communicate with friends on personal or business affairs. That use of the telephone will not be possible until a reasonable charge is arrived at. The telegraph business, the Minister admits, is dying, and he says that the success he expected last year did not attend the telephone service. He has not told us the reason. He simply told us it was not a success—that he did not get the number of subscribers which he expected. He should have told the House the reason for that. The way to remedy that is to popularise the telephone by reducing the price. What is the use of advertising a thing which is beyond the capacity of the people to use? You may fill all the newspapers and cover all the telegraph poles and dead walls in the country with advertisements but it will be no use unless you fix a charge for the telephone which the people can afford to pay. The charge for telegrams here is 1/6. I was over in England for a fortnight recently and I found that a man could telegraph to any part of the country for a "tanner." Deputy McMenamin from Ireland writes out a telegram and, because it is for Dublin, he is charged 1/6.
They must have known you.
They probably heard I was a friend of yours. The man who paid 6d. for his telegram could afford to pay 5/- where I could not afford to pay 3d. Nobody sends a telegram here except in case of absolute necessity. If the price were reasonable, much more use would be made of the telegraph service and also of the telephone service, but a charge of 3/4 for a trunk call to Donegal is utterly prohibitive. If I can possibly avoid it, I am not going to book a trunk call to Donegal at that charge again. With these charges, there can be no development. The present Minister will be succeeded by another Minister and he, in turn, will be succeeded by another Minister and the telephone service will remain much as it is unless the charges are reduced. To achieve success, you must bring down the charges to the sums that people can pay—1/-, 6d. and 3d.
Tell us more about your visit to England.
He went through the back streets of Glasgow with Viscount Hailsham in an Austin car.
The Deputy did not go over to send a telegram back?
To sell Caitlin Ni Houlihan to John Bull.
I went over to show the superiority of Irish red setters. I hope the Minister will pay some attention to the charges made by Deputy O'Higgins. I do not want to drive home my own grievance. If the matter had not been raised by Deputy O'Higgins, I should not have referred to it, but if that kind of thing is permitted to develop it will destroy the Post Office. If a specific case of tampering with letters comes to the Minister's notice, he should without further ado dismiss the responsible official as soon as the charge is proven. If that practice is permitted to go on, it will destroy the service. The implication is that telephone messages will be tapped, and that will injure the whole organisation of the Post Office. The Post Office, as has been said here, is, in the main, highly efficient. There is a high standard of integrity in the Post Office, and that, as Deputy Anthony said, extends to the very lowest grades of the service. Those postmen who are getting a very low rate of wage are, as we all know, men of the highest integrity. It is a high compliment to these men and to the institution which they serve that there are so few exceptions, if any, to that rule. I should be sorry to think that that standard of integrity would be undermined by the efforts of some curious person who wants to pimp inside an envelope. I ask the Minister to grapple with this question of the telephone. Anything I say is in the interests of the service. It may be a difficult proposition to tackle, but it is a business matter. I think that a new discovery of this kind should be made use of, and that that blessing should be brought to the people so as to improve their conditions. In this connection, a lot has been said about night exchanges in country places. I think that something should be done along that line.
What will you do when television comes in?
When that arrives we will deal with it. Were it not for the Civic Guards, there would be terrible inconvenience in the country at night. As a matter of fact, I do not think that the Civic Guards are justified at all in allowing people to use their barracks for the purpose of sending messages at night, and I think it is a great tribute to the courtesy and kindness of the Guards that they should allow the public to use the telephone after hours. After all, in the average small town or village, you have the post office closed at seven o'clock in the evening, and very often the post office is just across the street from the barracks. I consider that it is very kind of the Gárda to facilitate the public, in the way they so unfailingly do, in the matter of allowing the public to use the telephone. I think that something should be done to extend this service. If something is not done, the telephone will never become the blessing that it should be to the public.
