Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 5 Dec 1962

Vol. 198 No. 5

Committee on Finance. - Vote 45—Transport and Power (Resumed).

Debate resumed on the following motion:

"That the Estimate be referred back for reconsideration"—(Deputy D. Costello.)

Mr. Belton

When I reported progress last night, I was talking about the condition of the Royal Canal and the Grand Canal which flow through the city of Dublin. The Minister should use his influence with CIE to see that sections of those canals are completely filled in, or if possible, converted into swimming pools. I do not know what difficulties might arise in this matter because I do not know to what extent the canals supply a draining system to the parts of the country through which they go.

Bord Fáilte make a considerable amount of money available for improvement of hotels and I might add that I think we have reached our peak in the construction of hotels. We are now producing millionaire hotels whereas tourism really needs good-class guest-houses, and good, homely, comfortable, small hotels rather than the big emporiums which are now being erected in every corner of the country.

I would suggest to the Minister that loans free of interest should be made available to rural publichouses. They should be used for the improvement of toilet accommodation and other essentials. The majority of tourists like to sample the atmosphere of rural licensed houses and avail of whatever else they have to offer. The amenities in these licensed houses are so appalling that they require assistance from a body such as Bord Fáilte to enable the necessary improvements to be made.

I want to raise one point concerning the ESB. In Dublin city, and I am sure all over the country, the man with the scissors comes out at very short notice to the private houses and cuts off the light. I know the ESB must do their business and collect their accounts, but I suggest the Minister should use his influence with them to ensure that current is not cut off in any private house after 1 o'clock in the day. People are apt to be forgetful and the account may not be paid on the dot. In places where there are children or sick people and the current is cut off after 1 o'clock, the head of the house has no opportunity to pay the bill and have it reconnected. A few years ago, when I was a member of Dublin Corporation, I went on a deputation to the ESB, and I understood agreement was reached between the Corporation and the ESB that the current would not be cut off in any house after 1 o'clock. I think the Minister should raise this matter with the ESB with a view to achieving a more satisfactory solution of the problem.

Some 18 months ago, I asked the Minister a question in relation to pensions of CIE workers and he told me he had no function in the matter. Subsequently, I contacted CIE. Deputy T. O'Donnell mentioned last night that, because of alterations in the system at the workshops in Limerick, he feared there might be a lot of redundancy. If there is redundancy throughout the country, due to curtailment of rail services, many of these workmen will be put on pension. Will they be put in the same category as the present CIE pensioners, where 1,315 pensioners are getting less than 12/- a week? There are 431 pensioners getting between 12/- and 22/-a week and 30 pensioners getting between 22/- and 40/- a week. In all, there are 2,076 pensioners.

We have all had representations made to us in relation to Civil Service pensioners, Garda pensioners, pensioned teachers and various other pensioners. We have all sympathised with them and we have done our little bit to raise the level of their pensions. I think these CIE people are the worst treated pensioners in the country. The Minister, even at this late stage, should use his influence with the Board of CIE to get the position of these men improved. In the case of the men getting 12/- a week pension, I know many of them have to pay 1/2 a week to go into the city centre to collect their pensions. The position is ridiculous, and I appeal to the Minister to see if anything can be done for them.

Mr. Dillon

I want to raise a question which, I think, calls for review by the Oireachtas. There has been very hard criticism of the Chairman of Córas Iompair Éireann from many quarters. The House ought to recall to its mind that we are the ultimate authority. The Chairman of CIE could have sat comfortably in his job as Chairman of Bord na Móna, where he was perfectly happy and where he was generally credited with a very large measure of success and prestige. He was asked by the present Government to relinquish that position and take over the chairmanship of CIE at a very difficult time and to carry out Government policy in regard to CIE. Yet, strangely enough, I detect a tendency to direct the main volume of criticism against the Chairman of CIE who is carrying out the policy laid down by the Government chosen by Dáil Éireann. I suggest to the House that the Minister for Transport and Power is the person who must answer for the policy decisions which are being given effect to by the Chairman of CIE and the chairmen of the other State bodies for which the Minister is responsible to this House.

