I move:
That a supplementary sum not exceeding £10 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of March, 1970, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and of certain other services administered by that Office, and for payment of a grant-in-aid.
This token Estimate for £10 is being taken to enable Deputies to discuss the Estimate for my Department amounting to £25,410,000 which was passed before Christmas.
Last week the House agreed to a Supplementary Estimate for £750,000. To this should be added £1,550,000 included in the Vote for Remuneration and £70,000 in the Vote for increases in pensions to arrive at total estimated expenditure proper to the Vote in 1969-70. This amounts to £27,780,000, £3,170,000 approximately more than the 1968-69 figure.
As we are now nearing the end of the financial year and the expenditure proposed in the main and recent Supplementary Estimates has already been approved, I propose, with the permission of the House, not to enter into the usual detailed comparison of subheads with last year's provisions but to proceed immediately to report on the various services covered by the Vote for my Department.
Postal business continued to grow in 1968. The number of letters handled was approximately 450 million, representing an increase of over 2 per cent on the previous year. Air mail correspondence was up by 14 per cent. Postings of first class mails by air rose by 12 per cent and the increase in postings of second class matter was 23 per cent. Figures for 1969 are not yet available but the indications are that the growth in traffic was well maintained in that year.
The volume of letters and cards posted over the Christmas and New Year was some 2 per cent higher in 1968 than in 1967 and there was a further increase of much the same order last Christmas.
Parcel traffic handled in 1968 was up by an estimated 4 per cent as compared with 1967 but postings from Britain in 1967 were adversely affected by restrictions following the outbreak of foot and mouth disease in England.
Counter business is also growing. As Deputies are aware, this covers a wide range of services for other Government Departments apart from those required for purely Post Office purposes.
The standard of mail services given is high. Normally, over 90 per cent of internal letters posted in time for outward despatches are delivered throughout the country by the following working day. For parcels and second-class mail the standard is well above that normally given elsewhere. The bulk of letter mail for places abroad leaves the country by air on the day of posting and, with few exceptions, letters received from abroad are delivered on the following working day.
During 1968 70 motorised delivery services were introduced and in 1969 a further 63 routes were motorised. There are now over 370 motor delivery rural services in operation and about 25 per cent of the total route mileage in rural areas is being served by motorised posts.
Thirty-one new postman posts were created in 1968 to deal with increased mail work arising from housing developments in urban areas.
Following the enactment in July last of the Post Office (Amendment) Act, 1969, literature and articles specially adapted for the use of the blind may now be sent free of postage to places at home or abroad by surface post.
In 1968 special issues of postage stamps were made to mark the 800th anniversary of the founding of St. Mary's Cathedral, Limerick, the centenary of the birth of Countess Markievicz, the centenary of the birth of James Connolly and the International Year for Human Rights. We also joined with other members of the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations in the annual issue of the Europa Stamp. The first group of the new series of definitive stamps was issued in October, 1968, and the remaining denominations in the series were issued at intervals in the early part of 1969.
A special stamp was issued on 21st January, 1969, to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the First Assembly of Dáil Éireann. Other special issues during 1969 were on the Europa theme, the 50th anniversary of the International Labour Office, the centenary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, and a stamp featuring one of the works of the late Evie Hone.
Seven special stamps will be issued this year, including the Europa stamp. This stamp will be of special interest as the design is the work of an Irish artist, Mr. Louis le Brocquy. Other stamps will commemorate the 50th anniversary of the death of Terence MacSwiney, Tomás Mac Curtain and Kevin Barry, European Conservation Year and the 250th anniversary of yachting in Ireland and the founding of the Royal Cork Yacht Club. A stamp will also be issued showing the work of a contemporary Irish artist. The stamp will feature a work by Miss Mainie Jellett.
The number of telegrams handled in 1968 at 1,313,000, was little different from that for 1967 and the persistent downward trend of traffic continued in 1969. The telex service on the other hand continued its remarkable expansion. The number of telex subscribers increased by 159 during 1968 and by over 200 in 1969, a total increase of 70 per cent in the two year period. In 1969 calls to places beyond Britain exceeded a quarter of a million, 28 per cent up on 1968. More and more firms are realising the advantages of this useful form of communication. Planning for the telex service is based on maintaining an annual growth rate of about 35 per cent over the next few years. The capacity of the satellite exchanges at Cork and Shannon was doubled during 1969 and work on enlarging Dublin exchange is nearing completion. Further extensions of these exchanges are already at the planning stage. A new satellite exchange will be brought into service in Waterford early in 1971 and it has been decided to provide one later in Limerick and in at least one other centre.
