Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 19 Mar 1969

Vol. 66 No. 8

Telephone Capital Bill, 1968 (Certified Money Bill): Second Stage.

Question proposed: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Childers)

The purpose of this Bill is, briefly, to authorise the Minister for Finance to advance moneys, up to a limit of £50 million, for continued development of the telephone service.

Expenditure on the telephone service falls under two main heads. The cost of operation and maintenance is borne out of moneys provided annually by the Oireachtas under the Vote for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs, but extension and development of the system are covered by funds provided under Telephone Capital Acts.

These Acts empower the Minister for Finance to issue out of the Central Fund sums for development of the telephone service and empower him also to borrow in order to meet or repay the issues from the Central Fund. The Acts do not of themselves authorise expenditure, but merely ensure the continued availability of capital. Expenditure is authorised and issues from the Central Fund are made on foot of annual estimates approved by the Minister for Finance.

The moneys required for repayment of the sums borrowed are provided annually under sub-head G of the Post Office Vote.

The Telephone Capital Act, 1963, passed in December 1963 authorised the Minister for Finance to issue a total of £30 million for telephone development in the following 5 years. There had been on hands at 1st April, 1963, a balance of £2,555,000 from previous legislation. Expenditure during the five years ended 31st March, 1968, amounted to £28,897,000 leaving a balance of £3,658,000 which is now exhausted.

During this period 76,000 new subscribers' lines were connected to the system, 209,000 miles of new trunk circuits were added and 479 kiosks were erected. Over 190 important trunk schemes—underground or overhead cables or radio links—were completed. 220 manual telephone exchanges were converted to automatic working and the capacity of existing automatic exchanges was increased by 54,000 terminations.

When my predecessor was introducing the last Telephone Capital Bill in 1963 he emphasised that the main effort would be concentrated on improving the quality of the service to existing users at the expense of delaying connection of new telephones and running up the waiting list. This policy was followed, but from 1965-66 on when the trunk capacity of the system had been greatly enlarged it was possible to devote more engineering effort to providing service for new applicants and the waiting list was substantially reduced.

The £50 million capital expenditure provided for under this Bill represents the estimate of the cost of the works programme which it is hoped to carry out in a 5 year period. A net increase of about 115,000 subscribers' lines is provided for, representing a growth rate of 9.4 per cent in the 1963-1968 period. Some 500 new kiosks will be erected.

Four new automatic exchanges will be opened in the Dublin area and one in Limerick. New trunk exchanges will be brought into service in Dublin and Cork. A new international exchange will also be provided in Dublin to cater for our foreign traffic which, except for that with the United States, has hitherto been handled by the London International Exchange. It is hoped to convert some 300 exchanges to automatic working in the next 5 year period, including the larger exchanges at Wexford, Killarney, Clonmel, Castlebar, Ballina and Monaghan. In addition the spare capacity of all existing automatic exchanges will be raised to a level adequate to provide for further expansion.

Work is in progress at present on several major trunk circuiting schemes and many more are planned for the next few years in order to keep ahead of the growth of traffic which is estimated to rise at 15 per cent per annum. As the list is rather lengthy I shall mention only the principal schemes. Radio links, each with a capacity of 960 telephone circuits, are expected to be brought into service this year between Dublin and Great Britain and between Dublin and Portlaoise. Similar links will be completed next year between Dublin and Cork and between Portlaoise and Athlone. An underground co-axial trunk cable from Athlone through Roscommon, Castlerea, Claremorris and Castlebar to Ballina will be finished by the end of the year. Work will start in the near future on cables between Athlone and Galway, between Galway and Clifden and between Ballina and Belmullet.

Substantial amounts of additional equipment will also be provided at various centres to switch dialled calls throughout the network.

It is planned to introduce subscriber trunk dialling to London and Belfast in about 12 months time and to extend this facility later to other places in Britain and in Continental Europe.

A new type of coinbox telephone from which trunk calls as well as local calls can be dialled by the users will be introduced in 1971 when the changeover to decimal currency occurs.

