Transport (No. 2) Bill, 1944 — Fifth Stage. – Dáil Éireann (12th Dáil) – Thursday, 19 Oct 1944

Transport (No. 2) Bill, 1944 — Fifth Stage.

Minister for Industry and Commerce (Mr. Lemass)

I move that the Bill do now pass. During the course of discussion in Committee Deputy Mulcahy asked me to explain in greater detail the procedure adopted by the company to effect a redemption for cash of the subsidiary stocks of the Great Southern Railways enumerated in Section 132 of the Bill. I explained to the House that Section 14 and the Third Schedule of the Bill provided for the substitution of 3 per cent. guaranteed redeemable stock for so much of the Great Southern Railways subsidiary stocks as continued to be held by stockholders before January 1st, 1945. Section 132 of the Bill deems the company always to have had power to redeem the subsidiary stocks in cash by agreement with the holders. I informed the House that the company had made an agreement with the majority of the holders of stock for redemption for cash at par, and with the minority for the substitution on the basis of £ for £ of 3 per cent. Government guaranteed debentures. In the case of 4 per cent. guaranteed redeemable stock (1947) an offer was cash, £102, with the alternative of the stock being carried over as the liability of the new company until redeemed in 1947, similar to the mortgage debentures of the Dublin United Transport Company, also redeemable in that year which are to be carried over. The total of the subsidiary stocks of the Great Southern Railways named in Section 132 of the Bill amount to £976,961 nominal. The total amount agreed to be redeemed for cash is £924,657 and the amount for substituted Government guaranteed debentures £15,104. The amount of redeemable debentures (1947) to be carried over as a contract liability is £37,200.

There was also a long standing loan repayable to the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company, amounting to £100,000 which it has been agreed to repay in cash. The nominal total of stock and loans agreed to be redeemed for cash is £1,024,657. The balance sheet of the company on 31st December last showed that the depreciation and renewal fund stood at £850,000. In the other businesses fund depreciation then stood at £651,101, the Contingency fund stood at £218,591 and General Reserves, £235,022, making a total of £1,954,714. On the other side of the account cash at bankers was £754,801 and investments, £476,768. The balance to the debit of capital account was £1,114,232. That represents the extent to which the funds held against various reserve and capital accounts have been debited to capital. Cash at bankers amounted to £754,801 and investments to £476,768. Portion of the investments have been sold, and, with the cash at bankers, have been used to pay off these loans and capital bearing interest at 4 per cent. per annum, or more. In the case of the amounts redeemed to the London, Midland and Scottish Company, the rate of interest worked out at 4.97 per cent. on £313,800 and in the present year the interest charge would have been higher. The interest payable was determined by the earnings of the North Wall extension line. The position, therefore, of the company was that, as no money could be expended upon repairs and renewals, owing to the difficulty of obtaining materials, and as the money held against these various accounts could only be invested at 3 per cent., it was regarded as sound business to pay off capital bearing interest at a rate higher than 3 per cent., because, with the Government guaranteed debentures, it will be an easy matter to re-borrow the money, if and when required, at 3 per cent. The saving in interest to the company by reason of the utilisation of these funds to redeem the substituted debenture stocks in cash is approximately £30,000 a year.

General Mulcahy

We are glad to get the additional information even now, but nothing we have heard in the general discussion reduces in any way our opposition. The whole episode of the passing of this Bill through the House will be regarded later on as a very queer chapter in both the railway and political history of the county, and I do not think the Bill could have gone through as it has gone through but for the fact that the political and economic intelligence of the country was completely exhausted as a result of the circumstances under which the people exist. The Bill, in my opinion, will be a serious blow to our agricultural industry, on the one hand, and to the working population, particularly in the City of Dublin, on the other. A huge amount of capital debt is to be wiped out within the next few years, as was done in the case of the Dublin United Transport Company, against the opinion expressed in the Report of the Transport Inquiry of 1939 and against the very direct warning to the Government that that capital should not have been paid off within that time.

The fact is that it is possible only because of the extraordinary circumstances of the present emergency, when people's conception of the burdens they were bearing was completely distorted and when emergency conditions made it utterly impossible for them to understand what they ought to be paying for any particular class of goods or any particular class of services. "We are of opinion that the company should not be empowered to charge such fares as may be necessary to earn a net revenue sufficiently large to enable this proposal to be carried out"— that is what the tribunal said with regard to the proposed paying back of about £1,100,000 of capital debt of the Dublin United Transport Company within ten years. It has been paid off in a lesser period, and only because the people could not understand, in the general circumstances of the emergency, what they ought to pay for transport in the City of Dublin.

They have been paying these unnecessarily high rates at a time when the Government was taxing the people in every possible way and distributing additional relief by way of cash or vouchers to help the very people who were being mulcted in transport charges to provide food and clothing for their families. In Dublin, 50 per cent. of the capital debt at that time has been paid off in that way and now, under the new proposals for the transport system as a whole, it is proposed, in extraordinary times, that something near 75 per cent. of £13,000,000 odd is to be paid back, or paid off, between now and 1960, a very large part of that being capital which has been brought to life simply by the operation of this Bill.

The Minister indicated during the discussion here that the principle was that transport charges should be what the traffic would bear. In 1795, Richard Griffith, a member of the Royal Irish Academy at that time, in a pamphlet headed: "Thoughts and facts relating to the increase of agriculture, manufactures and commerce in the country", drew attention to the fact that some years before, in 1759,

"the market of our capital was left open and unprotected to the farmers on the western coast of England, who supplied Dublin with corn at a less expense of carriage by sea, than the Irish farmers beyond ten miles around the city could supply it by land...."

The Irish House of Commons at that time

"brought forward a Bill granting bounties on the inland and coast carriage of corn to Dublin; and as those bounties were calculated to pay the whole expense of such carriage, the Irish farmer thereby obtained an advantage over every foreign competitor."

At that time, because of the inadequacy of transport, the Irish farmer had to be subsidised in order to be able to compete with the farmer on the western side of Great Britain because it was cheaper to bring corn grown in the west of Great Britain to Dublin by sea than to bring it from ten miles outside Dublin into Dublin. He was dealing with the matter because he wanted to make the point that had the bounties — and between 1759 and 1794, £1,600,000 was paid out in bounties in order to bring Irish grown corn into the City of Dublin — been applied in a judicious and systematic encouragement of inland navigation, there would have been an immense increase in agriculture, manufactures and commerce.