Extra circuits were provided on the Belfast and cross-Channel routes recently and arrangements are in hand to provide more. A direct route to Germany was brought into service in 1969 and the question of establishing direct routes to other continental countries is being examined. The number of direct circuits between Dublin and the USA was increased from two to six in 1969 and when further circuits planned for 1970 become available direct subscriber telex dialling to the USA will be introduced. Telex service is now available to 108 countries and 97.8 per cent of all outgoing traffic is dialled directly.
Data transmission has been developing rapidly in some countries. It involves high speed transmission of data over the public telephone or telex network or over privately leased telephone or telegraph circuits. Data transmission is closely linked with increased use of computers and we have already provided facilities for data transmission where required. The demand so far has been small but, as more Irish firms obtain their own computers or rent space on computers, a growing demand for data transmission facilities is likely to arise. This question is under active consideration in my Department at present.
The telephone service is also expanding rapidly. In 1968 calls numbered 291 million, 15 per cent more than in the previous year. Of these 259 million were local and 32 million were trunk calls: 84 per cent of all calls were dialled directly by the callers. Figures for 1969 are not yet available but the increase in traffic was again high.
Demand for telephones during the year 1968-69 showed a remarkable advance, being 21 per cent greater than in the previous year: 22,300 exchange lines were connected during 1968-1969, 3,000 more than in 1967-68 and 6,800 more than the year before, but not enough nevertheless to keep pace with the new rate of demand. The connection rate in the current year has been running at about the same level as in 1968-1969 but demand continued to rise and some 11,000 applicants were awaiting service at the end of December, 1969. Over half of these applications were in course of being met or were being processed. Less than 7 per cent of these had been on hand more than a year and the great majority of the older applications will be cleared shortly.
My Department is very conscious of the need to improve the position and everything possible is being done to overtake demand and reduce the waiting list. Planning at present aims at doubling the connection rate, and catering for double the present traffic, in the next four to five years. My predecessor gave particulars of the extent of this programme when he was presenting the Telephone Capital Bill for £50 million last year to the House. It entails extensive cabling in all built up areas; provision of new exchanges and extension of existing exchanges; procuring new buildings and extending existing buildings to house the additional plant; expansion of trunk and junction capacity; increasing output by way of increased productivity from existing staff; recruitment of additional staff at professional engineer level; and recruitment and training of more technicians. All possible measures are being taken to speed the programme but present indications are that it will be some considerable time before inroads can be made into the waiting list if the pace of demand for telephones continues to increase.
The basic exchange, trunk and junction networks are in constant process of expansion and improvement to keep pace with the increased demands on the service. Progress with the extension of the automatic system continues. During 1968, 28 manual exchanges were converted to automatic working and a further 26 were converted in 1969. In 1968 additional equipment to provide for future subscriber and traffic growth was installed in 47 automatic as well as in 100 manual exchanges. In 1969 78 automatic exchanges and over 120 manual exchanges were similarly extended. In addition, an automanual exchange was opened at Tralee in March last and new modern manual exchanges were put into service in Castleblayney, Castlerea, Donegal and Listowel.
Over 600 additional circuits on 180 routes were added to the trunk system in 1968, mainly in underground cable; many open wire trunk routes were replaced by trunk cables thus improving the quality and reliability of the service and 37 additional cross-Channel circuits were provided. Among the more important routes improved were many in the Counties Cavan, Cork, Laois, Monaghan, Offaly and Westmeath, as well as routes radiating from Cork, Dublin and Limerick.
The year 1969 showed even greater progress in expanding the trunk networks, over 900 trunk circuits being added to about 230 routes including 51 on the cross-Channel route. Six transatlantic circuits were added— two to Canada and four to the USA, making a total of 16 transatlantic circuits. Other items among the more important works were expansion of the capacity of the trunk cables serving Carrickmacross, Ennis and Killarney; and completion of co-axial cable schemes between Arklow-Gorey-Enniscorthy, Cahirciveen-Killorglin, Ennistymon, Ennis-Kilrush, and Letter-kenny-Dungloe. The radio links between Dublin and Portlaoise and Dublin/Belfast/cross-Channel with a potential capacity of 960 circuits each were completed in 1969 and as equipment is fitted these will be brought into service. Already 60 circuits to Portlaoise, 30 to Belfast and 30 to Britain are in use and it is expected that 212 more to Britain will be brought into service in early summer.
Work on other high capacity radio links connecting Dublin and Cork, and Portlaoise and Athlone, is well advanced and circuits are expected to be available shortly. Work is in progress also on provision of radio links between Portlaoise-Thurles and Limerick-Shannon-Ennis. The capacity of the existing trunk cables serving Listowel, Macroom and a number of other places will be expanded by fitting additional equipment.