I acknowledge that the Minister is himself in a considerable degree responsible for drawing on the Chairman of CIE a volume of criticism which I think he ought himself to face and bear, by perennially coming into this House and saying he will not answer this or that question and that it ought to be addressed to the Board of CIE. The natural consequence of that is that Deputies, who find themselves frustrated and aggrieved by developments in connection with the public transport system, associate them with the Chairman of the company, when in fact a more patient examination of the problem would convince them of the fact that the Minister is the responsible person and that it is he who should be brought to account.

I deprecate generally the practice of discussing people who are not members of this House. I think it requires to be said, however, that the Chairman of CIE has undertaken a very difficult job, when he could have remained in a very comfortable job. I believe him to be an irreconcilable supporter of the present Government in politics: but that, in my respectful submission, is nobody's business but his own. Provided he does his job, he is entitled to be an ardent supporter of Fine Gael, the Labour Party, or Fianna Fáil. He is an extremely able man. I believe he is doing his job in a very difficult situation. I believe many of the things he is doing, and to which I am about to refer, are misguided and wrong.

I believe he is doing them as part of a policy which has been laid down for him by the Minister for Transport and Power who is authorised to do this by the Government of the day. I believe his position requires him to give effect to the general lines of policy laid down for him by the Government of which he is indirectly the servant. Therefore, any remonstrance I have to make, I should address to the Minister for Transport and Power. If I have any comment to make on the Chairman of the company in regard to malfeasance on his part—I know of no malfeasance on his part—it is that I believe he is carrying out a policy which in many respects I believe to be misguided, but there it is.

It seems perfectly clear that the Minister has now made up his mind to tear up a great part of the rail system of this country. I believe that process is being carried too far, and I think it is being done without that kind of consultation with local people which would be calculated in some measure to reassure them as to the development which has taken place. I have a personal interest in the branch line which is situated where I live and transact business. It is right that my colleagues should know that, quite apart from my public interest in that branch line, I have a private interest in it. It serves my business; I have business relations with it.

They say they are going to save £9,000 odd a year by closing it down. Maybe they are. I do not know and no steps have been taken to bring home to the mind of the people in that area how that saving is arrived at. I often wonder if the Minister considered what it means to a country town to be informed that the railways are closing down. It does not only mean that the train comes in no more. It means that five, six, seven or eight households, represented by railway employees, are now out of work.

I admit that the railway company try to help the employees but we should not, in this House, be indifferent to the problem of the man of 50 years of age who is suddenly told that he must translate himself and his family to the other ends of the country or else go out on a very small pension. I have seen this happen very widely in my constituency in County Monaghan where the Minister, preparatory to his arrival, succeeded in tearing up every mile of the railway line in the whole county. County Monaghan has the distinction of being represented in this House by one of the most junior members, the Minister for Transport and Power, who has taken up every mile of railway in the county.

Apart from the commercial dislocation that gave rise to ever since it was done, I have been in practically continuous correspondence with Córas Iompair Éireann about the cases of individual men who were either required to travel daily between Ballybay and Dundalk in order to carry on their work or who had to retire on very small pensions at a time when they anticipated being allowed to work for another ten or 15 years in the railway service or who were transferred to such distant parts of the country in the railway service that it was no longer possible for them to maintain the homes which they built and established in County Monaghan. I often wonder whether these kinds of considerations weigh sufficiently when the decisions are being taken to wind up a particular branch line. I doubt it. I think they ought to be considered.

We speak casually of saving £9,000 a year on the branch line between Ballaghadereen and Kilfree Junction. Yet that will result in the unemployment of probably seven or eight men in that area. I do not know what their wages come to but they must come to some pretty substantial sum. The bulk of that saving, I should say, is represented by the wages earned by those people who will all disappear out of that district or else their incomes will be very substantially reduced and they will have to take small pensions in lieu of the permanent employment they had. I am not satisfied that due regard is being had to that element of the situation prior to the decision being taken.

Again, there is some talk of closing down the branch line from Ardee, on the main Dublin-Belfast line. I think there is only one station on that line, Ardee, and then straight down to the main line. If that spur—I will not call it a branch line—from the main line to Ardee closes down, the amount of disruption, inconvenience and annoyance caused in the area will be out of all proportion to any economy that can reasonably be estimated by such a closure.

