During the past few weeks I have made an effort to draw attention to the hardships which bellmen are undergoing in this city and the difficulties they have in getting reasonable supplies to enable them to live, keep their families and pay for stabling and so on. I drew attention to the fact that, one day last week, I personally counted 247 carts—donkey carts, single-horse drays and pony carts —waiting for six to eight hours before they could get fuel. In one case a man informed me that he left Dundrum at 4 o'clock in the morning and did not get back until 6 o'clock in the evening. Yesterday morning, I met a woman who was driving a donkey and cart, with a small load of turf on it. She told me that, having remained up all night, she was at the dump at 4.30 in the morning, that she thought she was very smart, but that there were ten others before her. I want to impress on the House and on the Minister that nothing can be said against these people regarding their desire to work. In the cold, the rain and the storm, with wet sacks on their shoulders and rolled round their heads, they were waiting there for supplies. On a little over half a ton the profit was 8/-.
They complained to me that there were 74 fillers at Alexandra Basin dealing with that number of carts, about a similar number having been supplied earlier in the day. In the old days, they said, when the bag of coal was sold for 1/-, 1/6 or 2/-, they were supplied at Donnelly's at the Custom House and at Spencer Dock, also Donnelly's. They were supplied there with coal, and at those coal dumps there were 500 fillers engaged in filling coal for people who bought in bags and smaller lots. The difficulties having become greater, instead of improving on that number of 500 fillers, Fuel Importers. Limited, who got the monopoly from the Government, employed only 74 fillers at Alexandra Basin. Apparently, they were caring neither about the value of the time of those driving the carts, nor about the hardships which those people were undergoing. There was no restaurant to give them a cup of tea. There was one small restaurant—about twice the size of the reporters' table—a little alcove at Alexandra Basin, in which a caterer was endeavouring to give them a cup of tea at 2d. per cup, but supplies were exhausted after the first hour.
I want the House to realise, first of all, that these people are genuine workers, earnestly desiring to get work, to earn their own living. Had they stayed at home and not worked, they would draw more in unemployment benefit and from certain relief measures; but they assured me that they did not want to do that. They had their customers, who were kind to them in the past, and they had their ration cards entitling them to get turf. Some of those customers, because of the delays in getting turf from the small purchasers, withdrew their cards and told these small carriers and bellmen they could not wait any longer, and that they were getting their supplies direct from Fuel Importers, Limited. Thus it will be seen that there is a double complaint. As well as the hardships of the weather and the delay which they are undergoing, they run the risk of losing their customers, and in many cases they have lost them. I want to bring home to the House that we are not giving encouragement to those who want to work and who are willing to bear these hardships if they get fair treatment.
I suggested to the Minister that there were depots all over the city where turf could be dumped—say 1,000 or 500 tons. I will first draw attention to my question and the Minister's reply to-day. He says that the turf is stored within as reasonable a distance of consumers' homes as fuel is in normal times. I just mention now that, in normal times, they were supplied with fuel at Donnelly's at the Custom House, at Butt Bridge and at the yards at Spencer Dock.
To Alexandra Basin from Butt Bridge is nearly two miles. That means two miles down and two miles back, while the dump is almost out in the open sea; it almost touches Clontarf baths. It is so far out that the hardships on a cold and wet day are terrific. I want to get this point home to the Minister: what is going to happen if we have one night's severe frost or if we have, as we had last year, a week's snow? There is no petrol wherewith to send mechanical vehicles to Alexandra Basin to carry fuel to the tenement areas in the city or to working-class homes in the city. The carts are not being encouraged to go down there even in normal times, not to speak of when the snow falls. The people who own these donkeys have to pay 8/- for shoeing and, when the snow falls or the frost commences, they will have to pay about 4/- additional for caulking to protect the donkeys in using the streets. These people are getting no encouragement to go that distance to bring fuel into the areas I have mentioned and there will be considerable risk to their animals when the frost comes along.
I implore the Minister, before it is too late and before such circumstances arise, to see that those people who buy a shilling's worth of wood blocks or turf will have that fuel available at a reasonable distance from their homes. Yesterday morning, I saw a woman, with a sack under her arm and a couple of shillings in her hand, coming in from Crumlin to Parnell Street to buy a stone or two of logs or turf. Yesterday, in Inchicore, I met two persons from a place called Kennedy's Cottages coming to the centre of the city to look for a stone of turf which they intended to carry out on their backs to Inchicore. There should be a dump of about 500 tons of turf somewhere in Inchicore for the use of the people in that area. The Minister has made reference to the difficulty of procuring sites for turf dumps elsewhere. He said:
"The removal of the turf dumps from Alexandra Basin to other sites elsewhere in the city would raise difficult problems in relation to the acquisition of sites."
The City Manager has sites available in his housing schemes, and dumps could be provided at Kimmage, Crumlin, Drimnagh, Dolphin's Barn, Donnycarney, Cabra, Ellenfield, Larkhill, Oxmanstown Road, Keogh Square, and other areas. If there were a few hundred tons of turf in all those areas, it would be within half an hour's or a quarter hour's distance from the people's homes, and, if we were to have snow or frost, the people could walk to those dumps and draw their own supplies instead of depending upon a pony and cart which could not be used on account of the frost. Fuel supplies for cooking would in that way be safeguarded. Last Sunday morning, in Railway Street, I saw a queue who were disappointed on Saturday night in procuring a supply of blocks. They were told that the blocks would be brought in on Sunday morning. On Sunday morning, at 11 o'clock, I saw a queue of the poorer working-class element waiting with baskets and sacks to bring home the fuel to cook the Sunday dinner—the fuel they could not get on Saturday night.
The Minister said to-day for the first time:—
"I am, however, prepared to make arrangements with parish councils within the city area."
I remember what the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Flinn, said when I appealed to him six months ago to allow Clontarf Parish Council to take fuel into the Clontarf area—