The expenditure is estimated to be as follows: £22½ million on subscribers' exchange lines and apparatus, £14 million on trunk circuits, £11 million on equipment of new exchanges and extension of existing exchanges and £2½ million on buildings.

Over the past five years the work force of skilled and semi-skilled technicians required for large scale expansion has been built up and more are in training. Moreover, industrial consultants have been employed for a period of 18 months from whose recommendations it is hoped to secure a substantial increase in productivity by use of more mechanical aids and better organisation. Professional engineers have not become available in as large numbers as would be desired but there are grounds for hoping that this difficulty may be surmounted.

Despite the valuable progress already made, the telephone service in Ireland is as yet in an early stage of development. A first-class telephone service is today essential to industrial and commercial progress. Socially also its value is high. I am convinced that with rising living standards and the growth of industry and business there are boundless opportunities for rapid expansion of the telephone service to the benefit of the whole community.

Apart from direct contribution the service makes to economic and social progress it is a sound commercial proposition. The return on capital in recent years has averaged 7 per cent. If the service were allowed to re-invest its surplus and depreciation provision it would be able to finance about 40 per cent of its capital requirements from its own resources. In effect, therefore, the Exchequer will be called upon to provide only about £5.5 million net, per annum, and interest will, of course, be paid on all sums invested by the Exchequer in the service.

The moneys to be provided under this Bill will enable the service to be continuously improved, to make a modest profit for the taxpayer and to give employment to some hundreds of extra skilled and semi-skilled men as well as to many engineering graduates.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

The record of recent achievements and the plans for the future which the Minister has given us must be encouraging when we bear in mind the problems we have had with the telephone service, even though many of these problems are still with us. Since 1963, when we first took these problems seriously, a lot has been done, but a lot remains to be done. It is clear also that in the five years ahead it is intended to accelerate this progress. There is one point, however, on which I am not quite clear and perhaps I missed it in the Minister's speech. Is it the case that the extra £50 million is to be spent in the next five years?

Mr. Childers

It is a five-year programme but, as the Senator is probably aware, issues of the amounts are made on foot of annual estimates approved by the Minister for Finance. For that reason there is no guarantee that all the money can be spent, but I hope it can.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

This is planning for the telephone service for a five-year period and this raises the question of why we have four-year economic programmes and a five-year programme for the telephone service. It may be that a four-year period is too short for the development of the telephone service, a service which is so capitally intensive. If a four-year period is too short for such a capitally intensive service perhaps a four-year period is also too short for an economic programme. We know that a seven-year period is too long, the scrapping of the Second Programme for Economic Expansion has proved that, but the point about the five-year programme for the telephone service does make one wonder whether our economic programmes might be for five years instead of four.

The method of financing is also rather unusual and cumbersome. It seems to combine our two systems, it is voted every year and then we have legislation authorising expenditure over a number of years. For other purposes these two systems are used separately but here we find them com bined in a rather unwieldy and cumbersome manner. This is a rather complex system which combines the two systems we have of controlling capital expenditure and I think it should be simplified.

This brings me to the question of whether the Post Office should become a State enterprise. The Minister makes no reference to this matter in his speech. It is the policy of Fine Gael that the Post Office should be converted to a State enterprise. The present system is too cumbersome and the fact that the moneys required have to be voted annually and the receipts from the service paid into the Exchequer is an unsatisfactory and archaic way of dealing with what is, in fact, a major commercial enterprise which involves social obligations that render them uneconomic.

There are social obligations involved in providing telephone services in a country of low population density but nevertheless it is run as a commercial enterprise. It earns return on the capital. It could, if financed in another way, provide for nearly half of its capital requirements out of the profits of its operation. There seems to be more of a case for its conversion into a State enterprise than a number of businesses which are at present State enterprises. We can ask the Minister to comment on this and we can ask him am I right in saying that there has been a general announcement on this point and on how the Government intend to proceed. The provisions for capital here seem to be unnecessarily cumbersome and could be abandoned if the services were converted into a State enterprise.

