Before the adjournment last night, I had made a strong appeal to the Minister to have regard to the sad predicament of temporary postmen and night telephonists who have been the subject of gross exploitation by various Ministers for Posts and Telegraphs over a long number of years. I pointed out that were it not for the fact that there is in existence a benevolent fund, the Rowland Hill Trust Fund, many dependants of temporary postmen would be living in abject poverty. I paid a humble tribute to the noble man who conceived the idea of this benevolent fund through which such great humanitarian work has been done. I want to pay tribute also to those persons who administer the fund at the present time. Their resources are of necessity limited and they are confined to payment of about £1 per week to widows and orphans of deceased postmen for a specified period of approximately 20 weeks, after which period the allowance ceases and is subject to review. Where a case of hardship can be made arising from the curtailment of the allowance, the trustees of the fund are always very well disposed to continue the allowance.
It is a sad reflection on our Department of Posts and Telegraphs that we have had to rely on the benevolence of a man like the late Rowland Hill to maintain widows and children of men who gave the best years of their lives to building up the postal service. It is a serious indictment of our lack of regard for the welfare of these people and our abject neglect in not providing postmen with a reasonable pension on retirement.
I am not enamoured of the suggestion emanating from the Government benches in particular that a gratuity be given to auxiliary and temporary postmen on retirement. This simply is not good enough. Very many categories of workers who do comparable work, such as county council road workers and employees of other State services such as Lands and Forestry, will be getting a sick pay scheme and a pension scheme very soon and I appeal to the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs to take urgent steps to include auxiliary and temporary postmen in these schemes.
It is sufficient for a boy of little over 14 years of age, who, obviously could not have had secondary education, to pass an examination to become a messenger in the Post Office from which position he can progress to the position of established postman. It is deplorable that temporary postmen who have served for ten, 20, 30 and 40 years, who have the same responsibility and carry out the same functions as established postmen, are not granted an opportunity to become permanent and established.
It is a scandal that after long service, having done one's work in a very satisfactory and honest manner, one is still categorised as temporary and denied any rights in relation to a decent week's wages or security when it comes to one's retirement.
I have also mentioned the plight of the night telephonists. I have indicated the meagre hourly rates for which these people are expected to work, and that in order to secure a week's wages, these people in many instances must virtually put in two weeks' work. In one week they have to work 70 or 80 hours in order to take home a wage packet of £9 or £10. This is not good enough.
We now have a Department which is moving rapidly towards the attainment of efficiency. Efficiency is something which we all appreciate is necessary and desirable in these times, but I feel disposed as a Labour man speaking from these benches to caution the Minister, to ask him to show restraint and to have regard to the repercussions which of necessity arise and which he knows well will arise from the introduction of very costly computers, the application of time and motion study to work and the motorisation of our postal service. The Minister clearly admits that redundancy will occur. The point I wish to make is that although it may seem economically feasible to do these things, we question whether it is right from a social point of view in a country where there are so many unemployed. The Minister, in creating efficiency and savings in his Department, will simply be transferring that bill and that burden to the Department of Social Welfare who will be obliged to pay by way of unemployment benefit or the dole substantial amounts over a long period of time, with no prospect of alternative employment for the men concerned.
These costly devices, especially computers and the like, and, indeed, most of the equipment of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, are regrettably manufactured outside this country and must make for a sizeable amount in our balance of payments. I would appeal to the Minister to have regard to that and to the progress that has been made in Irish industry, especially these ancillary industries relative to telephonic communication, radio and the like, and to see to it that so far as possible all this vast equipment which he is purchasing abroad will be manufactured here. Even if we have to accept something less but something which will prove to be a reasonable substitute for the foreign product, this should be done in the interests of our economy and of employment.
There is another matter to which I would ask the Minister to have particular regard because he will find that the case which I submit in this connection is factual and is probably as much evident throughout the country as it is in my own constituency. I should like to see greater co-operation between the Department of Posts and Telegraphs and the local authorities in respect of the various work schemes upon which the local authorities are obliged to engage from time to time and which impinge on the work of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. I have in mind particularly the case where local authorities are engaged on the provision of footpaths which necessitates the uprooting of telephone poles or the re-alignment of cables. I have in mind the many road repair and re-alignment works which take place from time to time where again the work of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs must be interfered with.
Here there is interminable delay before the Department come along to rectify the position, whereby, as a result, say, of the laying of footpaths or of road repair and realignment, telephone poles are often standing in the middle of the new footpath or very much out towards the middle of the new re-aligned roadway. These obstructions are an obvious danger to the public, sticking out like sore thumbs for a considerable time before the engineering section of the Department is able to get around to their replacement.
There is a very important aspect of this matter. There is the question, which is very dear to the Minister's heart, of efficiency and economy. The public generally, and especially the ratepayers, are often appalled at the situation which arises from the laying of new footpaths and new roadways at great cost: a few weeks or a few months afterwards, depending on the time it takes for the engineering section to get around to the job, these new footpaths or new roadways are torn up again in order to re-align the telephone poles or relay the cables in question.
This is also true of the other Departmen for which the Minister has responsibility, the Department of Transport and Power. Although I appreciate that that Estimate is not before us now, the very same thing applies to the poles carrying electric current. There is a lack of cohesion or co-operation between these two important Departments and the local authorities. There is an obvious duplication of work and waste of money, time and effort. I am appealing for this kind of co-operation so as to ensure that the works will go on simultaneously, that the poles or the cables in question will be re-aligned in conjunction with the work schemes being carried out by the local authorities and that there will be no necessity in the future to have new work schemes torn up and replaced later on by the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. It is not good enough to say that the Department makes good the amount of money lost to the local authority by such damage to its amenities; the fact is that there is duplication and wastage involved in this whole procedure.