I believe this Bill will drive the Irish farmer back into a position somewhat analogous to his position in 1759 when he had to get a bounty to bring his produce into the City of Dublin at a saleable price which would enable him to compete with outside producers. Every other country in the world is organising and systematising its transport system to give cheap and efficient transport. We are organising our transport system to-day in a single monopoly, under a single man, but we are asking it to carry an amount of dead capital which has been brought to life and which will put a crushing burden both on agriculture — and, of course, every other form of transport which has to go through the country; I am mentioning the direction in which we are most vulnerable and in which we are likely to be most affected, that is, agricultural production, on which much of our economy is based — and on workers in the city. It is only possible because of the distorted condition with regard to charges of the mind of our people. The transport charge for bringing a ton of turf to Dublin at present is 37/6 because of the conditions under which we exist. When the turf scheme was started, it was 6/- per ton. The fact that we are forced, in present circumstances, to suffer these types of charges has had such an effect on our people's minds that there has not been the discussion, particularly by Deputies on the benches behind the Government, which this measure demands there should be.

It is largely because of the general effect which this Bill will have on the economy of the country that we oppose it. But we are also opposed to what is being done in this Bill, that is, that the owners of capital that was practically dead are to be made the owners of the new company of £13,000,000, to be extended later on to a possible limit of £20,000,000, The owners of common stock of the railway company are to be made the owners of that company and the report into the stock exchange transactions with regard to railway stocks shows that 21 per cent., or approximately one-fifth of the common stock, changed hands between 3rd January, 1943, and, I think, 21st November, 1943. It is to the owners then of stock that was practically dead, and one-fifth of which has changed hands in the circumstances of 1943, that we are handling over the ownership of this company and giving them an absolute and complete monopoly over all the public transport of the country. Then, when we are reduced to putting the complete direction and control of this company into the hands of one man, because he is that particular man, we are putting ourselves in an extraordinary position. However, as I say, the whole business of the passing of this Bill will be looked upon as a queer chapter in both railway and political history. Here, on the Fifth Stage, we are still as opposed to it as we were when it first saw the light.

Mr. Norton

The terms of this Bill demonstrate in a very convincing way how far the present Minister for Industry and Commerce has travelled and how circuitous his route has been since he told the House in 1931 that Fianna Fáil stood for a nationalised railway undertaking and a municipalised transport system. In 1931, the Minister believed in the nationalisation of transport, in the national ownership and control of the railway services of the country. After making an attempt at legislation in 1932 and 1933 and in 1944, and with evidence over the past 13 years of the incompetent and inefficient way in which the railway undertaking has been run, the Minister comes to the House again in 1944 with a most audacious Bill designed to buttress up the existing incompetently and inefficiently administered railway service, but on this occasion designed also to ensure that the stockholders of this company are to get from the State in the future a guarantee of the repayment of £16,000,000 debenture stock, and a guarantee, during the unredeemed currency of that stock, of interest at the rate of 3 per cent. per annum.

I regard transport, and I think the nation generally regards transport, as a very vital national service, as something which links up our whole national life, as something vital to the maintenance of our present complex industrial, agricultural and commercial life, and as something which, in a progressive State, must be administered on the basis of maximum efficiency. Here in this country we have a long history of inefficient and effete transport administration, an administration which has given us a costly and inefficient transport system, and which has given us railway stocks which have been described by the Minister in terms almost of transport junk. From time to time over the past 20 years this House has been called upon to try to make good the ravages of incompetent railway administration. From time to time we have been told by various Ministers that the step then about to be taken would surely put the railways on a firm basis. After a few years, we saw these prophecies falsified. We saw the railways stagger on to greater and still greater inefficiency, and we saw the service to the community, so far as these railways companies are concerned, repeatedly deteriorating.

Here again we are making another effort to buttress up the same type of inefficiency. It is true that on this occasion we have found, apparently, a transport administrator who, at all events, has thrilled the Minister and the Government by his transport capabilities. On his character, or on his transport abilities I do not desire to make the slightest reflection whatever. But I do want to make this observation, that, if the Minister imagines that he will create a situation in which a very incompetently administered transport service, financed as this undertaking has been in the past and as it is financed to-day, will in a short space of time become an efficient servant of the people by providing a cheap and efficient transport service, then I think the Minister is pinning his faith to a hope which I doubt is capable of realisation.

I came across an incident the other day which I think typifies the type of railway management we have had in the past and shows, too, that we have not, even at this stage, got away from the mentality of the past so far as transport administration is concerned. I came across the other day the case of a man of 65½ years of age who was first employed as a bus driver on the old Clondalkin bus service in 1917. In 1925, his services were taken over by the Irish Omnibus Company. In 1927 the Irish Omnibus Company was absorbed by the Great Southern Railways, and he served the Great Southern Railways until July last. Having given a service of approximately 27 years to transport in this country, that man has been told by the Great Southern Railways that his services are no longer required as he has now reached the age of 65. When he inquired what compensation, gratuity or pension he would get from the railway company, he was told that the board had decided to make him an ex gratia grant of £5 in appreciation of his services. Five pounds grant to a man who had given 27 years in the transport service — an appreciation at the rate probably of 1d. per week for that service over that period of 27 years. The railway company is simply casting that man out. He has no income; he has £5 which he has received from the railway company and for the rest of his life he must go to the employment exchange, convince the authorities there that he cannot get work again as a bus-driver or in a bus undertaking, and try to subsist on whatever pittance he can get in that way. It would be difficult to discover a greater indictment of the type of muddled mentality that exists in this benighted railway administration.

When one adverts to the circumstances of that case, one realises how inhuman this railway company can be to an employee. On the other hand, how generous are the community going to be to the same railway company by guaranteeing the stockholders interest at the rate of 3 per cent. per annum, whether the company makes a profit or not, and guaranteeing the repayment in full of £16,000,000 of debenture stock. It is outrageous to regard the company's debenture assets as worth the £9,000,000 referred to. These debenture assets have been hopelessly written up. They have been written up largely because of the fact that it was known, whether by intelligent anticipation or by the exercise of telepathic science, that the Government would throw in a guarantee of 3 per cent. per annum during the currency of these debenture stocks. Whatever the position may be in that respect, the naked truth is that the community will guarantee this interest at the rate of 3 per cent. per annum whether the railway company makes a profit or not.

