(Dublin Central): When the Dáil adjourned last week I was discussing the situation of the telephone service in this country and this city. I had pointed out that we seemed to be making no headway in respect of the backlog. At the moment there are in the region of 32,000 applications for telephones lying with the Minister and it is quite obvious that the telephone is no longer considered to be a luxury. It is taken in the same context as a car or the other amenities to which the average person deems himself entitled. This in no small measure is due to increased prosperity and the higher standard of living especially in this city of which I have particular experience.
A serious look will have to be taken at the supply of telephones and the telephone service generally. It is becoming increasingly difficult to make a telephone call without interruptions. Anybody using the telephone services of this House must be well aware of the difficulties we encounter. I hope during the coming year and the Minister's term of office that he will seewhat progress he can make with regard to the backlog in the telephone service.
In the capital programme this year the Minister has been allocated £19 million but I doubt if this will be sufficient to meet the demands placed on his Department. This section of the capital programme always seems to give a fair return on capital. The telephone capital programme has shown a reasonable return on capital. In various years it has been £8.9 million. £7.7 million and, indeed, in 1971-72, £6.4 million. Any investment in the telephone service shows a reasonable return. It is quite obvious that the demand for telephones will far outweigh the funds available to the Minister.
I hope some improvement will be made with regard to telephone kiosks in this city. Any city Deputy must be appalled at the amount of vandalism which takes place in regard to public property. It is a disgraceful state of affairs to see gangsters destroying the telephone kiosks which play such an important part in the life of people nowadays. The people who have private telephones are not affected but there are many people residing in some of our corporation schemes who depend on the public telephones to make urgent calls at night time in the event of any emergency. When they go to a local kiosk they usually find the telephone is out of order. It has usually been smashed by some of the vandals patrolling the city.
A fortnight ago I asked the Minister for Justice a question about vandalism and I was told that crime in this city is decreasing. Anybody who has seen the vandalism in this city would find it very hard to believe this but those are the statistics from the Department of Justice. I hope there is a closer scrutiny of vandalism and crime in this city. Telephone kiosks, which are so important to the lives of everyone should be protected from vandals.
The Minister for Finance, in the budget, announced substantial increases in the postal and telephone services. The cost of a local call is to go up from 2p to 3p, which is an increase of 50 per cent. I know the Department must pay their way but I hope when the Minister is looking for increases that he carries out the same investigations as ordinary businesses have to carry out when they seek increases in the price of their commodities. The postage stamp on an ordinary letter is to go up from 4p to 5p, which is a 25 per cent increase. If any business firm in the city applied to the Minister for Industry and Commerce for permission to increase the price of their commodities the Prices Section there would tell them to have another look at their costings to see where economies could be effected. They would also be told to increase productivity. The same type of investigation should be carried out in all Government Departments to see where economies could be effected.
Every section of the economy, including CIE and the ESB, come within the ambit of the Prices Commission. When they wish to increase the price of their commodities they have to go to the Prices Commission. I was glad to see that the Minister for Industry and Commerce did not sanction the increases which CIE wished to make in their fares. He said he would have a look at it. It remains to be seen whether that was a good reason. Some say that he took that view because the Presidential Election was taking place but I do not propose to make any comment on that.
The Minister will collect approximately £8 million in a full year from the additional charges in the postal and telephone services. When this is passed on to industry it will have inflationary tendencies. The charge for trunk calls has been increased by 20 per cent and this is quite a substantial increase to any industrial firm which has to make numerous trunk calls to various parts of this country and abroad. The increases in telephone and postal charges will have a serious effect on the costings of companies. The postal charges here are much higher than those in Britain and Northern Ireland so it might be more beneficial for a company to have a subsidiary in Northern Ireland where they could take their letters to have them posted.
When the increases were first mentioned I would have conceded that it would be very hard to bring a halfpenny into operation in the telephone service, but when increases were to be made in both the postal and telepone sections one penny should have covered the lot. The Department should then have tried to see what economies they could effect in the Department. If they had to go before the Prices Commission they would be told to see what economies they could make. The Minister for Finance took the decision in the budget to increase the postal and telephone charges and the taxpayers will have to foot the bill.
There is another aspect of the telephone service to which I should like to refer. I wonder how effective the three minute service is in the coin boxes. If you are waiting to make an urgent call and somebody is occupying the kiosk, the three minutes or five minutes which are allowed do not seem to work very effectively. This can be very annoying if certain types of people are using the telephone. On some occasions the call can last from five to ten minutes. I do not know whether this is prevalent throughout the city, but I have had experience of having to wait. Let us hope that there will be an improvement.
The important thing is to give a service. If you charge, by all means give a service. To increase prices and give a bad service is deplorable. I am afraid that is what is happening. I would separate the postal service from the telephone service in that regard. The postal service in this city is excellent. I would not hesitate to pay the additional postage charge because the service is good, but I cannot say the same about the telephone service which is very poor. Where I live in Terenure there is no need for telephone tapping. It is not unusual to pick up the telephone and hear a conversation taking place between two people. I have no interest in what they are talking about. My only interest is to make my telephone call. I am sure the Minister is aware that this has taken place on several occasions. It is due to overloading in the different parts of the city. We cannot cater for the number of telephone's people are looking for.
In business today a telephone is of vital importance. No one can start a business today, irrespective of whether it is retail distribution, or a factory, or what have you, without first having installed a telephone. The Department must give top priority to people who are earning their livelihood in a business in which a telephone is necessary. If we are to have increased productivity and more industry starting, we must ensure that telephone applications are processed immediately.