I want to reiterate a complaint which I mentioned here before. Public representatives and local people, when there is a rumour of a line closing down, go to Córas Iompair Éireann and ask them: "What receipts do you get on goods and passenger traffic on this line which you now propose to close down?" The reply of Córas Iompair Éireann is that they will not tell you. If the people want to know why, CIE reply: "Because if we told you, the information would be irrelevant to the argument which induced us to close the branch line."

That is all wrong. CIE are quite entitled to say: "There are the figures." When the local people base their argument on them. CIE are quite entitled, in subsequent discussions or conversations, to produce their auditors or accountants and say: "Here is Mr. Robinson, or whoever the accountant may be, and he will explain to you that what looks quite simple really is not relevant at all. You asked us to tell you what moneys were received at the stations on this branch line. Those are the figures. We have them now and you are basing all your case on these figures. In fact, these figures are wholly irrelevant to the argument by which we justify the closing of the branch line." It is all right to make that argument but what is all wrong is to say to the local people: "You want the information. We will not give it to you because it would be no use." That is causing infinite annoyance. It is rotten public relations and it is creating a mountain of misunderstanding.

The local people can argue that the figures are relevant. At least they feel their case is being heard and they have been given reasonable opportunity to argue its merits but, so long as the vital facts concerning the receipts pertaining to any branch line it is proposed to close down are withheld from the people, they will continue to feel that CIE are not giving them the information to which they are entitled and which, by implication, they were promised when the Taoiseach, then Minister for Industry and Commerce, said that no branch line would be closed without full and adequate prior discussion with the local people.

Governments can trample on public opinion in restricted areas and get away with it but it is not a good thing to do. I remind the Minister that, even though the Chairman of CIE comes to him and says: "I do not want to give these figures because they would only mislead the local people," the Minister ought to say to the Chairman of CIE: "Listen: you have never held elective office in your life. What you may know about turf and about railways may be worthy of great praise but your experience of politics, or public relations such as a politician is required to have, is not worth a halfpenny. Surrounded by your accountants and officials, you may think that if a figure is not relevant, it is a waste of time to provide it but you are quite wrong. Go and provide that figure and, having done that, go ahead and make any argument you like to the people but do not take up the `hoity-toity' attitude of saying that it is not good for them to know that figure and because you think it is not good for them, you will not give it to them."

A wider issue arises to which I want to direct the attention of the Oireachtas. In 1958, we passed a Transport Act which was a very radical measure because it relieved CIE for the first time of its obligations as a common carrier. Those obligations were pretty onerous and had been borne by the transport companies of Great Britain and this country ever since the first Railways Acts had been passed.

We also, by implication, in the 1958 legislation delegated to CIE the authority to determine what branch lines should be closed and what should be kept open. We relieved them of the obligation they had borne up to then to maintain the existing railway network because, prior to 1958, if they wanted to close down a line, there was a most elaborate procedure laid down by the legislature calling for public inquiries and notices and a whole paraphernalia of procedure, designed to restrict their right to close lines, so that, in effect, by the 1958 Act, we relieved them of two very heavy responsibilities which they had accepted and discharged up to then.

Since then, we have gone on to provide them with substantial additional capital to complete their dieselisation programme. It is true that, as of today, steam engines are no longer used on our railway system, except in shunting yards and in minor work of that kind and in the foreseeable future, their use will be no longer necessary at all.

Mr. S. Collins

They are very useful to pull in some engines that break down.

Mr. Dillon

So far as it was possible for the Oireachtas, we have put within reach of CIE the means to modernise their equipment fully. Has the time not come when there is a corresponding obligation on Oireachtas Éireann to ask itself: "Should we not now review what is the appropriate status of CIE? Should they still have the kind of monopoly in public transport they enjoyed so long as they continued to bear the burden of common carrier and the maintenance of the then existing rail network, economic or uneconomic, and of the relatively antiquated equipment of which they then disposed for the want of capital to replace it? I think the time has come when we should at least inquire into this de novo as to whether, in their new status, CIE, at least in respect of freight, should not be asked to face free competition.

Mr. S. Collins

Hear, hear.