It may well be that the Minister, with the power he can exercise under this Bill, will be able to compel the railway company so to order its business that it will be able to earn an income capable of paying the dividends. If that is so, the company is only going to pay the dividends by mulcting the trading community and the travelling public in charges which will be outrageously excessive. The community, therefore, are put in this position, that if they want to pay the shareholders this 3 per cent. per annum on the £16,000,000 worth of debenture stock, and if they want to pay the common stockholders 6 per cent. on £4,000,000 worth of common stock, they can only do so by subjecting themselves to very high transport charges. If they do not want to pay high transport charges, they can annually subject themselves to taxation, so as to enable the company and the shareholders to get income in the form of direct or indirect taxation, which, because of public protest, they cannot get in the form of higher transport charges.

When the Government went to the extent of pledging the State's credit at £16,000,000 for debenture stock, plus a guarantee of 3 per cent. per annum for dividends, I think the State ought to have gone where the Minister contemplated in 1931 they would have gone, namely, to the extent of taking over on fair terms the assets, whatever they may be, of the Dublin United Transport Company and the assets of the Great Southern Railways and make the transport undertaking of this country a nationalised undertaking, owned by the whole community and operated in the name of the whole community — owned and operated, not for the purpose of paying dividends to those with money to invest in a transport undertaking, but in order to give the public the cheapest and most efficient service it is possible, in our circumstances, to provide for them.

I object to a vital service such as transport being utilised as a medium to pay dividends to investors. The public depend to too great an extent on the transport service for their complex methods of life to permit that service to be made the plaything of investors. I should have thought from his utterances in 1931 that the Minister would long since have broken with the concept of a transport system based upon transport for the public only if the public are willing to pay the investors' ransom. We are providing a transport system, guaranteeing out of the pockets of the travelling public dividends to those who invest in the undertaking. I think an enlightened undertaking would have recognised, as is the case in respect of light and water and national roads, that these services, transport included, are so vital to the community that profit-taking could not be permitted and that it is desirable in the public interest that there should be a nationalised, non-profitmaking transport system.

However, the Minister has now reached the stage when he is satisfied to abandon the 1931 declaration and the Government are perfectly satisfied, as were other administrations here, to permit the transport system to be operated as a privately capitalised, profitmaking monopoly. That is unfair to the travelling public.

Whatever the fate of this legislation may be, and whatever may be the ultimate fate of the Great Southern Railways, public opinion, progressive as it is in matters of this kind, will, I venture to suggest to the Minister, shortly reach the stage when it will insist that there should be no profits made at the expense of the travelling public and that transport ought to be provided for the whole community on the cheapest possible basis consistent with the maintenance of the most efficient services. In that way you can best serve the interests of the travelling public and the trading community and I venture to say that these interests will be better served by the operation of a nationally-owned and controlled transport undertaking than they could possibly be served by the creation of what will be established under this Bill, namely, a private, profitmaking undertaking which puts the claims of its investors far and away above the claims of the travelling and the trading public.

Mr. Dillon

I oppose the motion that this Bill do now pass on three grounds. I oppose it, first of all, because I regard this Bill as the speculator's Magna Charta in Ireland; secondly, because I believe that the transport of the country could be very much better provided for along the lines adumbrated by me on the Second Stage of the Transport (No. 1) Bill; and, thirdly, because this Bill contains in it the proviso that there should be upon the Government a contingent liability to pay the interest on the debentures and the principal, if the necessity should arise, in the event of the railway company being unable to pay it.

Let us examine these three grounds. Shortly before the last dissolution a resolution was passed by this House setting up a tribunal to inquire into a situation which was agreed upon all sides of the House to constitute a scandal. I remember saying on that occasion that whatever scandal had taken place at least the people might take consolation in the fact that all Parties in Dáil Eireann were resolved to have the matter exhaustively investigated and appropriate steps taken to remedy any evil which might have developed. The House parted in that atmosphere, that, whatever individuals might have done, the Legislature was determined to do its utmost to prevent the exploitation of poor and simple people by the less scrupulous elements of the community. The tribunal having heard such evidence as they had access to, made their report.

The Minister must consider himself the champion of certain seedy interests. He need not imagine that he or his friends can intimidate me from saying what I believe to be true about this whole scabrous transaction. I shall continue to deal with it in public as long as I have the voice to protest against such dealings and nothing the Minister or his associates can say will deter me for a single hour. No threat, no combination of powerful moneyed interests, to operate a form of blackmail of public men lest we should refer to their depredations, will stop me from talking as long as my voice can be used to hold up the gentlemen responsible for that kind of business in the public life of this country. They need not imagine that, by getting the Minister to take their side or making him their champion, any combination of wealth or threats will silence criticism of what has gone on. That is the first ground on which I ask the House to reject this Bill.

The second ground on which I ask the House to reject this Bill is this. What we are in effect doing, if we pass this Bill, is giving to a private company, which has virtually no assets— the permanent way of the railway company and its existing railway stock are more of a liability than an asset — the very substantial asset of a transport monopoly in this country. I want to ask this House why we should give to the shareholders of Córas Iompair Éireann a monopoly in transport in this country, any more than we would give to Clery's a monopoly of the distributive trade in O'Connell Street or the City of Dublin. The only argument for any justification of this is that the railway company has gone bankrupt and that if we do not aid it, it will close down altogether.

Why should we give to this company a monopoly of the transport of Ireland? What particular virtue resides in the shareholders of the Great Southern Railways and the Dublin United Transport Company that they should become the repository of that? And if, for some incomprehensible reason, we do decide to present them with all these assets of considerable value, why do we go on doing so, and furthermore, capitalise the asset we give them, saying we will step in to guarantee the dividend on it and guarantee the principal? I am sure Deputy Loughman would be very grateful if we would confer a monopoly on him in his particular business in Clonmel, and I would be very grateful to Dáil Éireann if it would confer a monopoly on me of the distributive trade in Ballaghaderreen — never mind the whole country —and then say also that it will guarantee the payment of a regular dividend on the shares. Whether the fellow works early or late or goes to bed and stays in bed all the time, we are to say: "Never worry; on the 31st December every year you will get the dividend you expected to get, because the State will pay it, if you do not choose to operate your enterprise in such a way as to produce it itself." Surely that is daft?