The waiting list is still with us. It may have been possible since 1965-66 to reduce the list of priorities. I should be glad to know how the waiting list has changed since 1965-66. The existence of a waiting list is something which people find very puzzling. It is something which foreign firms coming in find extremely puzzling. Most services one looks for, like electricity, gas or transport, are available when firms start operating, and when the requirement is there for the service, it is made available at that time. When you have a firm starting or a new household they are not normally told, in urban areas, that they will have to wait weeks or even months before getting electricity.

Why is it that we have come to accept this extraordinary position that one waits for telephones? The whole thing is run in a manner which is uncommercial. There are people who will say that is because it is a State enterprise and State enterprises have not got flexibility and are not able to act commercially and that therefore it is inevitable that the position should be like that. This is not the case. We have many examples of State enterprises run as efficiently as commercial enterprises which are just as flexible as private enterprise is. We have still this example of a body run very much like a social welfare service. Telephones are issued like the dole and you have to wait your turn and queue up for them. This is not like a commercial enterprise at all. You are told it is more efficient because it means that telephones can be installed in only one area at a time and then the installation people could move to another area. This is a principle not applied elsewhere. It is not applied in the installation of electricity or gas. It is not applied in transport services or in any of the other services which individuals need. It seems to be the remains of an old out-of-date mentality which should not exist in State services and which continues to give currency to the belief that State enterprise is incapable of acting commercially.

I will not be satisfied until we reach a stage where there is not any waiting for telephones more than any other service we need. It makes an appalling impression on businessmen coming to the country when they have to wait for telephones. The most universal complaint, particularly with Americans, is the telephone service. They cannot understand how services should not be offered to them. They should not be held back and told they have to fill up forms and wait their turn as if it were some kind of privilege to have a telephone instead of some sort of profitable thing for the State to provide one. Telephones should be provided wherever they are needed. Indeed, the widespread American belief that State enterprise is incapable of being efficient is given a further lease of life by this situation. I have found it difficult to persuade Americans, or those of them who have had experience of this difficulty in the telephone service, that this difficulty is not representative of State enterprise in general.

I hope that the Minister will change the attitude and approach here and make the telephone service as commercial, go-ahead, and flexible as other State bodies. They should be selling their telephone service to anybody they can persuade to get a telephone just as Aer Lingus are persuading people to travel by air to and from this country. There is no reason why this attitude should be adopted.

I will have the Minister's sympathy, as he, too, is conscious of the problem of getting to this stage of an appalling backlog of investment built up since 1963 partly because of the failure of the Government to appreciate the development of the economy and the emergence of economic growth when it came after 1958. There is a backlog which is expensive to catch up on. We have hopes now, in view of the magnitude of the sum of £10 million per year which is to be spent from now on, that the Minister will be able to tell us that this whole waiting system will evaporate in the near future and that the telephone service will be selling telephones instead of holding them up.

I am pleased to note that we are to have our own international exchange. It is one of the irritating features of the present situation that we are treated as if we were part of the British provinces. It is irritating to make a phone call abroad and to be handed over to the London exchange and from then on to be dealing with them as if one were in Bradford or Cardiff. The idea that we would have no direct contact of our own is ludicrous. I am delighted to hear that this situation is being looked at.

I come now to subscriber trunk dialling outside this country. I am glad we are reaching this point. I understand there are technical problems but it seems that the volume of traffic between Ireland and Britain and Ireland and Northern Ireland is such as would have warranted installations for subscriber trunk dialling long ago. The present situation as regards international calls is unsatisfactory. When one is in Britain and sees how easy it is to make a call to any part of the country without going through the exchange it is frustrating, in ringing Dublin, to go through the exchange. There must be a large volume of traffic between Dublin and London exceeding far that between many cities in Britain. It is irritating to go through the exchange to get on to Dublin.