Mr. Dillon

I ask the House to note that I am deliberately using language of restraint and moderation in this matter. I am not prepared to go the length of saying the time has come, because I admit the matter would have to be very closely examined, but I am induced to say that I want to see it examined by the knowledge that there is in existence powerful evidence to suggest that the time has come to make the change. The evidence is that side by side with the CIE service at present operating, there is a restricted number of persons——

Mr. S. Collins

The new vested interest.

Mr. Dillon

——who have plates which entitle them to engage in freight transport. Some have full licences to engage in all freight transport over the whole country; others have restricted areas; while others have restricted categories of merchandise. One man who had four lorries plated, and who was licensed, I think, to trade over the whole country for a whole range of merchandise, recently offered his plates for sale. He was offered £12,000 for them, presumably for the four lorries as well.

Mr. S. Collins

No, only for the plates.

Mr. Dillon

Only for the plates. These would not constitute a very large figure as they were used lorries in any case, but in fact, the offer was for the plates. For the right to operate four lorries, a man was prepared to put down £12,000. That man could have put that money into the National Loan and drawn £720 a year on it without raising a finger, so that he was prepared either to forgo an income of £720 a year or borrow the money from the bank and pay £720 a year before he earned a penny. But he thought it was a good bargain.

We have to ask ourselves for whose benefit is transport provided in the community. Surely it must be, in the last analysis, for the consuming public and if it transpired that we could get freight transport to the consuming public on very much cheaper terms by letting it be operated freely on ordinary commercial terms, leaving CIE, with all the advantages we have bestowed on them through the provision of capital, the existence of goodwill they have on the railway system and so forth, to operate freely in competition with anybody else who wanted to engage in trade, if in these circumstances we could get for the public a better and cheaper service, what is the argument against doing that?

I should like to have that examined. I am quite prepared, if it is adequately inquired into and if fair attention is given to the arguments of all, to be convinced that there is some flaw in my reasoning but I have certainly reached the stage at which I think in regard to those who are transporting livestock, agricultural produce, industrial produce, raw materials and finished articles throughout the country and to ports of export, that we ought realise how substantial a part of their expenses is the cost of transport and how great a benefit it might be to our fundamental industries if that traffic were made available at a lower cost as a result of competition.

It will always be argued that there will not be any reduction, that competition never does reduce prices for anybody. That argument held the field for a long time until Mr. Monnet thought up the Common Market. Now everybody is trying to scramble into the Common Market. Why? Because it provides free trade, no more than that. When you listen to all the ballyhoo and brouhaha that is going on about the Common Market, it must be remembered that we are simply going back to free trade competition. When you hear people talking about the Common Market, you would think we were in the presence of the eighth wonder of the world but it is simply going back to the situation which I remember in 1922 when there was absolutely free trade in this country.

I suppose there are some young Deputies sitting up there who think the Common Market is the greatest miracle since Moses struck the rock and that nobody but their great champion, Seán Lemass, could lead us into it. We were all sitting comfortably in it 40 years ago and we never knew it was there. I wonder if a little of the atmosphere of the Common Market were brought into our domestic transport would it not give us better results? How does the Minister explain that in Europe he is a passionate advocate of free trade but that in Ireland he is a passionate advocate of restriction? I do not understand. Mind you, I can advance an argument for the limitation of the transport industry in passenger traffic to a public authority and I make no apology for that dichotomy of thought. I think there is a distinction between passenger traffic and freight traffic. On another occasion, I should be prepared to argue it. All I am arguing now is that the time is ripe for a re-examination of national policy in regard to freight traffic.

I am not persuaded that such an examination is yet required in relation to passenger traffic, which I believe for a variety of reasons must, for the time being at any rate, be left in the hands of a nationally-controlled monopoly. I listened to Deputy Belton's down-to-earth commonsense. I always have the most profound regard for what he says but I must confess that my blood momentarily ran cold when he asked the Minister to examine the question of the canals in Dublin and to recommend to CIE that some of them should be filled in. I exhort the Minister not to fill in the canals. They have a very great amenity value in any city.

Mr. S. Collins

He could stop them from being filled in the way they are being filled in.