We could perfectly honourably, perfectly equitably and perfectly legally, have gone to the Great Southern Railways, when this transport legislation was in contemplation, and said that we were going to take over the whole railway, assets, liabilities and everything else, and appoint an arbitrator, not to deprive the shareholders of the Great Southern Railways of anything they have had but to give them full value for everything we took over from them. We could perfectly easily have created and issued stock, just as we do when taking over land from the landlord and, instead of giving them land bonds, we could give them railway bonds. We could have gone to the Dublin United Transport Company and said that, as at a given date, we were taking over the whole company and that arbitrators would determine the full value of the property. There would be no question of compensation or of penalisation, but we would say: "We want you to get the full value of what we are taking over." We could have given them transport bonds in the same way.

Then we could have set up a body like the Electricity Supply Board and handed over the whole transport of the country to them. We could have given the board instructions to coordinate transport, to make known their road requirements to the Government, so that the Government could take requisite measures to provide adequate roads for the type of transport that may be required in this country for 25 or 30 years to come. We could have instructed them, either to levy freights on the merchandise and passengers carried, large enough to provide an annual contribution to the Exchequer, or we could have told them to levy freights at a level which would just defray the expenses of the transport board. Or we could have gone further and, if we deemed it expedient, in order to assist agriculture by exports or something of that kind, we might have said to that transport company: "Exempt all feeding stuffs and live stock from any charge for freight at all and the Government will give you a lump sum annually, to defray whatever expenses you may have been put to in carrying these things." That would amount to an indirect subsidy to the agricultural industry. All these alternatives would have been open to us, had we established a corporation primarily designed to serve the community, an independent transport board on the lines of the Electricity Supply Board.

Deputy Norton made reference to Mr. Reynolds. I want to be associated with him in saying that nothing I say here is to be interpreted as an attack on Mr. Reynolds. On the contrary, if Deputies will refer to the speech I made on the Second Reading Stage of Transport Bill (No. 1), they will find that I suggested to the Minister then that, probably, Mr. Reynolds should be one of the first three members of the transport board, were it set up. I am not qualified to judge the merit of his work. Certain it is, I think, that most people will agree that he threw himself with energy and zeal into the job he undertook, and that he undertook the job which he now has at a time when it did not look too attractive a proposition to anybody. But I want to demur to this proposition, which was one made at one stage by the Minister for Industry and Commerce in this House, that consequent on his taking over and on the new arrangement, whereby he had a coercive voice on the board of the railway company, superior management resulted in the accumulation of funds which permitted the payment of 3 per cent. dividend on the ordinary stock. That is just hooey. The process by which 3 per cent. was collected for the ordinary stockholders was by raising the freight charges steeply. There was no longer any opposition, as there was no petrol for the lorries. We had to pay the freight charges or leave our goods at the railhead. When petrol becomes available again and when individual citizens and firms are in a position to operate their own lorries and motor cars, a different situation will obtain. In the absence of private cars and lorries, freight rates have risen in some cases, I believe, by 100 per cent. In other cases, they have risen by a percentage so dramatic as to induce the Secretary of the Department of Finance, a member of the board of the sugar company, to protest publicly — and that despite the fact that the Minister for Industry and Commerce deemed it his duty to get up here and say that that member of the board of the sugar company did not understand what he was talking about. That is an old saw. We have heard that "crack" not infrequently across the floor of this House. But if the citizens of this State had to choose between the perspicacity of that member of the sugar board and the Minister for Industry and Commerce, who would have any doubt as to where their preference would lie? It was as a result of increases in freight charges, typified by that incident, that 3 per cent. was raised for the ordinary stockholders of the railway company, who included the speculators — the boys who got the wink, wherever they got it.

That brings me to the last reason why I ask the House to reject this Bill. Most well brought-up men and women in this House received at some stage of their adolescence this precept from their parents: never go bail for a man in the bank. If somebody comes and asks you to bail him in the bank, make up how much you can afford to lose and give him a present of that but never go bail in the bank. What does Section 18 of this Bill mean? Are we not all going bail in the bank? But, with commendable prudence, we are going bail in the bank not with our own money but with our neighbour's money. Do not Deputies remember Charles Lamb's essay on the two classes of men — the men who borrow and the men who lend? He describes the man who lends as a dreary, mean, gloomy creature who is always sidling up to you and saying: "Are you going to pay anything on the debt you owe me?" Then, he describes the man who borrows as a hearty, genial, optimistic chap whom it is a pleasure to meet, who is always glad to see you, who claps you on the back and tells you not to worry, that his ship will be coming in any time now and that if you care to lend him another five pounds he will put it on the bill. He is never gloomy or worried but always hale and hearty. He is always prepared, if pressed, to send the letter that a famous debtor sent when he received a communication from one of his legion of creditors to the effect that that creditor wanted to be paid forthwith. The debtor took up his pen and wrote in reply: "Dear Sir — I have received your impertinent communication. Please take notice that if I receive any more of those insolent demands, I will not even put you in the lottery of creditors which I conduct each one of whom is eligible for an instalment." That is what the railway company is in a position to say to us. In five or ten years, petrol will be available and private cars and lorries will be on the roads. This company proceeds to increase its freight rates. Protests are heard from all sides. Eventually, the commercial community, in their own defence, are driven to using their own lorries rather than pay the freight charges demanded by the railway company. Private individuals buy their own cars. Neighbours combine to drive up to Dublin rather than go in the train because railway fares will be so high. Then, a representative of the railway company comes to the Minister for Industry and Commerce and says: "You can do one of two things: either persuade the Minister for Finance to take such steps as will render it uneconomic for the private lorry owner and car owner to use their vehicles in competition with us or go to the Minister for Finance and tell him that your transport scheme has broken down, that the railway company cannot earn the interest on its debenture stock and that the Minister for Finance must introduce a Supplementary Estimate in Dáil Eireann to repay the Central Fund for the cash disbursed to make up the dividends on the debenture stock which the railway company is unable to pay." Observe the alternatives open to the Minister for Industry and Commerce. He can go to the Minister for Finance and say: "Put an extra tax on the tyres, petrol and horsepower of the private motor car and lorry. That will mean more revenue for you and permit of your reducing taxation in another direction." That is a pleasant thing to do in Dáil Eireann. Or the Minister for Industry and Commerce can say to the Minister for Finance: "Get up in Dáil Eireann and make an apologia pro vita mea, tell them that I was a damn fool, that all my gaudy promises about Transport Bill No. 2 were not worth the paper and ink with which they were written, that the railway company cannot pay and ask the Dáil to find the money to make up the debenture interest. Faeed with these two alternatives, what do Deputies think the House will do? Does not every Deputy know that, by hook or by crook, the Minister will create a situation in which the Transport Company will have such an advantage over the private lorry and private car that they will be virtually driven off the road except in so far as the wealthy citizen can operate a Rolls Royce or a Daimler. That is what this provision means.