I found it rather amusing to hear the sentiments expressed here last night, particularly by Deputy Kitt and Deputy Molloy from the West of Ireland, who complained that they as Deputies were not getting a fair deal on Radio Telefís Éireann. I believe these gentlemen were most probably sent in here to make this kind of protest, in a vain endeavour to soften the attack by the Opposition on the Government Party in relation to their obviously unnecessary interference with this mass media of communication. It was comical in the extreme to hear them talk as they did because everyone knows that Ministers have been interfering from time to time with both Telefís and Radio Éireann. Not only have they been interfering but they have been seeking to intimidate the staff of Telefís Éireann to slant certain programmes, and news items in particular, to suit Party political lines.
I want to avail now of this opportunity of congratulating the staff of Radio Telefís Éireann for the protest which they rightly made recently against the undue interference of Ministers of State, who, by a phone call, seek to deny the staff of Radio Telefís Éireann the right to project news items in a fair, true and objective manner. This was particularly evident from the manner in which the Minister for External Affairs cancelled the proposed team visit to Vietnam. Here, we had the appropriate staff of Radio Telefís Éireann deciding to go to Vietnam in order to project the situation there through Irish eyes for the benefit of the Irish people; we could rely on them to project the truth, to be strictly fair and absolutely impartial. For some unknown reason, this visit was stopped by a mere phone call from a Minister of State.
We wonder what the Minister was afraid of. Was he afraid that our Irish television experts might give us the truth rather than the garbled propaganda which filters through to us mainly from American sources? The ingrained fear of the Irish people at the moment is that there are ominous signs of the creation of a totalitarian regime in this country and all who value our democratic way of life, who have regard for justice, fair play, truth and objectivity, and the high principles of equal rights and opportunities for all have good cause to be perturbed and warned when they see about them this kind of interference by the Government with this important mass medium of communication.
Despite such organisations as Taca, consortiums of different kinds, interference with the news and Ministers in high places talking about low standards in other high places, Radio Telefís Éireann has been doing a great job of work. They are worthy of the thanks and gratitude of the Irish people for becoming so efficient on the job so quickly. We marvel at the expertise displayed by our own Irish men and women in Telefís Éireann in such a relatively short space of time. I congratulate them most sincerely on the wonderful programmes they project. The service they provide is greatly valued. There is, and always will be, criticism but the glowing praise far outweighs the occasional criticism.
If left unhindered, if not interfered with by the Government, if the over-powering weight of the heavy hand of the Government is lifted from the authority. I believe Telefís Éireann will continue to give a great service. It is disconcerting in the extreme to realise that so many of the staff were obliged to protest publicly, signing their names to that protest, about Ministerial interference with their right to do their job in the way in which they have been trained to do it. It is even more disconcerting to realise that so many of them, who have become so efficient, are giving up in despair and quitting that important service.
There are some programmes which demonstrate to ordinary people and, indeed, to supporters of the Government Party, that there is a positive political slant from time to time. This is evident in particular prior to Presidential elections, general elections, by-elections and so on. We have programmes which purport to show the changing face of Ireland. These programmes invariably portray progress and prosperity—the model farm, the progressive industry, the jet planes flying in and out of Shannon or Dublin carrying the millionaires and the industrial tycoons.
These programmes carefully avoid the seamy side of Irish life. They avoid like the plague portraying the deep-seated economic malaise which affects our country. They steer clear of the obvious depression and poverty so evident in so many places. We never see the cameras focused on the queues of unemployed outside our exchanges. We never see the eye of the camera focused on the sad faces of the thousands of young boys and girls walking up the gangway at Fishguard or Dún Laoghaire. These programmes are distorted. They give a completely distorted version of this country. They are designed to pretend that all is well in our economy, that ours is a land flowing with milk and honey and that prosperity and full employment abound whereas we all know that the opposite is the truth.
Instead of the model farm, let us look outside or inside our goals at the present time and we shall see something of the truth of the position of Irish agriculture today. Let us look at our labour exchanges or at our mail-boats and we shall see the plight of our unemployed. I do not have to advert to the sorry situation in respect of the lack of regard or respect for our sick and our aged. Radio Telefís Éireann would do a great service to the Irish people if they projected the truth on our screens in respect of the state of affairs in this country. May I suggest that an apt title for this programme might be to take a few lines from Goldsmith's wonderful poem The Deserted Village—“Ill fares the land to hastening ills a prey, where wealth accumulates and men decay”.
I do not wish to say much more on this Estimate except, again, to congratulate all our technicians and all those in high places in the Department who are giving an excellent service in respect of Posts and Telegraphs, radio and television.
I mentioned last night and I do not want to elaborate on it now the need to accelerate the provision of telephones in my constituency. I am heartened by the statement of the Minister that he is now hopeful of clearing up the backlog of arrears. I indicated some cases in particular in which I felt that priorities should have been given. I trust that regard will be had to my views in that matter.
I was pleased to hear the Minister say last night that the proposed increase in licence fees will not be applied in this financial year. However, it does seem to me that the Minister is now committed to an increase in licence fees and, in political terms, I may be right in asserting that what the Minister is simply saying is that there shall be no increase in the licence fees until after the local elections of this year.