The Minister made reference to the introduction of decimal currency. In the telephone system as elsewhere we shall find that the decimal currency decision will lead to a very unsatisfactory position. I regret that the whole proposal for this decimal currency at the behest of the Irish banks and against the wishes of Irish industry was taken and was not more strongly opposed. We are now in the position that the unit of currency is to be 2.4d in our current money terms. I am wondering what the price of phone calls will be and how they are to be paid for in future. At the moment we have a sixpenny call. That would be 2½ of these new units. Has the Minister given thought to the problems involved here? Are we in future to have calls paid for in units of new pence? The units are of five new pence. Are we to be in a position, when decimal currency is introduced, that there will not be 2½ of these new pence in a coin and that the cost of a telephone call will be raised to 7.2 existing pence instead of 6d at the moment because there is not any unit small enough to enable us to pay 6d for a call on the telephone service as it is now? Are we to be in a position of being able to pay for a telephone call in units of new pence? Indeed, are we to be in a position to pay for telephone calls in units of new pence or are we to be told that the smallest unit will be as it is in Britain at the moment, which amounts to five new pence being the equivalent of a shilling?

I should like to know the Minister's plan for the introduction of decimal currency. The system is totally inflexible. The smallest unit is ten times bigger than it should be for the purpose of accurate pricing and this will have drastic inflationary effects. It will make it impossible for any prices to be accurately converted, and further it will give monopoly profits to all people both in public and private sectors. Unfortunately, we are now too near decimal day for the Minister to do anything about changing the system, but he should tell us if we will be automatically faced with a 20 per cent increase in telephone charges, simply because there is no equivalent coin to the sixpence. I hope that his answer will be to reduce it to 4.8 pence. Nothing ever comes down in price and I fear that the introduction of decimalisation will be used to jack up telephone charges. I should like the Minister's reassurance as to how he intends to work this totally inflexible currency which is of such an inflationary character.

One point I meant to make earlier is that I particularly welcome the fast growth rate which is provided for in the telephone programme because it is a vote of confidence on the one hand in future economic expansion which is currently threatened. The fact that we are planning a 9.4 per cent growth also offers the prospect, as I said earlier, of catching up with the backlog. I am glad that the period during which the telephone service was skimped for capital to a degree which impeded the economic life of the country seems to be coming to an end, judging by the scale of activity on which the Minister is now embarking.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

I should like to start with a word of praise for the telephone service. I do not use the trunk service very often, but when I have occasion to contact the operator I get good manners and first-class service. I have some experience of the telephone service in Britain and France and I feel this is something that should not be taken for granted: the good manners, pleasant voices and personality of the operators are very refreshing and it would be lamentable if this were lost. Praise should be given where praise is due.

I do not use the trunk service very frequently but quite recently I received a call from Calgary which was very clear and I think our telephone service deserves praise for general efficiency. I put through three successive calls to West Cork and, again, efficiency and courtesy were the keynotes. I also had occasion last May to make a number of telephone calls to France—my wife was there and was unable to return home due to the rail strike—and I was able to speak to Amiens with great clarity even at the height of the French industrial and political crises. Praise for the telephone service for their efficiency applies not only to our own service but to the intervening services in Britain and France.

Mr. McQuillan

In spite of the bad conditions in which they have to work.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

I think that is probably true. One does not like to digress. I shall rely on Senator McQuillan to deal with that matter. I am inclined to agree with him that in spite of certain conditions these operators remain polite, and let us hope they will be encouraged to remain polite. I am sure Senator McQuillan presently will draw the Minister's attention to these matters.

There is one point of inefficiency to which Senator FitzGerald referred and I should also like to advert to the question of installation. When the service is functioning one gets efficiency but in order to get a telephone installed one has to wait a long time. I should like to ask the Minister what is now the average time lapse between application for a phone and its installation? I am prepared to be told that this will vary from place to place, but I should like to know what kind of time-lag is now considered inevitable between the moment of application for a phone and its installation.

No doubt the Minister will remember that I had occasion last December to draw his attention to the fact that an applicant for a telephone in a Dublin suburb had applied last July and the telephone had not then been installed in the new house into which he wanted to move. The application was accompanied by a statement from the hospital to the effect that this man, who was an electrician by trade, was consultant to the hospital on electrical matters and had to be on 24-hour call and therefore he had to have a telephone installed before he could move into his new house. The clergy and doctors on the same road had already got temporary connections with the new installation but this had not been granted to the electrician.