Mind you, when the Minister comes to that, it is not going to be done in an overt, open way. It will probably be done by giving Córas Iompair Eireann concessions which will constitute an additional burden on ordinary users of the road, and which will place the railway company in a very much more advantageous position. The cost of the concession will be levied on the ordinary taxpayers of whom the ordinary car owner and lorry owner constitute a very large part. That will all come about as a result of Deputies in this House forgetting the precept given them by their parents: "Never bail a man in the bank." You are bailing a man in the bank to-day, and he will come back in five years and demand either that you should take up his bill or that you should create in him an artificial ability to raise the money requisite to pay the commitments into which he has entered. Now we are letting ourselves in for all that when an infinitely preferable method is there available to us — to constitute a transport board, as ultimately we shall have to do. That is as certain as we are in this House. Sooner or later a transport board will have to be set up. Because we cannot face that now we are creating all these complications and difficulties for ourselves. For what? I admit that it is sometimes a mistake to model oneself too closely on one's neighbours, but I think it is a useful thing to look abroad, to judge by the mistakes of others and to learn from their successes. In the City of Greater London we had a situation closely analogous to that which arose here — a vast number of rival traction companies all operating for profit, and the superior rights of the travelling public were asserted, with the limited right of these individual companies to earn a profit. The London Passenger Transport Board was set up with certain very limited rights to pay dividends but with the primary duty of serving the public in London. Why could we not do that here?

Bear this in mind: You are constituting a company. Its real tangible asset is its monopoly, but it has got miles and miles of railway line. I may be right, or I may be wrong, but I believe the future of transport in this country lies on the roads. I believe that any far-seeing transport man must plan to put the whole transport of the country on the roads in 25 or 30 years' time. How can any company undertake that task effectively — because to do it effectively two things must be done. Firstly, years before transport goes over to the roads, a proper system of roads must be provided; and secondly, somebody must take the decision of abandoning the existing railways. Now, if you propose to abandon the existing permanent way, it would be very hard to get the shareholders to agree to that proposal, but yet, taking the longer view, the view of the community and of the State, that might be, and probably is, the right thing to do, gradually. I do not mean that any sane man would contemplate doing it the day after tomorrow, but that he should make up his mind that over the next 20 or 25 years they will be abandoned, and that all the traffic of the country will be carried over the roads. Can Córas Iompair Éireann or a transport board best take that decision? Surely a transport board which was not primarily concerned with the redemption of debentures, the accumulation of profits or the payment of dividends, whose sole concern was to provide for the country the most efficient system of transport that our resources would permit, could better undertake that job than Córas Iompair Éireann.

Suppose that the Electricity Supply Board were at present being run by a profit-making corporation, and suppose Deputies knew well that in certain areas it was in the interests of the community that the Electricity Supply Board should take a risk by going into a town where there was not such a demand at present for electricity that would justify the expenditure on the poles and wires required to go into that town. Has not each one of us in the case of our own town gone to the Electricity Supply Board and made the case that if this were a purely business proposition, one could not in conscience go and recommend the Electricity Supply Board to connect up the town but that, bearing in mind the social benefit that such extension as you were suggesting would confer, you felt entitled as a responsible man to urge the board to take the risk of some years' loss, partly in anticipation of getting an economic demand in the long run but mainly on the consideration that as a semi-public body they had a certain duty to the community and that even though this extension never paid dividends, it was a legitimate charge on the whole of the electricity system of the State? How can you make that case to Córas Iompair Eireann unless you are prepared to go the next step and say to them: "If this involves you in such a loss that 3 per cent. will not be available for the debenture stock, Dáil Eireann will provide it"? Can you conceive the Minister telling us that the transport legislation which he had put through this House has failed in its purpose and that the railway company cannot produce the dividend? The railway company will produce dividends every year of its existence. It will produce them but who will pay them? The people who use the transport system. And who are the people who are going to use the transport system?

The vast bulk of the use to which our transport system is going to be put is bringing in the raw materials of industry and carrying to the ports of embarkation the surplus agricultural produce which we consign to the markets of the world. We have taxed these raw materials with customs duties. We have restricted imports. We have placed on the farmers who are trying to produce the only exports which will ultimately pay for the essential imports which we must have after the war, many imposts. Is this House, with its eyes wide open, going to place on their backs a new additional impost, not designed to assist the Exchequer, not designed to finance some desirable new social service to alleviate the conditions of the poor, not designed to make life easier for some other sections of the community, but designed to give his pound of flesh to the gentleman who bought the poor man's shares at £9 each, shares which to-day are value for £55? This Transport Bill is going to be a cause of infinite trouble to our country. We have a clear and reasonable alternative if we choose to adopt it. We still can adopt it to-day. I have no doubt the Leader of the Opposition will provide the House with the opportunity of going on record as to whether it wants this Bill or not. If he does not do so, then perhaps the Leader of the Labour Party will; but if both should fail at least one voice will be raised for a Division in this House, and I do not doubt that I shall get the requisite half-dozen to stand up.

Mr. M.E. Dockrell

Speaking on this Bill in its earlier stages I said that I was afraid that the fare-paying section of the public and the freightpaying section of the community in general, would be asked in future to pay an unduly high cost for transport in this country. That, I think, is the kernel of this whole Bill. Here and there in the Bill there are aspects that are perhaps good and that will perhaps turn out all right but, generally speaking, I fear that the community in general are going to pay to this company, which has been put in a position of absolute monopoly, too high a price for the privilege of carrying their goods and carrying themselves as passengers. I might speak on the Bill for over an hour and not say any more in essence than that. I am very much afraid that we have not adequate safeguards to protect us. Now, the Minister will have to turn around and devise other things in the future as a means of that protection, but I am afraid that we are going to pay dearly for our transport.