Mr. Dillon

I suggest, if they are not being used by the public transport company, that it is not fair to insist that CIE should bear the full cost of their maintenance. I suggest the Minister should consult with the Minister for Local Government, with the Minister for Education and of course with the Minister for Finance, to see that appropriate steps are taken to preserve the canals for their amenity value, as a feature of the city, because canals can be an added beauty to the city, but over and above that, I want them maintained because they could be of great benefit if they were appropriately maintained as public swimming places for children who cannot afford regularly to go to Blackrock Baths, or any of the other baths on the perimeter of the city. The plain fact is that so long as children are children and so long as the canals are there, the children will swim in them. It would be well worth while to make them safe and sanitary for that purpose. I do not believe the cost would be prohibitive and I do not believe that the consequence of doing it would be anything but beneficial to the city as a whole.

Over and above the amenity value of the canals in Dublin, and it was to them that Deputy Belton primarily referred, I want to point out—and I hope that in this the Minister does not require conviction—the tourist value of the canals in rural Ireland is incalculable. Provided the Inland Fisheries Trust are helped to maintain the stocks of coarse fish in these canals, they would be a most fruitful source of revenue, with the peculiar advantage that they will bring tourists to a part of the country which has very little else in the way of tourist traffic and bring a type of tourist to whom the accommodation available in these areas is singularly attractive. They are the type of tourists who do not want luxury hotels. They are the type of tourists who do not want the impersonal atmosphere of a hotel. They are the type of tourists who seek a guest house and who want, if possible, to be received into a home.

I know from my own experience in the constituency I represent, in Monaghan, that since we built up, through the Inland Fisheries Trust, the coarse fishing resources of the county, there is not a town in the county which is not drawing in annually a very substantial tourist revenue. The money is not going into luxury hotels; it is going into the homes of the people in these towns who have adapted their homes for the reception of guests. There are some small hotels catering for the trade also and they are doing very well out of it but the more we can develop that kind of tourist trade, the more the income of the tourist trade will be spread over the country and not concentrated in Dublin, Cork, Killarney and certain other traditional tourist centres.

One of the most valuable means to that end is the maintenance and development of our canals. We are all charged from time to time with having a King Charles' head, and perhaps this is mine, but these things have to be repeated because people do not understand them and one must keep on repeating them, if one wishes people to understand them. I make no apology for reminding the House that the canals have a peculiar value and appeal to the tourist population most readily available to us, the people of the north and midlands of England. Anybody who has been through the Manchester Ship Canal or through any of the smaller canals across the Black Belt of England is amazed to see the banks of these canals lined every Saturday afternoon with middleaged men, solemnly fishing, taking out perch and other coarse fish, admiring them, taking them off the hook, putting them back into the canal and in 10 minutes or so doing the same thing all over again.

Mr. Corish

It seems a bit silly.

Mr. Dillon

No. They are there to catch fish. The interesting thing is that if one of them put a fish into his fishing bag and brought it home, he would be regarded as a public enemy by the others. They would regard it as a most unsportsmanlike thing to do because it would be reducing the number of fish in the canal. What they want is the sport of catching fish. People do not eat foxes but they ride all over the country in red coats, silk hats and high boots to run them down. Is it not more reasonable to go out and catch a fish and put it back in the water than to hunt a fox and tear it to bits at the end of the day? I am all for the man who will catch a fish and put it back with loving care, in the hope that it will turn up again on the following Saturday and make the cork bob again.

I have fished sufficiently to be able to renew my enthusiasm at the sight of the cork bobbing and slowly disappearing and then the crucial strike coming.

Major de Valera

There is a pond out at the back.

Mr. Dillon

That accommodates duck but the Deputy would not know the difference between the feathered creature that swims on the top of the water and the thing with the scales that swims down below. Deputy de Valera would not appreciate the difference. Fish do not lay eggs in the ordinary meaning of the word, although scientists say that is their means of propagation.

That is fishing and I wish I could arouse the House to the realisation of how valuable a potential tourist asset it is. If I could do that, I would have done a good day's work. The Minister has flirted with the idea of suffering the canals to be closed up.

Mr. Childers

I have not made any statement of what is to be done.