From the point of view of making a profit or a loss in this matter of the telephone system, I think that there should be no question of cheese-paring with regard to expenditure in the first year or two. After a year or two of propaganda and publicity as to the extension of the telephone system and its cheapness, I think it would be possible to show that the original expenditure was justified and that the Department would be recouped for it. I should like to refer, in this connection, to the cases of married men with wives and children. As a result of recent legislation with regard to the considerations for employment, preference is being given to married men—and quite rightly so—but I think that the rates of pay should be increased in cases where such men are dependent for their livelihood on their work in connection with the Post Office. I believe that the hard-and-fast rule of being merely part-time officials should not be enforced against such men when it is known that, for practical purposes, they are whole-time officials, although their salaries are based on a part-time basis. Something should be done to increase their wages. They all give excellent and loyal service, and at a very cheap rate of pay. In former times, boys or young men were being employed on such work, but now the preference is being given to married men, and I think that the Minister should give them some special consideration.
The Minister, in his statement yesterday, said that he had received a great many criticisms about the excessive rates charged in connection with the transport of letters by air mail. I do not wonder that he received many criticisms. He went on to say that the Department made no profit out of this service at all and that the very high charges for delivery of letters from this country are all paid to those countries which carry out the service. If that is the case, I hope that the Minister will take up that matter with these other countries. As the matter stands at present, the charges are simply monstrous. For example, I received a letter by air mail this morning from South Africa which cost sixpence to send it to me here, but it would cost me 1/3 to send a reply. If I were in Holyhead it would only cost me sixpence. It is a ridiculous thing that a charge of that sort should be imposed as between one country and another in the carrying out of a contract of postal service. It is a ridiculous thing that the rate of reply should be more than doubled by carrying the letter across the few miles of the Irish Channel. That is only one instance of the difference in the rates of carriage between this country and the country of destination. To send a message, or a reply, from this country to the other country costs more than double the rate from that other country to this country. I think that there should be some reasonable rate fixed with regard to such charges. Air mail is becoming almost indispensable now to many people who have relatives in different parts of the world, and I hold that there should be a reasonable rate fixed so as to enable us to communicate with our friends in distant countries as well as to receive their replies.
Another plea was made to the Minister during the course of this debate, and that was to endeavour to restore the postal facilities in Dublin to something like what we were accustomed to 20 odd years ago. Deputy Minch, yesterday, pleaded with the Minister to that effect and complained that we were going back to the conditions of 20 years ago. On the other hand, I hold that we have never got anything like as good conditions as we had 20 years ago. We are still carrying on with the war conditions both as regards deliveries and collections. There is no delivery in the city after 3 o'clock, or thereabouts, in the day, and there is no general collection of letters after 8.30 at night. The result is that it is impossible in many cases, to get a reply to an urgent letter within 24 or even 30 hours from the posting of that letter, even within a few miles in the city.
Again, take the case of letters arriving from England by the day mail. When they arrive, as regards the Dublin delivery, they are locked up in the Post Office until the following morning and are delivered 14 hours later. Formerly, they would have been delivered within a couple of hours of arrival, and the country mail, arriving in or about the same time, would have been delivered an hour or two later. All these facilities are gone and we are still in the worst conditions that existed in the country during the war. There has been no improvement in the years since the war or since this country got control of its own postal service. I am not complaining about the extra charges since the country got control of its own service. I realise quite well that the question of population makes a big difference and I think it is quite reasonable that there should be extra charges now. I think, however, that it is only fair to ask for a more efficient service and to ask for a fairer bargain to be made with the countries who have the contract to carry out the air mail service for us.
I should like to reply, first, to Deputy Rowlette's point about the air mail service. I can assure the Deputy that we are negotiating at present with the object of getting a better bargain with the countries who carry out the air mail service. As things are at present, payments have to be made on a gold standard basis in accordance with international convention, and, until a better arrangement can be made, payment has to be made on that basis. We are not prepared, at the moment, to subsidise an air mail service for ourselves, but we hope to be able to come to a better arrangement than the present one. That is all I can say on that matter.
I should like to ask the Minister, with regard to the sending of letters to South Africa by air mail, do our letters to South Africa go via a different aeroplane company from that which carries the letters from Great Britain to South Africa?
Mr. Boland
They all go to London first, and are sent on from there to the different destinations. We send them to London, and the London people deliver them to their destinations. We have no air mail of our own, as the Deputy realises, and they are delivered from London to whatever the destination of the letters may be.
How does the question of gold come into it?
Mr. Boland
The British have to pay on a gold basis to other countries.
Take the case of South Africa. Letters going by air mail to South Africa go by the British service the whole way.
