asked the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs if he will state why his Department do not install all telephones applied for in a village or townland when they are installing a particular telephone there, as this would avoid unnecessary cost.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Telephone Installations.
11.
My Department would gladly adopt the course suggested by the Deputy if this could be done without unduly delaying attention to other waiting applications. Unfortunately, this would not be practicable. To attend to all applications, including very recent ones, in any area where, for example, a telephone was being installed on priority for a doctor, would almost certainly draw justifiable complaints from applicants in adjoining areas who had been waiting for service for, say, two or three years. If the practice suggested were extended generally construction gangs would spend much longer in each exchange area. The result would be that many exchange areas and the long outstanding applicants there would have to wait for attention for months later than they would under existing arrangements. There would be little reduction in costs.
I am not referring to priorities but to four people who applied three years ago for a telephone and only two of them have been notified that they will get a phone in the near future. I cannot understand bringing back the Post Office gang.
The Deputy must proceed with the question.
I am asking the Minister about the expenses of bringing a gang back. Three years ago four people applied for phones and two of them have been offered service. Even so, they are not at the end of the line.
I have some difficulty in understanding just what the question is that the Deputy is putting. As far as I can identify it, I will try to answer his initial question in some detail and to explain that the procedure he advocates would necessarily involve the disruption of the priority system and that the priority system is not merely intended to secure just and fair treatment for individual applicants but also that telephones be given where they are socially most useful, as in the case of a doctor. This procedure would mean that priority applicants in areas other than those which receive collective priority treatment would suffer. His specific supplementary concerned cost.
I am informed that there would be little saving in cost arising from his suggestion as, in general, construction forces operate from their headquarters and return visits from their headquarters by the engineering work force would be necessary in any event to clear all the waiting applicants in a village or townland. I am informed that the reduction in cost would be very small and would by no means justify the disruption of the telephone priority system which would necessarily be a consequence of the suggestion.
I want to make it quite clear to the Minister that I am not referring to priorities at all. I am referring to four applicants in a village. One did not seem to have priority over the other. Two applicants have been informed that they are getting a telephone and the two others have not been. I cannot understand why, when going into that village to install two telephones, they cannot install the four.
For my part I should like to help the Deputy, but he put down a general question implying the need for a completely new system of operation in the telephone field. Whereas he did not specifically refer to priorities the suggestion made by him would necessarily disrupt the priority system on a national scale. In any case his original question concerned the installation of telephones generally. He now makes specific suggestions about, as far as I can follow, the idea that a priority system was not followed in a particular case or that fair treatment was not extended. If he would care to put down a question regarding any particular anomaly that has come to his notice or that he seems to have found, I will certainly try to answer that whether directly to him or in the House, whichever he prefers.