The House has listened to the Second Reading of another Transport Bill, but, unlike many of its noted predecessors, this Bill was introduced in rather muted tones this morning by the Minister. I have sat in this House for more than 30 years and have listened to various Transport Bills being introduced. Practically every one of them was recommended to the House and the country as being specially designed to put our transport services on their economic feet and to provide a cheap and efficient transport service for the public. Notwithstanding these glowing testimonials to the efficacy of the contemplated legislation, the House has been troubled, within a matter of a few years, with a fresh Transport Bill designed to patch up the deficiencies in the previous legislation.
To-day, 34 years after we passed the 1924 Transport Act—which was to remedy our transport difficulties for all time—we find our national transport undertaking with a greater deficit than at any previous period. We find its reputation in the public mind substantially lower than it has been for quite a long time. It is quite clear that the longer we live, the more we learn. The Minister's speech to-day was noteworthy for the absence of many of the flowery recommendations which he gave to the 1944 Transport Bill when introducing it here.
Deputy Cosgrave said this Bill was another chapter in the history of our transport undertaking. In fact, it is something more than another chapter or another saga of our transport activities: it is another surgical operation on C.I.E. and it is deliberately intended to be so. This Bill, as well as being a surgical operation, provides for a financial transfusion, in the hope that C.I.E. can be saved by both financial transfusion and surgical operation.
What are we doing under this Bill? It is well known that C.I.E. has on the market 3 per cent. Transport Stock running to the amount of £10,000,000, that it is liable to redeem the stock and it is liable to pay the interest on the stock. In fact, C.I.E. have never been able to pay interest on the stock, because their financial position did not permit them to do so, with the result that each year they had to borrow money from the Exchequer to pay that interest. Then, having paid the interest on the stock, they also had to pay the Exchequer interest on the money which they borrowed in order to pay the interest on the stock. That situation has continued for a number of years.
Under this Bill, C.I.E. will be exempt, not only from paying the principal of the £10,000,000 which it raised on the public stock market but it will be exempt from paying the interest on the stock and on the moneys which it has borrowed, and which amount in the aggregate to between £6,000,000 and £8,000,000. The slate is being wiped clean in respect to those liabilities. What we are doing is nothing more than realising that C.I.E. never has been able to pay any of its debts under those heads.
Those who have looked at the situation closely or discussed it with C.I.E. never imagined, in their wildest moments, that these moneys could or would be repaid by C.I.E., If we discuss this matter with C.I.E., we find they never regarded this as a liability for which they could be held responsible; they never regarded it as a liability over which they would display any ecstatic joy in liquidating. They merely said: "Well, those figures are there; we know all about them." They knew they had no money to pay and, far from being able to pay those debts, their problem was to find out who would lend them more money. Their problem was not to find out whom they would pay back first and in what amounts they would pay back: the problem of C.I.E. down through the years has been to find out whether they can get money from banks or finance houses or from the Exchequer, but the notion of ever paying back a pound out of the £15,000,000 or £16,000,000 was never a realistic notion on their part. They never believed they would be asked to pay it back and they never bothered, when you reminded them they owed it; because they realised their financial position was such that they never had a chance of paying back the money.
Now we are simply recognising that those are bad debts and that C.I.E. cannot repay them. We are wiping those debts out and saying they are State responsibility henceforth. The State will meet those liabilities, thereby wiping the slate clean and giving C.I.E. a new chance to make good economically, in the hope that this may be the last occasion on which it will require a financial transfusion.
I agree that C.I.E. has not been its own best friend. It has not been able to build up for itself a high reputation in the public mind. That is regrettable. Our transport services to-day, especially in our circumstances, have undergone transformations which have made them better than they have ever been before; yet at the same time, C.I.E. has not been able to establish for itself a high reputation in the public mind. I think C.I.E. ought to have done something to try to popularise itself. It is essential for a national transport undertaking such as C.I.E. to carry with it public goodwill. C.I.E. does not appear ever to have worried about public goodwill and some of the things it has done, and some of the things it refused to do, have had the cumulative effect of establishing in the public mind towards C.I.E. a rather hostile and cynical attitude.
For example, C.I.E. has stubbornly refused to introduce workmen's fares, though these are a common feature of transport undertakings in various countries. I know they will give you a long memorandum stating reasons why that cannot be done. It should not be an insuperable difficulty to introduce workmen's fares. Even though it might cause some trouble, it is nevertheless desirable that C.I.E. should build up some good reputation, from a business point of view, with the travelling public. Efforts have been made, for example, to get C.I.E. to provide cheap fares for old age pensioners. C.I.E. will give reasons galore, more reasons than there are old age pensioners, as to why that cannot be done. It is not an insurmountable difficulty, but C.I.E. are not concerned, and exceptions of this kind do not apparently make any great appeal to C.I.E. administration.