Mr. Boland
We make those who send letters by air mail pay us what it costs to send them by air. Payment has to be made to all countries for the air mail service on a gold basis. I want to tell the Deputy that the whole question is the subject of negotiations and that we are hoping to arrive at a favourable arrangement. That is the best that we can do at the moment. We are not prepared to subsidise mails sent by air. I agree with what Deputy Coburn said, that we cannot expect to have the same postal services that we had when we were attached to Britain. I think that is part of the price that we have to pay, and I submit it is not a very big price. Some time ago I told Deputy MacDermot, I think, that when we had got through with our industrial and economic policy we would have quite as good services as they have in Britain. But with a depleted population, the smallest in Europe in density and scattered all over the country, it is most unreasonable for people to expect us to provide telephone and other facilities on the scale that they have them in Great Britain. I have not travelled myself through Sweden or Denmark, but I am told by people who have that the people in those countries live principally in village communities. That is quite different from the position here. The population in those countries is not scattered, as it is with us, and therefore it is easier for their Government to provide telephone and other facilities than it is for us. The cost of providing such facilities in those countries is also much cheaper than it is here, for the reason that the people very often co-operate in putting up posts and in other constructional work. That is a thing that would not be thought of here. I am told that in Sweden the villagers help to put up posts. That helps to reduce the cost of their erection.
There has been a great demand from every side for an extension of the telephone system. Naturally, I myself would like to see an extension of it, but if a scheme of that kind is to be carried out it will have to be done at a prohibitive cost. In 1925 the Post Office did reduce the rentals in the case of certain exchanges. There was an immediate drop of something like £30,000, and that sum of money was not fully recovered for about seven years. It took that length of time to catch up with the loss. I would like to remind the House that when the British left this country in 1922 the telephone system was in a very bad way. The largest part of the West of Ireland, as well as Donegal and Kerry, were left practically unserved, as most members of the House know. In the year 1923 we had 6,604 miles of open trunk lines. Since then these have been increased to 15,271—in other words, there has been an increase of 130 per cent. In addition, in 1923 the telephone equipment was very bad and had to be replaced in most cases. I admit that in certain parts of the country we have not anything like the service that we should have, but at the same time I want to stress the point that there is scarcely any part of the country that is not in some sort of telephonic communication with the rest of the country, even if it be only through the Civic Guards' stations. That is a big advance on what the position was in 1922 when we had this glorious connection with Britain and were part of the United Kingdom. I just want to point that out to Deputy Coburn. He may not agree with me, but certainly telephone development in this country has advanced enormously in the meantime.
The Minister agrees with me on the other point?
Mr. Boland
Yes, but on that question I, personally, am prepared to pay the price and so, I believe, are the majority of the people in this country.
So am I, and that is why I do not grumble.
Mr. Boland
I cannot hold out very much hope that increased telephone facilities will be provided in the immediate future. We did promise a publicity campaign last year or the year before. That campaign was not carried out in the form of Press advertising. The reason was that there would be demands from districts which we would not be able to meet. Deputy MacDermot laughs, but I want to remind him that it takes time to put down extra cables. It takes more than a resolution of this House, or speeches by Deputy Dillon or Deputy MacDermot to lay a line of cable.
Our reason, as I have said, for not engaging in the publicity campaign in the form of Press advertising, was that we would get demands from areas which we were not prepared to meet. The form of publicity campaign that we did carry out was to send canvassers into different areas and towns. We did our best to induce people to take the telephone, and our success is reflected in the increase, the details of which I gave in my opening statement. I admit the increase is not very large, but still it is something. I believe that the increase in the number of telephone subscribers recorded for the past year will continue.
Would the Minister give the number?
Mr. Boland
I gave the particulars in my opening statement. I admit that the increase is nothing to shout about. I cannot find the figures at the moment, but I will give them to the Deputy before I conclude.
It is all right. I do not want to delay the Minister.
Mr. Boland
There was a slight increase—not very much. I do not see how we can be expected, at a time like this, to go ahead with a big telephone development scheme when, not only in this country but in every country, there is depression. It is all very well for Deputy Dillon and other Deputies to speak about the conditions in rural Ireland. Everyone knows that these conditions are worldwide. I do not want to go into the question of the economic war, but everyone knows that in America and in other countries there is as much depression as there is here, and maybe more. Even though I am as anxious as any member of the House to have the use of the telephone developed to the utmost possible extent, this is not the time to ask the Government to subsidise the telephone or any other branch of the postal service. When we have got into a better economic position I will certainly urge that, but at the moment I am not prepared to ask the Minister for Finance or the Government for the large sum of money that would be required to engage in a big telephone and postal development scheme. In the near future we may do it when, as I have said, we have got into a better economic position, and I believe that we are rapidly approaching that time.