I brought the matter to the attention of the Minister in December and I was disappointed to receive a reply from him stating that the man would have to wait until the end of January before he could hope to get a phone. The Minister did not advert to the special circumstances of the case where the man was required to be on 24-hour call. One point which dismayed me was that the Minister seemed to consider it quite natural that this man, who had applied in July for a phone, should be condemned to wait until the following January. I pose the question, is a period of six months considered quite usual and normal? I might add that despite the Minister's hope that the person in question would get the telephone by the end of January, it was, in fact, nearer the end of February before the phone was eventually installed. This seems extraordinary to me and I share the view of Senator FitzGerald in relation to the question of speedy installation. Senator FitzGerald also said he felt sure that the Minister is concerned about the delay in installation of phones. I should like to feel he is even more actively concerned about this than he has appeared so far.

There are two features of the telephone service which call for a word of praise. The first is the efficiency of the actual operation of the service in general and, secondly, the good manners of the vast majority of the operators. I mentioned what appears to me to be inefficiency at the level of installation and I wonder whether enough staff is employed in that sector.

Professor Quinlan

It is pleasant to come to a Bill of this type and to say that it undoubtedly represents a record of progress. We are provided again with an opportunity of reviewing progress, which we can do in giving this permissive consent to the expenditure of £50 million capital over the next five years. I would like to endorse what the previous speakers have said about many of the characteristics of our telephone service. Undoubtedly the courtesy is something that anyone can appreciate, and the genuine ring of friendliness is again something that is very much appreciated by all.

It is also refreshing to note that the service is by and large a commercial success, in other words that it is able to remunerate the capital even though it is not able to provide all the capital for the big expansion ahead. It is quite reasonable, then, that it is providing the usual return on investment to the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. That is all to the good. Before getting to the main point, I want to say that perhaps the most persistent fault that seems to be occurring is that of line crossing. It is not infrequent to get conversations crossing. I know that there are technical difficulties, but this is something to which a greater effort should be applied to eradicate it. If the telephone line cannot guarantee privacy it loses most of its value.

Another point I would like to say is that I have been dismayed on many occasions at seeing the vandalism and wrecking of public kiosks. I would like to see a more positive effort or general appeals to the public to try to get rid of this vandalism and waste of our national resources.

I should also come to the point raised by Senator Garret FitzGerald as to whether it should become a semi-State body or not. I know the difficulties involved in disentangling it from the post office activities in which it has grown up, but it would be worthwhile to consider putting it on its own as a semi-State body. I have many reasons for that, not on the telephone side alone. Take the Minister's statement where he said that professional engineers are not coming in quite as fast as are needed. This is a rather serious state for the country as a whole because the professional engineers concerned are amongst our most skilled engineers. They are the electronic specialists and we live today in an age of electronics. Unfortunately the telephone service, or the posts and telegraphs, have fallen down in this task and are not attracting the best of our young electrical engineers. We see that foreign firms in England and elsewhere are continually beating the Department of Posts and Telegraphs for our good young men. This is very sad, not so much for the Department of Posts and Telegraphs as a concern but for this country as a whole, because if we take the electronics revolution seriously and the tremendous part it plays in modern life and in modern industrial development it is obvious that we should try to create here a pool of trained electronic specialists, the best of our people, and we should take the standpoint that no commercial firm in England, Switzerland or anywhere else is going to beat us for those people.

That is why I put it to the Minister that there is in the telephone service the possibility of creating this central nucleus or body that would be the conservatory of our electronics specialists within the country, because when we face an expenditure of £10 million a year it is obvious that the spending of, say, five per cent of that, which after all is only £500,000 a year, classed as pure research and development in electronics, would not be a big sum to spend, yet it would provide the nucleus and the initiative to set up this electronics centre.

I would suggest to the Minister that he would consider linking with this a national computer service, because we need that also and it has a natural affinity to the electronics of the posts and telegraphs. Indeed it would not be hard for this firm to do a more business-like job than, for instance, CIE are doing, where they generally ask you for the colour of your eyes before they will rent computer time to you.