Mr. Dillon

I only said you flirted with the idea and silent flirtation can be as alarming as vocal adulation. All I am asking the Minister to say is that it is not the policy of the Government to close down the canals and, if the company regards their maintenance as an unreasonable charge, that adequate measures will be taken to transfer their responsibilities to some other authority; but it must not remain within the discretion of the company to close them down as being no longer necessary for public transport. If we do not require them for that purpose, they are necessary for other purposes and it is the Minister's responsibility to see that they are kept going and that they are not closed up.

This desire of living a lie is a kind of disease of Fianna Fáil. They always want to present a kind of fraudulent euphoria to our people. I remember well the days of the paper republic. We were not a republic but we were one. We were prepared to do everything about the republic but to declare it. They never can come down to state the hard facts and then to ask the people, having presented the facts to them, to act accordingly. There has appeared in the terminology of the Minister's Department in recent years another typically Fianna Fáil euphemism, the "operating surplus." They will not ask us to face the fact that every single company over which the Minister presides, with the exception of the ESB, is operating at a loss. I think the nation is strong enough to face the facts and to determine on the merit of the fact what is best to be done. And there is no use attempting the alibi that the accounts reveal an operating surplus. That means nothing at all. You can either say that we keep no accounts or that we keep true accounts but it is deplorable to say that we keep fraudulent accounts and then expect the public to accept them. The phrase "operating surplus" is entirely venal.

Mr. Childers

I gave a true picture of all the State companies, including those who did not redeem their capital. I hope the Deputy does not accuse me of having misread the company's reports.

Mr. Dillon

I appreciate the Minister's intervention. Here I have what is a veritable rainbow of reports. I appreciate the efforts of those who try to make their reports more attractive and I commend them for these beautiful pictorial reports which are designed to strengthen us against what they contain.

Mr. Childers

I did not misquote the reports.

Mr. Dillon

I am merely saying that if Fianna Fáil came to the House and said: "We are losing money every year on Irish Shipping; we are losing every year on Aer Lingus; we are losing money every year on Aerlínte; we are losing money every year on Bord na Móna; but we consider that the losses are worth the social benefits derived therefrom", then we could argue rationally and intelligently about these several questions.

Take Bord na Móna. I do not think Deputies would get hysterics if they were told, in effect, that Bord na Móna are losing money.

Mr. Childers

That is a profitable concern. It is very unfair of the Deputy——

Mr. Dillon

If that is true, well and good. Let us analyse that. I do not know if the Minister's attention has been drawn to an article of 1st August, 1962. The article sets out, to the best of the writer's ability, from the published reports of the Electricity Supply Board, to ascertain what it costs the ESB per annum to generate electricity from turf and the conclusion reached is:

...the Ringsend (coal/oil), Ferbane (milled peat) and Lanesborough (sod peat) power stations were all commissioned during 1957 and 1958; they all consist of 20 or 30 units, and last year they all operated at load factors between 48 per cent. and 56 per cent. so that their performance can fairly be compared. Whereas the total cost per unit sent out from Ringsend was only .854d, the figures for Ferbane and Lanesborough were respectively 1.107d and 1.031d—Ferbane having had a slightly lower load factor than Ringsend, and Lanesborough a slightly higher load factor.

This suggests that the cost of producing electricity from peat is at present 20 per cent. greater than the cost of production in power stations using oil or imported coal under comparable conditions. The cost of production in the Arigna station using native coal would appear to be about 50 per cent. higher at comparable load factors—the price paid for Arigna coal being almost £4 per ton last year, as against about £2 12s. to £2 15s. per ton for imported coal. In the small 5 mw. power stations in western coastal areas which use sod peat, production costs would seem to be about twice as high, as in the case of the larger stations using oil or imported coal. If these cost relationships are followed for the whole range of peat-fired power stations already built, or currently planned, it would mean our overall electricity production costs during most of the 1950s has been artificially increased by about 10 per cent. as a result of the social decision to employ peat for electricity production.

If you turn to the report of the Electricity Supply Board, you find the revenue from sales for the year ending 31st March, 1962, was £17.7 millions. If it is true that the use of peat generally operated to increase their costs by 10 per cent., it is not unreasonable to say that it represents an annual charge of about £1.7 million. Bord na Móna in the year in question showed a loss of £94,000, owing to adverse weather conditions, but, in fact, the loss in that year could, I think, fairly be described as a loss of £1,794,000 because what they do is to ascertain their production costs, that is, what they charge the ESB for the peat used in the station and the ESB pass on the increased cost referred to in the article to the consumer in the form of increased charges which, it is estimated, represent about 10 per cent. of the total cost.