Deputy Dillon talked about telephone development and seems to visualise the disappearance of the telegraph system altogether, I cannot see that coming about unless we reach the position that we are able to have in every part of the country, in almost every farmer's house, some kind of telephone connection. As the Deputy knows, if any person in the country wants to have the telephone in he can have it.
Yes, if he pays for it.
Mr. Boland
I think that every citizen is entitled to be in the position that he can be communicated with, especially in the case of an emergency, even though he has to pay for it; but while saying that I think we are a long way off from the time when we can dispense entirely with the telegraph system.
Why not substitute the express letter service?
Mr. Boland
That would cost just as much. As far as telephone development is concerned, I am not very hopeful that much can be done during the coming year or for a couple of years to come. I do not think it is correct to say that we have a bad service. There may be exceptional cases, but I was surprised to hear some Deputies say that it had taken them an hour to get Dublin from some of the country post offices. The experience of the Department is that, as a general rule, the service is good. Deputy Dillon seemed to me to contradict himself when he said that it took him so long to get Dublin from Ballaghadereen and that he had no trouble in getting Glasgow; he should know that calls to Glasgow have to go through Dublin.
I said that it took me a shorter time to get Glasgow from Ballaghadereen than to get Dublin from Ballaghadereen.
Mr. Boland
That was merely an accident. I think, on the whole, the service is not as bad or anything like as bad as has been represented here. I cannot speak from very much personal experience, but on the few occasions on which I have telephoned from the country, I did not have anything like a very big delay. I might have had to wait ten minutes but that was the utmost I remember. I have telephoned from all parts of the country—from Cork and everywhere else—and I have not found anything like a very long delay. The Department have not got very many complaints on that score at all.
It is quite easy to find out what the facts are because every postmaster in the country takes a note when a call is passed.
Mr. Boland
It is quite easy and I am speaking now from information in the Department's hands. They make inquiries into all these things and I am quite prepared to admit that occasionally there will be delay. It is bound to happen, for instance, if you are unlucky enough to put a call through when there is a lot of traffic on one line, but, as a general practice, it is not the case. I can tell the Deputy that authoritatively. We have our records of all these things and they are examined periodically. We are quite in touch with the situation, so that the complaint of undue delay in getting trunk calls through is not justified.
It all depends on what "undue" means.
Will the Minister say that anything over 15 minutes is undue delay?
Mr. Boland
I would say so.
So would I.
Mr. Boland
The most serious charge made here—and I must say that, on the whole, the debate was helpful to me— was made by Deputy McMenamin and Deputy O'Higgins. Deputy McMenamin is a lawyer, and he ought to know quite well that not alone would any Post Office official caught tampering with a letter be dismissed, but he would be prosecuted. It is a criminal offence, and I am surprised that the Deputy only suggested he should be dismissed. He would be prosecuted, too. Deputy O'Higgins praised the Department for a long time, getting us into good humour about it, and when he had us off our guard, he gave us the blow. It is not bad tactics, but it is part and parcel, apparently, of the Opposition campaign to discredit the Government and every Department in the Government.
I most vehemently protest against the suggestion that I was thinking of the Government at all. I was thinking of a State service and of its integrity. I never thought of the Minister or his Department.
Mr. Boland
I am referring more to Deputy O'Higgins, who deliberately said that hundreds of letters were held up, and warned the people of the country of the dangers that would arise from a continuance of that practice. I think that was the most serious thing he could have done, and it is in line with the attitude of the Opposition Parties in respect of practically every Department of the State since we took over the Government. "We cannot get justice in this country; there is no integrity anywhere," and the fact of the matter is that we have had no complaints whatever from Deputy O'Higgins as to the holding up of correspondence. It is not and has not been done. It is a shame for him to attack a Department like this on those lines. There is no foundation whatever for it. If a letter is tampered with and we get to know of it, we spare no pains to trace the people who tampered with it, and if we find them out they are prosecuted. It is then in the hands of the courts, but they are dismissed, whether they are found guilty or not. We never tolerate it. It is the first time that such a charge has been made since I became Minister, and I am sorry that Deputy O'Higgins should have spoiled a good speech, because he made a very good speech, by making such a statement.