Recently, in Dublin, C.I.E. announced that they intended to withdraw the cheap fare available to children going home from school to lunch. I do not know anything more calculated to engender a feeling of hostility and bitterness towards C.I.E. than a petty economy of that kind. It cannot cost C.I.E. an enormous sum of money to transport school children at a reduced fare during the day time. Yet, C.I.E. have abolished the fare.
They have done that in this City of Dublin where an examination of their accounts—certainly an examination of their accounts up to 1956—will show that in that year they probably made close on £500,000 on Dublin bus services alone. It may be that that profit is not there now because of the wage increases; but the increased fares which C.I.E. will exact from the travelling public whenever it is compelled to meet increased wages will, I have no doubt, readjust the balance and show that the Dublin bus services operate, as do the provincial bus services also, at a substantial profit.
Of course, the profits made on the Dublin bus services and the profits made on the provincial bus services, together with the profits made on the road freight department, are ploughed back into the losing railway sections. In addition, it has been found necessary to stop the haemorrhage there by putting in a State subsidy of £1,000,000, or more, to keep the whole organisation in balance. It is unfair that the privilege of a cheap mid-day fare going to and from school, hitherto enjoyed by school-going children in Dublin or elsewhere, should now be withdrawn.
C.I.E. has not a problem worth thinking about if the problem is capable of solution by resort to a device of that kind, which, as I said earlier, is just a petty economy. It does harm to the reputation of C.I.E. and it is a pity they would not be sufficiently alert to and aware of the tempo of public opinion vis-a-vis C.I.E. and manage to avoid resort to devices of that irritating character.
The main problem confronting C.I.E., of course, is the problem of competitors. There would be no transport problem for C.I.E. and no financial problem if we had on the roads our 1939 complement of motor cars and motor lorries. If we had no more lorries or motor cars on the road than we had in 1939, C.I.E. would have no transport problem. The problem is caused because the number of lorries has increased five-fold since 1939 and the number of motor cars has increased considerably, too. Of course, illegal haulage is now indistinguishable from legal haulage, so far as freight is concerned.
It is because of these factors— increasing lorry traffic, the increase in the number of private motor cars and illegal haulage by people with lorries, inside and outside this portion of the country—that C.I.E. have been faced with these difficulties which press so acutely upon them. C.I.E. are crying to the moon, if they think that, in world conditions to-day, they can restrict lorry development in the way in which they urged it should be restricted in the evidence which they gave before the Committee of Inquiry into Internal Transport. The lorry has come to stay and it is being unrealistic to imagine that lorries can be exterminated, as if they were a national pest.
It is there that C.I.E. fails to take cognisance of what is really a public demand and a public requirement. These lorries do not float in here. They do not come in as unsolicited gifts. They were ordered and purchased and brought in by business men and others for use in their transport service. They do not drive themselves. People have to be employed to drive them. To that extent, they give employment. If C.I.E. could be got to realise the fact that lorries have come to stay and endeavour to ensure that those who compete should compete on fair terms, then the situation might be capable of being remedied.
Of course, C.I.E. is not permitted to compete with the lorry on fair terms. The drivers of these lorries engaged in illegal haulage are employed from six o'clock in the morning until 12 o'clock at night. The law is frequently broken by these lorries hauling cattle illegally to and from fairs. C.I.E. cannot employ people from six o'clock in the morning until 12 o'clock at night; neither can C.I.E. put its transport on the road in the condition in which some of these privately owned lorries are. C.I.E. must conform to certain standards and respect the obligation imposed by the Road Transport Act as to the hours for which people can be employed. To that extent, they are put in a seriously disadvantageous position as compared with the private haulier.
Sanity will come back into our transport system if we can manage to get some reasonable balance between the conditions in which the railways operate, on the one hand, and the road freight system, on the other. C.I.E. has a monopoly, if you like, as far as the transport of passengers by bus and train is concerned. They have not a monopoly, of course, of all passenger traffic because every new motor car seriously indents on the traffic C.I.E. would otherwise get. Its financial position would be very much better if we only had on our roads to-day the same number of private cars as operated in 1938. In my view, the lorry has come to stay.
Sanity in transport depends upon our ability to get an equitable balance in the conditions under which railways operate, on the one hand, and road freight traffic under private ownership, on the other. We could make a start in that direction, without imposing any great hardships on anybody who has invested his money in road transport services. Eight, ten and 12-wheel privately owned trucks are now a common sight on the roads, carrying commodities which could quite easily be carried by C.I.E. It is almost impossible to pass one of these trucks, unless the driver is unusually gracious. You find these very heavy lorries on roads travelling almost side by side with and within sight of a goods train which is half empty. It ought to be possible, with the new powers given to C.I.E. under the Bill, to arrange that these goods will be carried by C.I.E.
