This Estimate makes provision for a number of matters to which I want to direct the attention of the Minister. I want to refer to the unsatisfactory position of at least one branch of his Department—the engineering branch. On the 22nd February last I addressed a question to the Minister asking him to state the number of employees in the engineering branch of his Department whose services had been dispensed with since the 1st September last. To that I received the rather surprising reply that 36 such employees had been paid off. In reply to a supplementary question, which I addressed to the Minister, he said: "As a matter of fact, these men were retained during the emergency period until we saw how we could carry on on a normal basis. Their being out of employment now is ruled entirely by the fact that we have no work for them to do." Those who know the facts of the position in the engineering branch would not believe a statement of that kind for two minutes because there is no foundation for it. There is an abundance of work in connection with the engineering branch which could be usefully undertaken in the maintenance of an efficient telephone service.
The fact of the matter is that the Minister's Department does not choose to do that work, and, consequently, 36 people have had their services terminated since the 1st September last. Let me take the Minister back to September when we had a moving appeal from the Taoiseach to private employers not to resort to the expedient of terminating the services of their employees. We also had the present Minister for Supplies making an appeal to private employers to keep on their staffs as far as possible, and not unduly to restrict their activities. Now, one would imagine that an appeal by the Taoiseach and the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Supplies, would at least induce the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to do some honour to the appeal which they made, but, instead of listening to their appeals, the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs feels that their appeals have no concern for him, that he is not obliged to take any notice of them, and he then proceeds to set this very bad example to private employers by dismissing staff, although the Taoiseach had made a very strong appeal to private employers to retain their staffs, especially during the emergency period. There is, at least, one employer in the country who feels that he can disregard entirely the appeal made by the Taoiseach, and that he is perfectly free to act in any irresponsible manner he wishes in a crisis such as that through which the country is passing.
Let me deal for a few moments with the contention that there is no work for these 36 men. The Minister made that statement in the Dáil at a time when many persons want to have the telephone installed either in their business premises or private residences in Dublin. The fact is that they are not able to get the telephones installed. I understand that there are approximately 200 people in Dublin City alone at the present time who have ordered telephones, and these orders have not been supplied. I venture to say that if the position is examined in other areas it will be found that there, too, there is a lag between the date of application for a telephone and the date of fitting it in.
And yet, notwithstanding that condition of affairs, the Minister tells the House that there is no work for these 36 men to do, that there is no work in a branch of the service for which he is administratively responsible.
If we pass from that type of telephone activity to a type of activity which should be attended to with the utmost expedition, and come to another phase of the Department's work, namely, the provision of underground cables, here again, as the Minister's staff can tell him, there is an inadequacy of these cables at the present time which results in a loss of revenue to the Department because of the inability to give services in areas where there is a shortage of telephone cables. The position in the city area in this respect is extremely bad, as the staff in the Minister's Department know only too well. In certain areas, such as Inchicore, Cabra and Marino, as well as in the greater Dublin area, there is the need for a greater number of additional cables. At present the cables are in many cases giving very considerable trouble. That is due to the fact that sufficient attention is not being paid to maintaining the cables in a state of efficiency. There is a 1,000 pair cable running from Crown Alley to O'Connell Street, and the Minister should make some inquiries to ascertain the number of faults which have revealed themselves on that particular cable, as well as the vexatious annoyance caused to persons whose service comes through that defective cable.
Passing from underground defects and the shortage of underground cables to overhead work, here again we find that the Post Office Department does not apparently regard it as a serious part of its functions to maintain the overhead wires and poles in an up-to-date state of efficiency. In Dublin City and suburbs there has been no effective maintenance carried on for a number of years.
There are defects in many of the poles, loose nuts, loose bolts, and sometimes loose wires. Apparently that condition of affairs is allowed to drag on, with deleterious effects on the efficiency of the telephone service. I think the Minister knows that many of the distributing poles in the city are extremely defective and react on the efficiency of the service. Some of them are positively dangerous. There is a distributing pole in Tara Street which has been officially condemned as being dangerous. The men object to climbing the pole owing to its dangerous condition. Yet it continues to serve in some kind of fashion. It will probably be replaced if someone's life is lost as a result of the defect in the pole. Passing to the condition of the Wicklow trunk route, if the Minister inquires from the engineering department I think he will find that the position is anything but satisfactory, that faults are of frequent occurrence, and that a staff should be employed to overhaul it. Apparently, the Post Office authorities are content when faults show themselves to do patchwork, instead of making the service satisfactory on that route. Faults in subscribers' lines in the Dublin area have been particularly bad in the last 12 months, and were viciously bad during the recent wet weather.
If the Minister was a linesman, and had to call on some of the irritated subscribers who complain of faults, he would recognise that there is work to be done in the engineering branch, and that there was an insufficiency of staff for proper maintenance work. Even in the Ship Street exchange the Minister might inquire if the staff is adequate according to the Department's standard of what is normally required. In face of these facts, which I am prepared to prove if the Minister would only initiate an inquiry into the working of the engineering branch, I cannot understand the allegation that there is no work to be done in that branch. My remarks are about Dublin, but a similar condition of affairs could be shown to exist in other places. How, in the face of that situation, the Minister could contend that there is no work which would justify the retention of the 36 men members of the engineering staff I referred to completely baffles my comprehension.
If he looks at the accounts the Minister will realise that the telephones are a profitable service and have yielded a substantial surplus for many years. Accordingly, the least the public is entitled to is an efficient telephone service. That cannot be secured if the Minister continues to dispense with staff while there is so much repair and maintenance work to be done. An insufficient staff means an inefficient service. The Minister should realise that when this service is yielding a substantial surplus it can best be encouraged to continue doing so by maintaining it in a high state of efficiency. At present the Department appears to be content to allow the necessary maintenance work to be put on the long finger; no serious attention being paid to the necessity for systematic maintenance and repair work over the entire service. I cannot accept the contention of the Minister that there is no work available in the engineering branch. If he makes inquiry he will find that there is much more work in that branch than the 36 ex-employees could possibly do.
Having brought these facts to the notice of the Minister, I hope he will make some inquiry into the manner in which the engineering branch is staffed, at a time when maintenance and repair work is put on the long finger and neglected, and take steps to provide an efficient telephone service, as well as obviating the necessity for the harassing tactics that prevail. If an inquiry of that kind is undertaken the Minister will find that there is scope for considerable improvement in that branch of the service, and that a solution of that problem will add to the efficiency of the service. At this stage I hope the Minister will undertake to take back those whose services were dispensed with. There seems to me to have been downright disregard of the Taoiseach's appeal, and an irresponsible attitude from that which might be expected from a public department, when 36 persons were paid off in a crisis period, with apparently very little consideration for their sufferings, and very little regard for necessary work that should be put in hand.