The other big question that arose was the question of part-time labour. Deputy Norton spoke as usual. He took the extreme case and painted a harrowing picture of the misfortunes of this man in Blackrock. He moved everybody. I quite admit that he moved me, too, and I do not blame him for picking out the worst case he could find.
It is a very typical case.
Mr. Boland
Deputy Norton knows as well as I do that it is anything but typical. There are cases, undoubtedly, of hardship, and, if I could remedy them, I would. I was discussing with Deputy Norton the other day the case of a constituent of mine who was looking after a land matter—he wanted to be left with what land he had. This is an extreme case, I admit, but I think I am as much entitled to quote extreme cases as Deputy Norton, and people can then strike a balance. I was not aware that this man, a very decent hard-working man, was a postman, but I knew that he had a fairly large amount of land. He actually had 172 acres of land and he had paid for most of it himself. I was discussing that case with Deputy Norton and he said "I know a fellow who owns a picture-house and he is a postman." I am just as entitled, as I say, to refer to this case, as Deputy Norton is to the case of the poor man in Blackrock.
I said I knew a person who held an interest in a small picture-house but that such an extreme case proved nothing and was not typical of the poverty of thousands of Post Office employees.
Mr. Boland
I admit that in Dublin and in the big cities, it is too bad to have people working part-time, but the Deputy will have to admit that we have done all we can at the moment. We have brought about a considerable improvement in Dublin. We have brought people who formerly worked 14 or 15 hours a week up to 28 hours. That will not give them as good pay as I should like them to get, but I hope, if it is at all possible, to eliminate part-time labour entirely, but it is very difficult to do it in the cities. We cannot do it in the country unless we seriously curtail the services and go back to the position of 1923 when the Post Office was £1,100,000 to the bad. Deputy Norton said that these conditions do not exist now in the Post Office and that the Post Office is not £1,100,000 to the bad now and that, therefore, we could have daily deliveries in the country, but if we are to give all these telephone facilities and to give Deputy Norton his daily deliveries in the country again, I am satisfied that we would be £2,000,000 to the bad and perhaps the people who are dissatisfied with us for paying our way—after all, £35,000 of a surplus is not a great lot— would have something to growl about if we were losing £2,000,000. I think that if the Post Office just pays its way, it is all it ought to do. It should not make a big profit, I quite agree. I think it was Deputy Belton who said that the British do not do that. As a matter of fact, the British Postmaster General was able to hand £10,000,000 of a surplus into the Treasury. He had £12,000,000 profit and he was allowed to keep £2,000,000 for Post Office development, but the general Treasury benefited to the extent of £10,000,000.
That could be called taxing the public, but in our case we are not taxing them to any extent. The £35,000 profit this year might very easily disappear in another year. I do not think it is fair to say that we are really a profit-making department. We subsidise one service at the expense of another and, on the whole, we try to give a fairly decent service. The part-time labour question, as I say, cannot be solved unless we are prepared very seriously to curtail services in rural districts. In regard to the condition of people who are employed part-time, when applying for the positions, everybody knows that they are only part-time and they know that they have no prospect, or very little prospect, of becoming fulltime. As a general rule, we have tried to employ people who had other means of livelihood, such as small farmers or men who had casual work of one kind or another. I was not able to tell Deputy Norton what other employment these auxiliary postmen have, but it is not true to say that we have given up keeping records because we never did keep them. I understand that records of what other employment auxiliary postmen have were never kept. We could make a fair attempt at keeping a record, but it would take a long time to ascertain exactly how a man was fixed, and, even then, we would not be sure either. We have had some tests made in certain districts and at least 50 per cent. of these postmen have other means of livelihood. Nobody knows that better than Deputy Norton.
I deny that.
Mr. Boland
Not one person knows it as well as Deputy Norton.
Would the Minister say how many part-time postmen in Dublin have outside employment?
Mr. Boland
I do not think any of them have. I should be surprised if any of them have.
How many in Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway?