You may say perfectly legitimately that, against that, Bord na Móna employ a great many people; that they relieve the balance of payments in that we use a native product in lieu of importing oil or coal, or something else, and, taking one year with another, they sometimes make a profit and sometimes make a loss, but ordinarily the profit and loss account shows a surplus. I think their profit has sometimes gone up to some hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Mr. Childers

Yes.

Mr. Dillon

They sometimes show a profit. Sometimes they show a loss. Add to that the £1.7 million and we are losing £1,000,000 a year on the use of turf, but, as against that, we are giving the employment, saving the imports, using up a raw material which otherwise might not be used at all and, in any case, part of that loss is used in draining and developing the bog which, otherwise, would not be drained or developed. I do not think the country requires to be sheltered from the knowledge of those facts.

Mr. Childers

I think honestly the Deputy is making a political statement, not an auditor's statement. If he wants to relate it to policy, that is all right, but it is not in order.

Mr. Dillon

But is it not true? What I am troubled about is that I think the Minister likes to get actuaries and auditors and create a miasma and fog of——

Mr. S. Collins

Statistics.

Mr. Dillon

——of figures, and to hide behind them. I do not think there is any need to hide at all and I think it is unhealthy to hide.

Mr. Childers

I have never hidden.

Mr. Dillon

I think the Minister is misleading his own supporters. If the Minister asked the Deputy from Cavan, sitting up there, he would believe I am talking the most appalling heresy. He will probably go out, shake his head over his tea, and say: "Were those not terrible things Deputy Dillon said and the Minister told us everything was lovely in the garden?"

Mr. Childers

The figures are in the report.

Mr. Dillon

Figures! Can anybody give me the figures?

Mr. Childers

They give the figures in the report of the cost of the current sent out.

Mr. Dillon

That is all very well, but I suggest that Deputies, as to 90 per cent. of them sitting behind the Minister at the moment, never heard the calculation based on the proposition that the probable annual cost of generating electricity from turf is in the order of £1.7 million. That is a substantial sum, and one would have to be able to show some value for it before one could justify it.

Remember the way this is collected. It is not collected from the taxpayer. That particular levy is collected from the users of power and, mark you, there are some industrialists who have considered coming to this country and, having examined the cost of power, have said to themselves: "No; on that basis of cost, we could not operate". Others have found they could carry that cost and have established their industries here. But it has operated to exclude certain industrial enterprises from this country where it was felt by the promoters that the cost appeared to be too heavy an overhead charge; and we ought to have that person before our minds when we take a decision of this kind.

Now I come to Aer Lingus and Aerlínte and Aer Rianta. There is a forest of interlocking companies through which it is extremely difficult to tread one's way. I think it is quite a revelation to quite a number of Deputies here that we lose annually on the airports something like £500,000. We lose that on the operation of the airports. Now I want to be as clear as crystal on this. I have always thought Aer Lingus give a first-class service. I have always believed we should have a service like Aer Lingus under our own control, in the day and age in which we live, giving us air contact with the outside world. If it has to be subsidised, I believe we must pay a subsidy to keep it going, and I think for the subsidy we are paying to Aer Lingus, we are getting very good value, and a service of which this country has every right to be proud.

I have never forborne from saying that in this House and outside it. I have never hesitated to comment on the admirable organisation, and so forth, represented by Aer Lingus, the astonishingly high standard maintained by the personnel who man Aer Lingus, the admirable quality of the service, and last but not least, the unique ability of Aer Lingus pilots to set down an aeroplane here or abroad without shaking the back teeth out of your jaws. It is an art not shared by pilots on many airlines in the world, and I have travelled on a good many in my day.

Every service is, I suppose, susceptible of improvement but, comparing Aer Lingus with other great services operating in Europe and the United States of America, I cannot readily recall any service I would consider to be superior to Aer Lingus, but I have one slight criticism to make. It very often happens that when we work out a system for ourselves which is the envy of our competitors, we are inclined to be fascinated by some foreign practice and feel a kind of malaise until we have adopted it, just to be up to date. I draw the Minister's attention to this, although it is something which could be more appropriately dealt with by the directors of Aer Lingus. I have mentioned it to them but it is relevant to our consideration of general policy.