At all events, I do not think we would impose any great hardship on those using these large vehicles by saying that, while they can continue to use what is there at the moment, after a certain period of years, they will not be allowed to import any new lorries of that kind. It seems absurd to buy lorries longer than this Chamber from countries exporting them here, to compete with the publicly-subsidised transport service, at a time when that service is starved, not for the means of transporting goods, but for the goods to transport. I do not think we would cause any serious hardship to anybody if the very heavy road traffic of that kind were restricted. It would give C.I.E. a chance of obtaining that traffic for transport by rail. It would also save the public a considerable sum of money, because these huge lorries must inevitably do considerable damage to roads, particularly to sections of roads over which they constantly travel.
Ratepayers and motor users pay a substantial sum for the maintenance of roads, but the biggest damage of all is done by those very heavy lorries, even though I concede they pay a greater rate of road tax than the smaller vehicles. The damage these heavy vehicles do, particularly when they get off the main roads on to the side roads, is completely disproportionate to the amount of road tax they pay.
This Bill deals with compensation for people who may be affected by the future operations of C.I.E. and the curtailment of their services. I notice, for example, level crossings are to be modernised. Though I do not know what this means, I assume it means that, as in other countries, there will be some mechanical device for operating level crossings in the same way as traffic lights are operated in the city, and that these crossings will be automatically controlled. Traffic will be prohibited from crossing them at certain times and then the barrier against the road user will be removed when danger has passed. There are quite a number of people employed as level crossing keepers and, as far as I understand it, there is no provision in the Bill for compensating those persons, in the event of level crossings being converted to automatic working. We can come back to this on Committee Stage, but I should like the Minister to look at the matter in the meantime, because, I presume, it is hardly intended to displace those keepers without giving them compensation.
On the general question of compensation, I think this Bill marks a substantial step back, and that railway workers who are redundant under this Bill, who will lose their employment, will in future get compensation which is distinctly less favourable than the basis of that compensation to-day. It is provided in the Bill that a person who is redundant, and who loses employment in consequence thereof, will get a pension under the terms provided in the Bill. These terms provide, however, that when a person reaches the age of 65 years, the pension, for some unknown reason, will be reduced by 25 per cent. In other words, a person who is 50 years of age, who is told he is redundant and must go, gets a pension which will be less than his pay. He will suffer the loss of the difference between his pay and pension until he is 65 years of age, and then he will suffer another reduction of 25 per cent. on the amount of his pension.
The Minister said a person would get, under redundancy, something at 65 years of age which he would not get if he retired in the ordinary way. That remark of the Minister can have no validity, so far as the salaried staff are concerned, because a person retiring at 65 years of age from C.I.E. in the ordinary way would get a pension appropriate to his service at that age.
I want to know why it is proposed at this stage to interfere with the whole basis of pensions which was inserted in the 1924 Act. The pensions provisions in the 1924 Act were inserted as a result of a hard and tough fight on the floor of this House by the Labour Party, and were the result of Labour Party pressure. The Dáil Reports of the period confirm that without question, and those provisions have remained in our transport compensation legislation since 1924. In other words, they have withstood the test of equity over the past 34 years, but now, for the first time in 34 years, these pension provisions are being worsened. Railway workers who will be redundant under this Bill will get less compensation than they would if the 1924 pensions provisions were fully operated. I think that is unfair.
It is not just sufficient for the Minister to say that, in future, the taxpayers will have to pay the compensation involved. The taxpayer is not entitled to dismiss people from their jobs, jobs in which they have served for many years, unless these people get reasonable compensation. It is an inhuman and brutal thing to say to a person who is 55 or 60 years of age: "You must get out of your job to make room for modernised methods of locomotion, modernised methods of transport," unless you are prepared to say to that person: "We will give you compensation which will insulate you against hardship because of the fact that this action is taken in the public interest." Where action is taken in the public interest in that way, it is only fair that the victim should be adequately compensated for the serious dislocation in his whole life, in his domestic arrangements, and in his ability to meet liabilities to his family which he may have contracted, on the assumption of continued permanent employment.
It is a petty way of approaching the question of compensation, to say that after 34 years' experience of the 1924 compensation provisions we should now contemplate whittling them away in this manner when a person reaches 65 years of age. I hope the House, particularly those who sit on the Government Benches, will show some interest in those who will be the victims of the enactment and the operation of this Bill.