I had an astounding experience last October when, having booked half an hour's computer time with CIE, paid for out of my own pocket at the rate of £45 an hour, I was told three hours beforehand by the Director that in his judgment the programme could not be in operation by then and could not proceed. This runs contrary to the commercial practice anywhere that if you rent the computer it does not matter whether you turn up to use it or not provided you pay the bill—that is all that matters. So I would suggest to the Minister that a national body which has no affinity at all with national transport any more than it has with any other large activity should have this as its number one electronics task. This should also become a tremendous source of revenue, and I would appeal to the Minister, knowing his imagination and his courage, to examine this. I know that he will see the advantage in creating this school. I would like to see this school as the place where we could have our best brains trained in electronics so that industries throughout the country when they need that, as they will very often, could get consultant electronics from this.

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator is going far outside the scope of this Bill.

Professor Quinlan

I think that I am making a contribution to the Minister on it and that he will have the imagination to appreciate what I am saying.

An Cathaoirleach

It is now time to come back to the Bill proper.

Professor Quinlan

The Bill is here to say how far we can spend £10 million and I am making a suggestion regarding one of the difficulties the Minister can encounter with regard to recruiting professional engineers in adequate numbers. I am making this suggestion as one concerned with the education of engineers and who knows the difficulties that the Department is in in trying to recruit more of our young engineers. I would like to see this centre so that not alone would specialist service be acquired from it on a consultant basis but men would be taken from it to man corresponding positions elsewhere in our industry.

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator is going very far outside the scope of this Bill.

Professor Quinlan

I have every confidence that the Minister is appreciative of this and that he will see the possibility of it. I shall take it up with him in private.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Do that, and come back to the Bill.

Professor Quinlan

I know, of course, that the Leader of the House cannot be expected to appreciate anything on this level of thinking.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

The last experiment which the Senator tried was not very satisfactory. Judging from the result of that, we would be better off without a computer.

An Cathaoirleach

Senator Quinlan, without interruption.

Professor Quinlan

I would suggest to the Minister that even if he is to retain the engineers he already has, he would require to implement speedily the recent award to engineers because there is a great deal of disquiet about this and the profession as a whole are not happy that it should be put aside for three months and that they are told it cannot be considered until such time as some other commission concerned with higher level salaries make a report.

Finally, I wish to congratulate the Minister on his statement in which he has given us all the information we need. I look forward to discussing with the Minister the setting up of a national centre of electronics in connection with our telephone service.

Mr. McQuillan

Though I agree with most of what Senator Quinlan has said, I still think he must be a very naïve man if he thinks that there is any possibility whatsoever that the Department of Posts and Telegraphs would embark on, shall we say, a first-class programme such as the one described by Senator Quinlan.

In fact, the outlook of the Minister and his Department during the years has been a very conservative one. In so far as this Bill is concerned, it must be accepted that the Minister's statement is correct when he says that a first-class telephone service is essential for industrial and commercial purposes as well as for its social value. Of course, there is a fantasy about the Minister's opening statement when we realise that the real boss in control of our telephone capital development is the Minister for Finance. We must realise, then, that Deputy Childers' statement saying that he is running a commercial enterprise is inaccurate. The Minister for Posts and Telegraphs is merely a puppet or an agent for the Minister for Finance and not one penny piece can be raised by him to expand the Post Office services or the telephone services without the sanction of the Minister for Finance. How, then, can the Minister claim that he is dealing with and running a commercial concern, which he alleges gives reasonable profit to the taxpayer, when all the decisions with regard to the capital expenditure lie with the Minister for Finance and his Department? Whenever the Government found it necessary—because, shall we say, they were convinced of the right of State enterprise—to utilise State enterprise, they, in so far as was possible, gave public corporation status to the particular enterprise, and they immediately decided in each case to cut away the particular concern from the Department concerned and from the Department of Finance. Therefore, if the Department of Posts and Telegraphs are to run their telephone capital development on the lines on which the Department of Finance would run it, we would be in the same position in five years time as the country is in at present time.