It may be that with the development and growth of air transport, it is no longer possible to preserve the air of informality which was one of the great attractions of Aer Lingus. When you went to the air terminal at Dublin, you did not feel absorbed as you did at Orly, or London, or Washington, or New York, into an immense machine in which one became a mere digit passing through a vast calculating machine that disgorged you into an aeroplane which landed you on the streets of Paris, New York, Washington, London or wherever it happened to be. Perhaps that was intended for a more expeditious handling of passengers.

I found myself at the airport in Dublin walking up stairs—I do not know if Deputies have had this experience—but unconsciously you move through a series of tubular rays and end up in a pen and, by a strange coincidence, everyone else in the pen is destined for the same aeroplane. You then go down a stairs with the contents of the pen; you are led by a charming lady, and you land in the aeroplane. That may be very efficient and indeed I have no doubt that it is. There may be others who prefer that system to the more casual atmosphere which obtained heretofore.

I am bound to say an impression was created in my mind as I stood in the pen and asked myself: "Where did I feel this before?" The only place I had felt like that before was in the stockyards of Chicago. When the cattle are being brought to the slaughter house, there is a long narrow ramp up which the cattle pass. It is very difficult to get the cattle along the ramps and so they have a goat, an experienced goat. The goat marches up the ramp and the cattle follow. The goat gets to the door of the slaughter house, steps briskly aside on to a platform prepared for him, the cattle pass into the slaughter house, and the goat goes down and takes up his stance again and leads up another block of cattle.

I asked myself is this atmosphere congenial to air transport. At Orly, they have given up that system and restored the old system. I recently read that so well-versed a man as the Chairman of BOAC, Sir Matthew Slattery, said that some of the big English air companies are reaching the stage in air transport where they are treating passengers as if they were cattle. Why is it that we do not require rail companies or shipping companies to reach that stage? The air companies are now so efficient that they have ceased to recognise people by whose traffic they live as humans and assert the right to treat them as ciphers. Aer Lingus should preserve that which Air France abandoned at Le Bourget and that which has been reinstituted at Orly, that is, the recognition that people should not be treated like cattle, even in the sacred cause of efficiency.

I want to make this clear: let there be no suggestion that passengers at Dublin Airport are treated with any incivility, because the very reverse is the case. It would be hard to find a staff more gracious, courteous and considerate of passengers, but using this device for the expedition of traffic creates a problem which requires consideration.

I want to put it to the Minister that in determining whether a company is making a profit or a loss, it is quite legitimate to say that you do not demand that a company should pay a dividend, if it is a public company, but it is quite illusory to say that if the Government borrow money at an average interest rate of five per cent. and invest it in the ordinary shares of the company, the company can be said to be making a profit, if it does not pay back that investment.

It is wrong to say that a public company paying no dividend is involving the State in no loss because the State did not get the money out of the air. It borrowed it and the Exchequer is paying £500,000 a year for it. Unless the company is able to pay the State £500,000 a year to meet that charge, that company is, in effect, losing £500,000 a year.

Mr. Childers

I never failed to state it.

Mr. Dillon

I bet if you asked the Deputies sitting behind the Minister, and particularly my friend from Cavan, they would lay their hands on their hearts and say it was a cruel lie—or "slander" would be a more appropriate word—to suggest the company was making a loss, and they would tell you eloquently the company was making an operating surplus. I think that is a mistake. We should say plainly and frankly that the company is making a loss and that, on the whole, we can justify that loss, balancing the advantages against the disadvantages.

Mr. Childers

"Operating surplus" is the term used by all the air companies. They try to get some uniformity.

Mr. Dillon

Are their circumstances similar? For instance, do identical depreciation rates apply? Unless you can say that identical depreciation rates apply, you cannot make the comparison. You are taking an operating surplus out of a certain bit of the accounts and giving it a wholly unique meaning, which I believe is calculated to deceive the public and which, I think, contributes to this detestable system of living a lie.

Progress reported; Committee to sit again.