An aerial cable between Ballina and Belmullet, an underground co-axial cable between Waterford and Dungarvan, and an underground co-axial cable scheme Athlone - Castlerea - Claremorris - Castlebar - Ballina are expected to be completed this year. Aerial cables, and aerial and underground co-axial cables between Galway - Clifden, Killarney - Kenmare - Sneem and Portlaoise-Birr will be ready for service at the end of this year or early 1971. In addition an underground co-axial cable scheme Athlone-Ballinasloe - Loughrea - Galway is expected to be completed in 1972.
The first issue of the classified directory was distributed in June, 1969, and met with generally favourable comment. The 1970 edition is at present being distributed.
Quite a number of changes have been made in the 1970 issue of the telephone directory. It is printed in a different typeface with more space between the entries which makes for easier reading. All the telephone numbers are listed in bold type and there is additional spacing between digits in four, five and six digit numbers.
The preface too has been re-designed with the object of presenting useful information as clearly as possible. Part I of the directory has been extended to cover a wider area. In addition to all subscribers in Dublin city and county it now includes those subscribers in parts of Kildare, Meath and Wicklow who are in the Dublin local call fee area now known as the "O1" area. The purpose of the change was to simplify the position regarding subscriber trunk dialling, emphasising that "O1" is the access code for making a call from outside the area to any telephone in the "O1" area. In addition a new code for reporting faults was introduced in the "O1" area to coincide with the issue of the directory and new facilities for coinbox users in this area were also introduced. They now have direct access to the fault report, directory inquiry and service difficulty services where previously they had to dial "1O" to be connected by the operator to the appropriate service. These changes involved changing the dialling codes for all of these services. One further point about the directory: despite the fact that all of the 200,000 odd entries in the volume had to be reset and that it contains 60,000 new or amended entries, it is the most up-to-date directory published by the Department for many years. The weather service, which was introduced in 1967, continues to be very successful. Over half a million calls were made to the service in 1969.
It had been expected that an automatic time service would be introduced in 1969. Regrettably the manufacturer was unable to deliver the equipment as scheduled and the service will not be available until later this year.
In mid-1969 a revised policy regarding provision of telephone kiosks in rural areas was announced. Previously kiosks were provided only where they would pay their way. It was decided to allow a modest subsidy in the case of kiosks in rural areas and to accelerate the extension of kiosk facilities to these areas. It was also decided that this extension could best be achieved by replacing by kiosks these call offices in rural sub-post offices which are used fairly extensively. As a first step the rural kiosk programme for the current financial year was increased substantially. The intention is to increase the annual provision of kiosks from 100 to about 200 for the next few years. This will represent a three-fold increase in rural kiosk provision from about 50 to 150 a year.
A five-year extended kiosk programme is being drawn up commencing in the financial year 1970-71 and centres are being selected for inclusion on the basis of the extent to which the call office in the local post office is used. This will have the advantage that kiosks will be provided in the order in which they are likely to be of most benefit.
Deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank, excluding surplus funds invested by trustee savings banks to which I will refer later, amounted to £23.9 million during 1968 and withdrawals to £25.8 million. At 31 December, 1968, the total balance due to depositors, including interest amounting to £3.9 million, was approximately £118.3 million, an increase of £2 million on the figure for 31 December, 1967.
During 1969 deposits and withdrawals amounted to £25.1 million and £27.1 million respectively.
Net deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank by the trustee savings banks amounted to £0.4 million in 1968. The total amount to the credit of the trustee savings banks at the end of that year including interest and deposits amounting to £1.7 million in the new investment account service was £22.5 million, an increase of £1.3 million over the previous year.
During 1969 withdrawals by the trustee savings banks on ordinary account amounted to £1.7 million as compared with a net deposit of £0.4 million for 1968 but this was more than counterbalanced by deposits totalling £4.9 million on investment account.
The 6½ per cent investment bonds were introduced, under the management of my Department, in January, 1969. In the first 12 months net sales totalled £5.2 million. Interest on the bonds is paid twice yearly; the first payment, of some £78,000, was made on 31st July last and the second payment of about £173,000 on 31st January this year.
Sales of savings certificates during 1968 amounted to £6.7 million and repayments, including interest, came to £6.2 million. The principal remaining invested at the end of the year was £47 million as compared with £45.1 million at the close of 1967, an increase of £1.9 million. During 1969 sales of savings certificates amounted to about £5.5 million and repayments, including interest, to £7.1 million. The net outflow (£1.6 million) compared with a net inflow of £0.5 million in 1968.
The aggregate result for 1968 for the savings media with which my Department is directly concerned was a net dissaving of about £1 million.