The Minister spoke at length about RTE. Practically everybody has his own ideas about television and who should run it. I can appreciate that this is a very sensitive area. People in public life are sensitive about it, and about the balance which should be maintained. I do not envy the Minister the difficult role he has to play in this regard. The duty of RTE is to inform and entertain and, if at all possible, to educate. We must ask ourselves have they played their part in the field of entertainment down through the years. I would say they have. taking into account the amount of money available to them. You can only get what you pay for and that is true throughout all the sectors of our economy.
The amount of money given to RTFis very substantial. We must look at RTE in that context and against that background. Will that be sufficient when we come to the challenge of multi-channel television which the Minister spoke about after his London visit recently? Will the performance which RTE have been putting or over the past couple of years be sufficient to meet the challenge of other television stations? Before we open up this country, we must lake a close look at our own television station and ensure that, when there is complete freedom, and a choice of television, we will have established our own identity, and our television station will be able to compete with any of the cross-channel television stations if they are available.
We are rather vulnerable in this regard. I am speaking strictly from my own experience in Dublin where we on the cast coast have the amenity of cross-channel television. We will have to improve our programmes and ensure that the public are attracted to our native programmes, irrespective of what programmes will be available in five or ten years' time. We must ensure that whatever expertise our people have is used. We must ensure that the Minister has a proper staff in RTE.
I do not know what problems this would involve. It is certainly important that we should develop our own native culture. There are programmes on RTE that are attracting the attention of the viewing public. I refer specifically to "The Riordans". I believe that a programme like "The Riordans", irrespective of what stations are available whether BBC or UTV, will attract Irish viewers.
We have also the "Late Late Show". Here are two programmes which are attracting the Irish audience. We must develop along these lines. Although people might be under the impression that "The Riordans" is rural-oriented this is far from true. People in the city-and I would be anxious to know what the TAM rating is-are just as interested in "The Riordans" as any rural viewers. We must develop this type of programme and develop our own identity.
As some Deputy mentioned last week, irrespective of the competition from foreign newspapers, you will always take your own newspaper to read first. This is very true of anyone who is abroad on holiday. If you can put your hands on your own native newspaper you will buy it. Unfortunately, when you go abroad you can only pick up an English newspaper.
If we develop television along these lines we will be able to overcome the challenge of foreign television. Certain programme times could be changed. I refer to the "Late Late Show" on Saturday nights in the winter. This programme usually starts after the 10 o'clock news. I know what men view at that time. The housewife's feeling is that she would like to see the "Late Late Show". Where men are concerned it would, however, be very difficult indeed to get them away from "The Match of the Day" and, once more, we have a conflict. I know from experience that the men invariably demand "The Match of the Day" instead of the "Late Late Show". If the timing were changed both programmes could be enjoyed. The same argument applies to the ten o'clock news. This conflicts with the news from Thames. I do not say we should change just for the sake of getting the British programmes, but an intelligent adjustment would make it possible for people to listen to the news from both stations. The news from Thames is of a much more international character and it should have a particular interest for politicians. Some adjustment would be an excellent idea.
The current affairs programme can be very enlightening. It can also be very sensitive and someone invariably complains of being misrepresented. I have not been on this programme myself and, because of that, I can perhaps judge the programme more objectively. These programmes are very interesting and I should like more of them. The public are also very interested and people would be quite willing to listen to more of these programmes.
We should also have programmes which would inform the younger people and educate them in how to spend their leisure. From now on they will have more leisure and Telefís Éireann, a powerful media of communication, could play a role in advising them as to their function in society and how they should spend their leisure. There could also be practical programmes, such as demonstrations in woodwork, which would help the youth to develop their talents.
There is unfortunately too much violence on television. I hate to see my children looking at pictures in which violence is portrayed. Such pictures should only be shown late at night when children are in bed. One can understand the attitude of young boys and girls who take violence as a matter of course almost because these pictures have an impact and some effort should be made to move away from them. It is difficult to fill up programme time and, if these pictures cannot be avoided entirely, then the only solution is to put them on very late at night when only adults will have an opportunity of viewing them.
I should like to see voluntary organisations projected on our screens. Plenty of publicity is given to wrongdoers. Surely we could portray the silent army which works day and night for the good of the community. They are never projected. If they were it would be a great boost to their morale and it would also encourage young people to join these organisations once they became acquainted with the role these bodies are playing in our society. I should like to see these organisations brought to the forefront and recognition given to their work.
The Minister made a statement recently about communal aerials. I have always held the view that limiting the number to 500 was not practical economics at all and the Minister is now apparently moving towards eliminating this limit of 500. Indeed one aerial to cover the entire city would be the ideal solution. The most recent report states clearly that the limitation is wrong. Why it should be wrong now but not wrong initially is something I do not understand. The sooner every aerial is removed from the rooftops the better it will be. This ugly forest of aerials is a disgusting sight. I trust that in the course of time all these aerials will disappear. I believe that is on the cards.
The Department plays an important role in the life of the community. It has an employment content of 23,000. Its progress and development is of vital importance. Every worker in the Department, from the highest to the lowest, makes a contribution to the social and economic life of the country and harmony in the various branches is essential for the smooth operation of the Department.
I wish the Minister every success. Problems are bound to crop up. I know that he Is having second thoughts about section 31. Something will have to replace the section because someone must have the final control. There must be autonomy from the point of view of the day-today working of Telefís Éireann, but the Minister must have the final responsibility and he must, therefore, have some control.