There is another innovation in the Bill which is to the disadvantage of railway workers. It is provided in the Bill that in order to get compensation, the event leading to redundancy must take place within five years of the passing of the Act. In other words, one must be discovered to be redundant within five years. If one is discovered to be redundant within six years that is just too bad for one. The compensation provisions apply only where the person is found to be redundant within five years or where he is a victim of dieselisation within five years, but outside the five-year period there is no protection. That is another cutting back on the provisions of the 1924 legislation and subsequent Acts based on it.
Therefore, if this Bill is passed and C.I.E. continue to operate branch lines but discover two years hence that a certain line should go, the people on that line will get compensation but if six years hence they discover that that line should go, then there is no compensation as I read this Bill, for the person whose redundancy takes place outside the five-year period. If C.I.E. get to the stage in which the five-year period is nearing exhaustion and they say that a particular branch line should be abolished, there is a great temptation to say: "Do not do it this year. Leave it over until next year. If we abolish the branch line next year, that is the sixth year and we shall not have to pay any compensation but we shall have to pay it if we abolish the branch line within the five-year period." That kind of manipulation ought not to be possible because C.I.E. could push its redundancy proposals to a point at which they could dodge paying compensation if they desired to do so. I do not say they would deliberately wish to do that but they should be put beyond temptation. That can be done by eliminating the restrictive character of the compensation clauses in this Bill.
Again this is a novelty from the point of view of compensation. This is a restriction which is being imposed for the first time; it is a restriction which ought not to be imposed when the clear purpose of it is to deprive some people of compensation to which they would normally be entitled if this provision were not there and to which they are morally entitled if, in the public interest, they are cast aside to permit of the modernisation of our transport undertaking.
There is another shortcoming in this measure. The section dealing with compensation refers to the cessation of train services or the cessation or reduction of canal services or the substitution of diesel for steam traction. However, there is no provision in the Bill for compensation for workers made redundant as a result of reorganisation. If C.I.E. carries out a reorganisation which is not a cessation of a train service or a canal service or is not the substitution of diesel for steam traction, then the victim of the reorganisation whose services are no longer required will receive no compensation under this Bill as I understand it. He must be caught by the closing of a railway line, the closing of a canal service or by dieselisation. If anything else happens to him and he loses his employment, no compensation is provided for him here. That is grossly unfair because we are dealing with people who have feelings, emotions and liabilities which they cannot cast aside, to themselves, to their families and to the whole community. This is an unworthy section of a Bill which purports to grant compensation but which, in fact, imposes some conditions which do violence to all decent conceptions of what reasonable compensation should be.
There is provision here whereby C.I.E. can close branch lines and canals once they are satisfied that these branch lines and canals are not economic. I do not think anyone will regret the abolition of the old transport tribunal machinery which was a rather complicated piece of mechanism when the question of the closing of a railway line came up for consideration. At the same time, the switch from that complicated mechanism to a situation in which C.I.E. can do this on their own, without consultation with anybody or without any intimation to anybody, is a revolutionary change. This is a case requiring C.I.E. to give public notice of what they intend to do and consult bodies which might be interested in the consequences which would follow the closing of a railway line.
For instance, it would not be unreasonable to ask to have imposed on C.I.E. an obligation to consult beforehand with some kind of consultative committee which, I think, would be the most desirable method, or if for any reason that is not possible or practicable, they should be required to consult with such bodies as perhaps the Trade Union Congresses, the Federated Union of Employers or the Federation of Irish Manufacturers. At all events, some kind of consultation should be imposed upon C.I.E. so that the merits of the case may at least be examined before C.I.E. takes the final decision in the hope that it might be possible by fresh suggestions and by alternative methods to keep open the service on an economic basis.
In Great Britain they have set up a consultative council which operates for the purpose of the closing of branch lines in Britain—the Central Consultative Transport Committee I think it is called. That body is entitled to consider any proposals for closing, and is empowered to issue an opinion in connection with the closing of a branch line. While, as I have said, nobody will regret the passing of the transport tribunal machinery, nevertheless, there should be some form of consultation imposed on C.I.E. before they are permitted to close branch lines without regard to other people's needs, and without consultation with other interests which might be vitally affected.
May I conclude by saying that the kernel of this whole business seems to me to be our ability to find a reasonable balance between road transport and railways and that is not a thing you can do by legislation? I know you can help to do it by indicating the signposts in legislation and if we can do that we can save C.I.E. from continuing catastrophic losses. To the extent that we fail to do it, this House will be considering similar legislation when the £5,000,000 provided under this Bill is spent in 1964.
Deputy Esmonde rose.
