I have the figures here. For Portarlington, it was 1.119d. per unit, and for Allenwood the figure was 1.182d. I want to make this perfectly clear: in giving these figures or any figures it depends entirely whether the station concerned is used as the base load or the peak load station. If the station is used as the base load station in operation all the time the figures will obviously show a lower cost. If it is used only as a peak load station then equally the figures are going to show variation. For example, the figure for the Pigeon House station was 1.338d. and for the North Wall station it was 0.939d., one station being used in one way and the other in the other. But when costings are being taken into consideration I am trying to keep on the basis of like with like and hydro with hydro.
The most important thing that was wrong with the statements made by Deputy MacEntee was that they had no foundation in fact and that the suggestion made by him that there was in the archives in the Department of Finance a report suggesting, or in any way implying, that the Shannon scheme was improperly or inefficiently built is not true, and if Deputy MacEntee wishes to refresh his memory or if any other members of his Party wish to refresh their memories on the report of Professor Meyer-Peter I shall make suitable arrangements to make the report available without the slightest delay or difficulty.
Deputy Lemass tried to make it out that he and his Party were the fathers of rural electrification. It is perfectly clear from the original report that the Siemens-Schuckert firm were asked to provide data in 1924. They did provide it and in the report of the four experts to which I have already made reference it is also quite clear that the scheme was being visualised and considered not merely as a scheme for the cities and towns and villages but a scheme in addition for the rural areas based on a population there of some 2,000,000 people. In my Budget speech I mentioned the acceleration of rural electrification. Deputy Lemass, in the way to which we have become so accustomed, suggested that it was a brazen reference for me to make. It was a truthful reference for me to make.
In so far as rural electrification is concerned we shall not merely go ahead with it more speedily than last year but more speedily than the previous Administration intended to progress with it. That is not a question of argument but a question of fact, facts which speak for themselves quite clearly. In the year ending 31st March, 1954, the last full year in which Fianna Fáil were in office, the number of new consumers connected under the rural electrification scheme was 23,477. In the year just passed that number had increased to 29,812, but in the next three years under the plans made by this Government it is proposed to step up that figure to 40,000 and we propose to ensure during the next three years that the number of people in the rural areas connected with rural electrification each year will have reached the stage that when the plan comes to an end in 1959 the completion of rural electrification will have been achieved.
Deputy Crotty, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Industry and Commerce, speaking in the House, referred to the number of areas that were developed in 1954, the last year in which the previous Government was in office. What was the number of areas developed? Sixty. In the year that has just passed that was stepped up to 75 and we propose in the three years that are ahead to step that up again to 100 areas every year, in other words, to increase the output over that for the year just passed by approximately one-third.
It was in that picture and with that knowledge that, deliberately, I suggested we were going to have accelerated rural electrification and we are going to have it and every member of this House, no matter on which side he may be, may be quite certain of that fact. We are going to have it without in any way altering what is known as the criterion ratio, that is, the ratio by which the E.S.B. down through the years have judged the charge that will be imposed.
If the annual revenue that will come in on the ordinary rates from any house is a certain proportion of the capital cost of erecting the supply, then it is connected at the ordinary charge. That ratio has not been and will not be decreased by this Government. On the contrary, in fact, the ratio is now higher than it was some years ago and, in consequence of that, less people will have to face the special service charge than would have had to do it if the ratio were left as it was some years ago.
Certain Deputies from the far side of the House suggested that the manner in which we had required the E.S.B. to carry their own rural electrification would mean that there would be additional charges placed upon the people, particularly for rural electrification. That is untrue. There will be no change whatsoever in respect of those charges. The position will not be altered by one iota as the result of our going back to the provision to which I referred already in the original Electricity Act, Section 21, sub-section (2).
There will be no diminution in the rate of connection. On the contrary, there will be a substantial increase. When I challenged one Deputy, Deputy Seán Flanagan, for cases of increased special charges following the decision of the Government, I was referred by him to the only case of which he knew and that was a case that was referred to in a question asked by Deputy Bartley on the 27th April last. Those of us who live in rural constituencies and who have occasion to deal with rural electrification in rural constituencies, know that sometimes what happens is that there is a group of six houses together and that all the six people, when they are first canvassed, say they will take supply and then one of them, for some reason, changes his mind and withdraws and, of course, the connection for five houses becomes immediately a different proposition. What happened in the case which Deputy Bartley mentioned in his question in this House was exactly that. One of the people, who had previously intimated that he would take supply, withdrew his undertaking and that was the only reason the E.S.B. even questioned the matter.
Subsequently it transpired that they felt that they were bound by the quotation they had given, notwithstanding that withdrawal, and they very properly stood over their arrangement but there can be no suggestion, and on the facts of that case there is no suggestion, that it had anything whatever to do with the changed administration of the rural electrification subsidy by this Government.