Mr. Boland
I am not prepared to go into statistics now, but we have had tests made recently which show that 50 per cent. have other means of livelihood. I have already said that in respect of Dublin and other towns, I am anxious to have them put on a fulltime basis and we have increased the hours of attendance in these places. I am not going to ask the Government— for Deputy Norton or anybody else— to tax the people at this crisis to the extent demanded to improve matters in the Post Office. When the time comes, as it soon will, when we get into better economic conditions——
When you have a Republic.
Mr. Boland
That will come too and we will get there much more quickly than Deputy Dillon would like.
We would like you to get there at once.
Mr. Boland
The Deputy has not done much towards it. I do not think it is practicable at the moment. As far as I am concerned, I am prepared to go as far as ever, and so is every member of the Government, but we are not going to ask people to do the impossible. We will get there all right.
You do not want to be in a hurry?
Mr. Boland
I do not mind Deputy Coburn coming in on this matter, but for goodness' sake let us try to keep Deputy Dillon off the subject. I think now I have dealt with the question of telephone facilities fairly fully. Everyone seems to demand extra telephone facilities. Only a few Deputies asked us to get back to the British postage rates. We are satisfied that if we reduced the postage rate from 2d. to 1½d. it would cost us nearly £250,000, at any rate something like £228,000. We cannot do that yet and we must wait until our industrial development policy has gone further.
And you will raise it to 3d. then.
Mr. Boland
Deputy McGuire wanted to know whether our income and expenditure balanced. Very nearly. We are running on commercial lines. We try to meet losses on one service by savings on another. We do not tax the public to the extent that the British Post Office does. They are handing £10,000,000 out of their £12,000,000 profits to the Treasury.
Does not that go in relief of taxation?
Mr. Boland
I suppose it does eventually. With regard to the suggestion made by Deputy Dillon of a maximum charge of 1/- within the jurisdiction of the Saorstát and 6d. within provincial borders, we did not test that fully. We did make some tests and we found that if we got double the calls at present there would still be a very serious loss. We do not anticipate anything like a 100 per cent. increase of calls under the suggested rate. We tried certain areas and had a fairly good test.
I suggest to the Minister that he could not have a full test unless he published the matter broadcast.
Mr. Boland
That is so. The Deputy thinks that it would result in an increase of two calls for every one now.
Give it a year's test.
Mr. Boland
If we take the calls that we get at present in certain areas and multiply them by two or even three, there would still be a loss.
What would the loss be?
Mr. Boland
Perhaps £20,000.
What would it be over the whole of the Saorstát?
Mr. Boland
I am not in a position to say, but I think it would be much more.
I do not think you would lose anything.
Mr. Boland
That is a matter of opinion. When we reduced the postage on postcards, there was a loss——
Who wants postcards, anyhow?
Mr. Boland
I do not know, but there was a big loss, at any rate. Things are not quite so easy as the Deputy seems to suggest.
You might as well reduce the fare for horse-drawn cabs and expect people to travel by them.
Mr. Boland
With regard to country telephone exchanges, I admit it is a serious drawback that we cannot have them open at night. It would be very costly to keep them open all night. One thing is certain, that, in cases of emergency, the Civic Guards will always allow people to use their telephones. There is an arrangement with the Post Office to do that. If we were to extend telephone facilities in rural areas, people would have to attend to the working of them all night. There again, I do not see that there is much demand. I suppose we would have to keep them open for a time to know whether there was or not, but, so far as we know at present, there is little demand and the result would be that we would have to keep people up all night doing nothing.
Better than having them on the dole.
Mr. Boland
Deputy Norton brought up the case of the Waterford Post Office. That is still under consideration and, seeing that it has been under consideration since 1908, it can wait a little longer. There is more than one department concerned in this matter, and I think it will have to wait longer. As to the wages claim put forward, that is still under consideration. It involves thirty different classes, and means a demand for more than £230,000 per year. It is a rather big claim. Deputy Norton picks out the worst cases. I do not blame him, but he will have to wait a little longer before we can tell him the result.
The net result is that the Minister will "do nothing for nobody."
Mr. Boland
I did not say I would "do nothing for nobody," but I am not prepared to give a quarter of a million in increased wages at the present moment.
Question put and agreed to.
Progress reported; Committee to sit again on Wednesday.
The Dáil adjourned at 2 p.m. until 3 p.m. on Wednesday, 15th May, 1935.