Now, I want to refer especially to Section 52 of this Bill. Section 52 is that portion of the Bill which deals with the payment of wayleaves made by the tramway company in the past, and the present transport company, to the Dublin Corporation and the Dun Laoghaire Borough Corporation — a payment which, I maintain, is a monopoly payment and which, I think, the Minister has tried to make out as being, very largely, a payment for the usage of trams on the roadways of those two bodies. Now, in Section 52 there is sub-section (4), and that sub-section, which is the kernel of the whole matter, states that the arbitrator — who has to go into this question of what sum is to be paid to those two local authorities — shall have regard to all the circumstances of the case. Now, that is mandatory. The sub-section says that: "he shall have regard to all the circumstances". Every circumstance which has any bearing on this question of the wayleaves is to be considered by the arbitrator, and I must emphasise the words "all the circumstances". In other words, every circumstance that may exist must come under that phrase "all the circumstances"; but then, in the second part of that sub-section (4), it says that the arbitrator "may have regard, so far as he considers equitable, to the extent to which the roadways of that road authority have ceased to be used or will cease to be used for the purpose of tramways". I submit to the Minister and to this House that if the first part of the sub-section, which is mandatory, and under which the arbitrator has to consider all the circumstances, has any meaning, then it renders the second part of the sub-section, which is permissive, as either tautological — and, therefore, may be struck out — or as being suggestive to the arbitrator that one of the chief things for the arbitrator to consider is the extent to which roadways have ceased to be used for trams.

I do not wish to go back over the whole ground, as we had a long discussion on it on the Committee Stage, but I suggest that the second part of sub-section (4), when viewed in that manner, has a sinister meaning. It can only mean one of two things. It can only have the meaning that it is tautology or that it is suggesting to the arbitrator that one of the chief things of which he must take account is the question of the extent to which the roadways have ceased to be used for trams. If that is the procedure, then why did not the Bill suggest to the arbitrator that he might also have regard to the extent to which buses had been increased or to which lines of buses had been extended over portions of the roadways where buses never ran before? Why pick on the cessation of trams and leave out the increase of buses? I would ask the Minister, when he sends this Bill to the Seanad, to strike out that portion of sub-section (4). Now, in connection with that sub-section, the Minister, when we were discussing this matter on the Committee Stage, made a rather significant statement. I am quoting from the Dáil reports. He said:—

"In so far as there is an allocation out of the Road Fund to local authorities, in proportion to the amount contributed in the local authorities' areas, the corporation will still continue to receive a certain sum in respect of the amount paid by the company in road tax."

Now, that really means that the Minister was saying: "Oh, in so far as there is a payment out of the Road Fund, you people will get an increase in tax for the amount got on the roads; the trams will go off, but you will be recompensed by the increased taxation on the buses." That, on the face of it, appears to be quite fair, but unfortunately it has no relation to the facts, and I should like, in this connection, to give some figures as to the amounts contributed in motor taxation from the City of Dublin and the amounts received from the Road Fund grant by Dublin City. In the year ended 31st March, 1931, the amount contributed in motor taxation from the City of Dublin was £256,848, and the amount received from the Road Fund grant by Dublin City was £38,383. In 1932, the amount contributed in motor taxation from the City of Dublin was £282,003, and the amount received by the corporation from the Road Fund grant was £72,440. In 1933 the amount contributed in motor taxation from the City of Dublin — they did slightly better in that year — was £265,631, and they got from the Road Fund grant £117,835, but that included a special grant of £51,000. In 1934 the amount contributed from the City of Dublin was £261,044, and the amount they received was £50,000. In 1935 the amount contributed in motor taxation was £272,145, and the corporation got £50,000. In 1936, the amount contributed in motor taxation was £279,338, and the amount received from the Road Fund grant was £51,032. In 1937 the figures, respectively were £306,019, and £49,278. In 1938 they raised from motor taxation £309,254, and the corporation received £51,000. In 1939 the amount raised was £326,403, and the corporation received £51,000. In 1940 they raised £321,538, and the corporation received £51,000. That is the last year for which I have figures. By quoting those figures I hope to correct the misapprehension under which the Minister appears to be labouring: that there is any direct relationship between the number of vehicles registered in Dublin and the amount received from the Road Fund by the Dublin Corporation. That fact completely blows through the roof the idea that, by virtue of more buses being put on the road, the Dublin Corporation benefits by a penny. I wish to clear away that impression for fear the arbitrator, or anybody else, would have the idea that the corporation and, as a consequence the citizens of Dublin might benefit.

In that connection, I am not surprised that there should be a certain amount of confusion in the Minister's mind on this question, because the whole subject of payments out of the Road Fund to the local authorities is one of absolute confusion. No local authority knows what it is going to get and it does not know why it gets it. I hope at a later stage to raise this question in greater detail. I want Deputies to be clear in their minds on this: that local authorities affected by this question of wayleaves will not benefit one penny by the extra buses that may be put on the roads. In conclusion, I would ask the Minister to strike out the offending portion of sub-section (4), Section 52, if not in the interests of justice, which I believe to be on the side of the corporation in this matter, then at least in the interests of accuracy.

Mr. Cogan

Deputy Dillon appeared to be rather worried lest the other Opposition Parties would fail in their duty to call a division on this Stage of the Bill. I do not think the Deputy need have any fears about that. So far as we of the Farmers' Party are concerned, we have opposed the Bill at every stage mainly on the ground that it constitutes a menace, and a permanent menace, to agriculture, which is the primary industry of the country. It is a menace to the development and expansion of that industry and to its very existence. It constitutes that menace by reason of the extraordinary and unjustifiable monopoly which this new company is being given, not only in regard to passenger traffic but also in regard to merchandise traffic. Whatever justification there might be for a monopoly in regard to passenger traffic, there is none whatever for the monopoly which is being given to this new company for the carriage of goods by road. This Bill seeks not only to perpetuate but to extend the restrictions placed by the 1933 Act upon the operation of licensed hauliers on the roads, thereby making it impossible for real competition to grow up in the conveyance of merchandise on the roads except in so far as competition is provided by the private lorry owner. I do not agree that the competition provided by the private lorry owner is sufficient to check the injustices which may be inflicted upon the agricultural community by this monopolist company. When we consider the type of organisation which is being set up to control transport, when we consider the manner in which this new company is being financed and the generosity with which the former railway company is being rewarded, we cannot escape the conviction that an excessive burden must and will be placed upon the general community in order to provide the finances necessary to implement this Bill.