Deputy Burke said that he had evidence of a case where a new special service charge was being imposed because of the Government's decision. I asked him for the letter. I have it. It is an ordinary case such as any Deputy in a rural area would have received for the last five or six years and there is no suggestion whatever in it that there is any increase in the special service charge because of the new method of financing which the Government have implemented.
It seems to me that the cases which Deputies on the other side are mentioning have arisen more in their own imagination than anywhere else.
I trust, therefore, that when we are discussing rural electrification in general and the Shannon scheme in particular and the operations of the E.S.B. in particular, in future, Deputies on the other side of the House will keep to the facts and will not try to distort those facts by suggesting that the efficiency of the hydroelectric scheme is not satisfactory when everybody has reported that it is entirely satisfactory and that they will not endeavour to suggest that the rural electrification scheme was solely theirs when, in fact, they must remember that it was only introduced in 1945 after various Deputies who are now on this side of the House and who were then over there had beseeched and urged them in many different debates to do so. Particularly in 1940, Deputy Hughes, Deputy Norton and Deputy Cosgrave all pressed the then Government to do something about introducing rural electrification when, at that time, there was not a single word about rural electrification coming from Fianna Fáil though they had then been in for eight years and had for those eight years chances and opportunities in the statutory provisions that were enacted when the original Act was introduced. So much for electricity.
Deputy Lemass in his speech on the day following the Budget, endeavoured, in the first place, to turn the debate on to a twist in regard to pensions that I cannot allow to pass unchallenged. Speaking on 5th May— column 835—Deputy Lemass said:—
"The point I want to emphasise is that bringing the old age pension to 24/- is only restoring the purchasing power which it had in 1952."
When we look back to the debates in 1952, what do we find? We find that Deputy Lemass's colleague, Deputy MacEntee, brought in an increase of 1/6 in the old age pension. For what? For the deliberate purpose of equating the then pension with the increase that was to be operative as from July of that year. We find Deputy Lemass himself reported at column 1298 of Volume 130 as saying:—
"The Minister for Social Welfare will introduce forthwith amendments to the Social Welfare Bill designed to increase the old age pension and the unemployment assistance payments so as to ensure that the beneficiaries under these schemes will be no worse off either in July next."
We find Deputy Dr. Ryan, then Minister for Social Welfare, saying as reported at column 1536:—
"The old age pensioners are compensated."
In 1952 the cost of living was 122; to-day it is 126—four points up—and Deputy Lemass tries to suggest that all this Government has done is to make up that difference. We on this side do not suggest that half a crown is more than half a crown, but we are entitled to suggest and we do suggest that it brings the position, even by comparison with the cost of living, further than it was brought by the 1/6 introduced by the previous Government in 1952.
Wherever you go throughout the country the one thing that has universal acceptance is that the Government were entirely right in choosing the old age pensions, the widows', blind and orphans' pensions, as the first thing that should be dealt with by the Government in any Budget it introduced. The only person I have met who has made any suggestion to the contrary is my predecessor here, who in his speech last week made it perfectly clear that if he had been sitting where I am sitting, the Budget would have been not the Budget that I introduced but another Budget. He made it perfectly clear in his speech last week that if he had been here as Minister for Finance his Budget would have been one that gave £3,000,000 away in remission of taxation, half of it in a remission of income-tax and the other half in other tax remissions. Remember, that £3,000,000 implies that Deputy MacEntee was not going to provide £2,000,000 for butter subsidy or any other subsidy and that he was not going to provide £900,000 for old age pensions and other pensions.
Deputy MacEntee cannot have it both ways. If he says that this Budget was brought in on a balanced basis—and he did say that—and that if he were here that £3,000,000 would have been used for the specific purpose of remission of taxation, that carries with it the specific assurance and the undoubted claim that the £900,000 for increases in pensions would not have been made available, nor would the money have been provided for the butter subsidy. I tried to make it clear in my Budget speech, but I want to make it clear again to-night, that we in this Government have a scheme of priorities in regard to carrying out the objects of our policy and we have no apology to offer to anybody for the first priorities in that field—the subsidy on butter and the increase in old age pensions.
When I read, not the reports of the Dáil about the Budget but some of the local papers, I really met some gems. Deputy Mooney is not in the House this evening, but apparently he was up in Clones on the Sunday before May 21st and he is reported in the Argus and the Northern Standard as having spoken there to delegates from various Fianna Fáil Cumainn. The speech made by this Deputy, of all the speeches that I have heard from Fianna Fáil at any time, for brazen audacity and for untruths really takes the biscuit. Here is what the Deputy says about the Budget:—
"The only thing of any interest to the working man in this new Budget is the increase of 2/6 in the old age pension."
Fair enough, so far. He goes on:—
"Only the Government got an easy £1,000,000 from C.I.E. there would have been no increase for these old people."
I am afraid the propaganda from the Fianna Fáil offices in Mount Street must have reached him some 12 months too late, for it was my predecessor who got £1,000,000 from C.I.E. for some of the benefits he gave last year. Unfortunately, there was no such beneficence available to me this year.