There are a number of inaccuracies in the Minister's statement and also in the statements made recently by him in the Dáil with regard to this matter. For instance, he says that there will be a profit for the taxpayer arising from this measure. I should like him to elaborate on where the profit is for the taxpayer. A sum of up to £50 million must be raised by the Minister for Finance and there are a number of methods available to the Minister to do this. He may raise the money by floating a national loan which costs up to 7½ or 8 per cent and which will cost more from now on; or, as on other occasions, the Minister may borrow from the commercial banks; so if one looks at the return which the Minister says is on the telephone profit—6½ or 7 per cent—I do not know how the Minister can make that claim when one remembers that 7 per cent or more has already been paid for that money by the Exchequer. Where, then, does the profit come in for the taxpayer?

Fifty million pounds is a big sum in this country at any time and I believe that the cost of the telephone system in Ireland at the present time is higher than in any other country which can be compared with ours in so far as incomes are concerned. An example of this was illustrated in today's Irish Times. This told the story of a man who made a telephone call from Belfast to London which only cost him a few pence but when he made a call from Dún Laoghaire to London, the cost was 4/-. These are the practical aspects of what the people have to pay and while we are going on the methods used by the Minister, we will have a very dear service and, consequently, our economic and commercial interests will suffer.

The telephone service plays a vital part today in costings and if we do not give that service at a reasonable cost to industrial and commercial life, the consumer will suffer in the long run. At the present time and for some years past, there has been a tremendous demand for telephones. It would be wrong for any Government or any Department to look on this as a kind of bonanza and to take the attitude that because there is a tremendous demand we can have higher charges for installation and for rent.

This is a wrong approach. At one time, officers were appointed who would try to convince the public of the wonderful thing the telephone would be and to encourage them to have it installed. There were a number of people in this House at the time who did not appreciate that the public would go in in such a big way for telephones. My fear is that because the public are so anxious for various reasons to have a telephone service the Department's callous approach so far as costing is concerned will do damage in years to come.

There is an alternative method of financing the telephone development programme. I do not think it should be done overnight. It was in 1963 that we had the last Telephone Capital Bill. From 1963 to 1968 was a fair period of time for the Department of Finance and others to check on and examine alternative ways of raising the necessary funds rather than to bring in here another drab copy of the 1963 Act in the form of this Bill.

I mentioned a few minutes ago that in order to service this expenditure, to service the money raised, the commercial banks will reap their pound of flesh. I do not want to develop this in any detail but is it not an extraordinary thing that in other countries, to which the Minister has referred on a number of occasions, they can pay for the expansion in their telephone system out of funds coming into the Post Office from other sources? I refer now to Sweden and highly developed countries like that to which the Minister has referred from time to time. In those countries money made available through other services in the Post Office provide large capital sums at low interest rates which in turn can be utilised for telephone development work. One of the major matters to which I refer in that field is the bank giro system. I have no intention of going into it in any detail at all except to say——

Mr. Childers

It does not come under this Bill.

Mr. McQuillan

The Minister is in a terrible hurry to prevent discussion. The Chair is well able to look after the Minister's rights and mine. We depend on the Chair's neutrality. The Minister's advice is an insult to the Chair. He tries to suggest that it does not come under the Bill. He should keep his mouth shut once in a while. He is not trying to silence RTE now.

Mr. Childers

I am not briefed on the giro system. It does not arise on this Bill.

Mr. McQuillan

I know the Minister is not briefed on it. That is the trouble.

Mr. Childers

It does not arise.

Mr. McQuillan

It is the wrong brief. That is the trouble with the Minister.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Computers and giro have nothing to do with this.

An Cathaoirleach

The Chair would like to remind the Senator that this is not a discussion ranging over the whole of the Post Office services.

Mr. McQuillan

I accept that. I am saying there are alternative ways of raising this £50 million and one of the ways would be to bring in the giro system. I do not say it would make money available immediately but instead of spending the past five years running the Department on the old lines, we should have reached a stage when the giro system could be functioning and bringing in a certain amount of money, perhaps increasing annually and reducing the burden of the cost on the community as a whole in the long run. I do not intend to deal with that in any detail.