The terms offered in the Bill to the railway company are far too generous, having regard to the value of the assets which they hold at the present time. In particular, they are far too generous to those who became the holders of railway shares only a short time ago and purchased them at a very low price. There is no justification whatever for asking the general community to come in now and reward those people so excessively. On every occasion, when public property is acquired by the State, almost invariably machinery is set up to fix the amount of compensation to be awarded to private individuals. When land is acquired for building or other purposes we usually have a tribunal set up or an arbitrator appointed to award the amount of compensation to be paid, but in this case the compensation is fixed by statute and on a scale which is so generous that there can be no possibility whatever of dissatisfaction on the part of the existing railway stockholders. There can, however, be grave reason for dissatisfaction on the part of those who will have to foot the bill.

This Bill makes provision for capital to the extent of more than £6,000,000, over and above what is required to compensate the existing transport companies. That means that £6,000,000 is being provided for the new company to play with. That, in itself, constitutes a menace for those who have to depend on transport. There will be the inevitable temptation for this new transport company to invest a large portion of this £6,000,000 in bringing the existing railway system up to date, a system which, in the course of a few years, may be found to be unnecessary and have to be scrapped. We cannot, having regard to the sparse population of this country, maintain two thoroughly up-to-date and efficient transport systems: a railway system and a road system extending into every part of the country.

One of them must go, and it is inevitable, sooner or later, that the railway system will go. When this new company have invested the larger part of this £6,000,000 in modernising the railway system, they will be compelled to hang on to that system and to tie the country to two systems of transport, although the traffic offering is not sufficient to justify their existence. Thus there will inevitably be placed upon the travelling community, upon the farmers, upon the consumers and every section of the community dependent upon the transport of merchandise, an excessive and everincreasing burden. The Minister may say that there will always be the competition of the private car and the private lorry to protect the rights of the citizens. Does anyone think for one moment that the Minister will stand by and allow the private car or the private lorry to force this new transport company into bankruptcy? Is it not inevitable that immediately the private car and private lorry operate to the detriment of the new company, restrictions will be placed upon the private car, that even greater restrictions will be placed upon the private lorry, and, probably, still further restrictions will be placed upon the existing inadequate number of licensed hauliers. All these restrictions will operate to prevent the expansion and development of our main industry. It is the duty of every Deputy to make it clear that we do not stand for the agricultural industry and every productive industry in this country being put into a straitjacket, into a stranglegrip, in order to make profits for a chosen few, the few who will own this transport system.

Mr. Cosgrave

I think sufficient discussion has taken place concerning this Bill since it was first introduced and I do not intend to delay the House. I cannot attempt to prophesy what effect the Bill will have when enacted either on the general economic position or on goods and passenger transport, but I certainly hope that the enactment of the measure and the setting up of the new transport company will result in a cheap and efficient transport system. I have a certain amount of confidence that when the new chairman secures control that that will be the position. There are certain portions of the Bill to which I take objection. One is the right of the Minister to fix charges, even though they are the maximum charges. No impartial body now remains to which transport users may resort in order to ascertain the equity or otherwise of the passenger and freight charges fixed by the company. While the Minister has argued, with a good deal of truth, that the Railway Tribunal had ceased to function or, in actual fact, never functioned effectively as a body which could fix these charges, owing to the expense devolving upon the ordinary individuals or traders in securing adequate representation by counsel to meet the array of counsel which the company could afford to brief, nevertheless; I believe some independent and impartial body or tribunal should be available to which the public could resort for the purpose of ascertaining the equity or otherwise of the charges imposed by the company. No such tribunal is provided for in the Bill and, that being so, it devolves upon the Minister for Industry and Commerce for the time being to fix — in the event of a dispute — a reasonable or a fair charge.

I wish to impress upon the Minister the desirability of informing the new company, or the chairman, when he is appointed, of the essential needs of the country so far as transport is concerned. The first is that transport should be cheap and efficient and that the rates should not be higher than the passengers or goods are able to bear. As far as I can learn, the sugar company were allowed reduced freights for their products and for the transport of beet, and, I presume, of beet pulp to and from the factories, with the result that the railway company lost considerably on the transaction. It is feasible that the company should lose on certain commodities and make up the loss on others. Of course, it will be argued then that one class of goods, or one section of the community should not pay for the transport of other goods or other sections of the community. I understand that the rates which the company charges in regard to sugar beet and sugar products have now been increased with the result, apparently, that they are in excess of what the goods are able to bear or in excess of what would allow the sugar company a reasonable margin of profit.

These are the particular matters about which I have some fears, and I should like the Minister to say what directions he proposes to give the chairman or that, when he is laying the appointment of the chairman on the Table of the House, he would give some indication to the House of the instructions which the chairman has been given in respect to these matters. It may be that for a time nothing will arise, but that after a period, when revision of transport charges or of conditions of transport is required, a certain amount of dispute may ensue and that the public must depend on the Minister, as guardian of their rights, to ensure that they get a fair deal.

I would urge the Minister to allow the company, so far as is possible, to operate freely without Ministerial control or interference, at the same time, bringing to bear on the company and on the chairman the fact that transport charges in this country have been high and that the general tendency is to have them higher than the goods and passengers are able to bear. In the event of a transition from tramways to buses, while the actual charges may not be increased, by routeing and by distances, the same result may be secured by the company. Many people have experience recently of the increased fares on buses over and above what were previously charged for the same journeys by the tramways. In some cases, the total charge was the same but for intermediate stages the buses were charging a halfpenny more than the tramways.

Mr. Lemass

May I say that I have been greatly pleased and heartened by the announcement from the Opposition Front Bench that they are going to continue their opposition to this Bill to the end? With an unbroken record of 20 years, during which they were never right on any question of major importance, it is good to know they are still against us. It proves that we are right on this occasion, and it makes it all the more probable that the Bill is a good one. I was also glad to learn that the Farmers' Party, through its spokesman Deputy Cogan — I use the word "spokesman" as distinct from "leader," as the strong, silent leader is so strong and silent that he has not spoken at all — has informed us that they are also going to oppose the Bill to the end.

It has been obvious in the discussions that we have had on the Bill that most of them had not read it and that those who had did not understand it. I do not think that made any difference. Deputy Cogan announced that their opposition to the Bill was because they regarded it as a menace to agriculture, proving that they did not understand it, and apparently did not understand either the interests of the agricultural industry. Deputy Mulcahy was right in saying that this Bill was the central feature of a queer chapter in the political history of this country. I thought the main feature of that chapter was so queer that the Deputy would have had the good sense not to refer to it. Undoubtedly it has had a chequered career and many incidents will be remembered when the details of the Bill are forgotten, but I do not think they will be remembered to the credit of the Fine Gael Party and of Deputy Dillon and Deputy Cogan who also spoke this afternoon.

I am not going to transgress the bounds of order in this debate except to refer briefly to Deputy Dillon's observations arising out of the report of the tribunal of inquiry into certain transactions in railway stocks. Allegations were made regarding transactions in railway stocks, and because the allegations were made, a tribunal was set up, a tribunal composed of three eminent judges, which has reported that there was no foundation for these allegations. The tribunal reported that not merely was there no evidence of a direct kind that there was any improper use or disclosure of information concerning the Government's proposals for the reorganisation of transport, but that the weight of circumstantial evidence showed that there was in fact no such improper use or disclosure. Deputy Dillon says the tribunal's report is wrong.

Whether he implies that the eminent judges who composed the tribunal deliberately produced a report contrary to the facts or whether he is seeking to imply that the facts were not available to them, his speech is, I think, more than contemptible in all the circumstances. Deputy Dillon was a witness before that tribunal. He was one of the fathers of the allegation which led to its establishment and, on that account, he was brought before it as a witness. As a witness he was asked to give evidence on oath and, on oath, he declared that he had not got one single item of fact to justify his allegations; but now that the tribunal has reported, now that the eminent judges have had all the facts and, on the basis of all the facts, given a verdict, Deputy Dillon, in the privileged circle of this House, says that the tribunal was squared, that the tribunal was misled, or was wrong, and that he is not going to accept its report. I cannot hope to follow all the labyrinthine ways of Deputy Dillon's mind to find the cause of the bad smell that always emanates when he speaks, but I think all those Deputies who have any rules of decency by which to conduct public affairs and their part in public affairs will join me in expressing contempt for the speech delivered this afternoon by Deputy Dillon.

I cannot follow the argument of Deputy Mulcahy that this Bill, when enacted and put into force, will operate to the detriment of the agricultural community or to the workers of Dublin. Certainly neither he nor those who joined with him in opposition to the Bill were able to convince the agricultural community or the workers of Dublin that the Bill was contrary to their interests. We are setting our hand now to the task of reorganising the transport system. We cannot complete that reorganisation until more normal conditions have arisen, but we can bring into being the framework of that organisation. We can give it directing force; we can give it powers, and we can give it the means to avail of the material resources which will not become available until the war is over. Our aim in doing that is to ensure that we will have better transport services after the war than we had before it.

Deputy Mulcahy says that we are going to impose on that new transport organisation a burden of dead capital. The primary purpose of this Bill is to reduce the capital charges which transport has had to bear in the past. In my introductory speech I demonstrated how, by a comparatively smooth operation, affecting only the subsidiary stocks of the Great Southern Railways a saving of £30,000 per year in capital charges has already been effected, and the establishment of the new company on the basis contemplated in the Bill will mean further substantial savings immediately operative in the capital charges which transport services have had to meet in the past.

It is quite clear that by the amalgamation and the new capital structure which the Bill contemplates, there is going to be a substantial diminution in the amount of revenue from transport which must be allocated to the payment of interest and dividends. There is going to be an accession of new revenue, there is going to be created the possibility of considerable economies which would not otherwise have been possible. We are ensuring that of the revenue which comes from the sale of transport services of one kind or another, a higher proportion will in future be available for the improvement of the services, for a reduction of the charges at which the services are provided and for the improvement of the conditions of workers employed in the operation of the services. Deputy Norton chose to ignore that aspect. He chose to ignore that under the scheme associated with this Bill, or implemented by it, £175,000 additional every year is going to be allocated in priority to debenture interest for the purpose of the superannuation arrangements now being brought into force. He told us a distressing story about a worker, employed in transport for a number of years, retiring without provision being made for his old age when no longer capable of being employed. One of the purposes of this Bill is to end that.

One of its purposes is to ensure that workers employed in transport in future will have reasonable economic security in old age. Deputies who vote against this Bill are voting against that economic security for transport workers. Clearly, the new system of superannuation which has been brought into force, and which is associated with this Bill, cannot be operated at all until we can contemplate that the new transport organisation is going to be a greater financial success than the old Great Southern Railways Company.

Deputy Norton objects to paying dividends and interest on capital and apparently contemplates a position in which the State can get money for nothing, although there is no means of doing so, except by taxation, and we could not impose taxation for this purpose. He will not face up to the fact that it is the success of the new transport company that makes it possible for us to guarantee, not merely security for workers in their employment, not merely economic protection in old age, but reasonable conditions of employment in the interval. There is no security for workers employed in transport if transport has to be subsidised by the Exchequer, if the organisation providing the transport services is not paying its way, and I submit that nobody knows that better than the transport workers of the country who have always realised that their security and future prosperity depended upon the prosperity of the organisation which employed them. That applied not merely to transport workers but to workers in any occupation. Workers employed by a firm which is making losses rarely feel secure in their employment, and the transport workers of this country have every reason to support the Government in its effort to put transport upon a paying basis, because that is the primary purpose of this Bill.

Deputy Dillon said he is opposed to the scheme of the Bill. He wants a new system standing upon three legs: State purchase of transport facilities; control by an organisation similar to the Electricity Supply Board; and subsidised transport services. I am against all three. If there are three things which we should try to avoid in the reorganisation of transport services, they are State purchase of the existing transport organisation, control by an organisation similar to the Electricity Supply Board and subsidies. I am against the State purchase of transport services because if we follow that suggestion, we will put transport in the forefront of Party politics. It is because, if the State acquires the transport organisations of the country, the recruitment or promotion of every railway porter will be a matter about which political Parties and political clubs will concern themselves, because the extension of transport facilities or an improvement of transport charges in any area are things which will make and unmake Deputies, that I am against the inauguration of a system of State ownership of transport services.