The Minister spoke about the Post Office being a sound commercial proposition and said that the Post Office is a business concern. If it is the great business concern he says it is why is it that when he produces classified advertisements in the telephone directory he hands that out to an outside firm? When asked the reason why this so-called commercial Department which he heads do not print the classified ads, his answer in the Dáil was that we must make use of a commercial concern.

An Cathaoirleach

Perhaps we should concentrate on the Minister's statement to the Seanad.

Mr. McQuillan

I am concentrating on the Minister's statement and what is missing from it which would be relevant to the £50 million which the community is asked to bear.

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator is stretching the word "relevant".

Mr. McQuillan

I do not want to stretch it. I do not want to go outside the scope of the Bill. With your permission, Sir, I should like now to deal with another matter which is contained in the Minister's opening statement. He referred to the employment of industrial consultants. To me, industrial consultants can be industrial consultants in the sense of looking after industrial relations, personnel relations, methods by which you look after the welfare of your staff. It is in relation to the last category that I propose to make some further comments.

When we bring in automatic exchanges and make these highly desirable improvements, it is extraordinary how we forget the people who man those contraptions. Senator Sheehy Skeffington, Senator Quinlan and others paid tribute to the staff who man the exchanges. That tribute is deserved and more than deserved. I have already intervened to say that the courtesy and patience shown by the staff has been traditional in the telephone exchanges in spite of the fact that the same staff, both male and female, work in atrocious conditions. This House should urge the Minister that, side by side with all the technical improvements which we all hope to see, we should have improvements in regard to staff relations and the conditions in which they work.

The position in many of these exchanges at present, which the Minister now hopes to improve, is that in the summertime they are simply sweat boxes. They are overcrowded with young girls working in extraordinarily harsh conditions and under a Victorian type of supervision. In the wintertime these same rooms are ice boxes. We had an example within the past few weeks of the conditions in an exchange in Dublin. The telephonists had complained about the scandalous conditions, the icy cold temperature within the exchange. No more heed was paid to them than would have been paid if they had been up in a satellite. In desperation they were forced to leave their place of work and walk out. It is very interesting to note that within a matter of hours—the genie in the bottle was only trotting after them and Aladdin's lamp would have taken second place—some senior officials of the Department rushed in to provide heat at all angles and to improve the conditions in that exchange for the girls.

It was rather annoying at the time to find the Minister's officials stating that they appreciated the hardship the girls were undergoing and felt sorry about it. The extraordinary thing is that there was no action to remedy the position until the patience of the girls was exhausted and they walked out. Perhaps the girls will begin to learn and understand what their strength means.

The Senators who spoke about the courtesy and patience of the male and female telephonists are quite right. I wonder how many Members of the House realise that many of the men who are giving excellent service from 7 o'clock in the evening have been in a temporary capacity during the past 10, 12 or 15 years. I wonder how many Members of the House are aware of the mentality displayed by the Minister's staff towards the recruitment of people to man the exchanges in a part-time capacity. I do not want to weary the House but it would be no harm to put on record a few comments by the Minister's officials about the manner in which part-time telephonists should be recruited. I want to quote now from an official document from the Minister's Department dealing with part-time night telephone assistants. I will not say much about it except that it is an official statement issued by high officials of the Minister's Department.

The statement says:

Night telephone assistants have no right to continuing employment or to employment for any fixed number of hours weekly. They are to be employed only according as they are required and are available. The nights on which they are available should ordinarily be ascertained on enquiry from them and attendances listed as far as possible. It is envisaged that the Assistants will be employed mainly during the summer pressure season and that outside this season they will be listed only sufficiently often to maintain their efficiency. It is important that nothing be said or done which would tend to give the impression that this employment is otherwise than on a purely casual basis, giving no right to continued employment for any fixed period or number of hours weekly. Where an Assistant reports late for duty, he should not be asked for an explanation—if he gives one, well and good—he should be paid only for the actual time worked. Moreover, if he absents himself he should not be asked for an explanation and there is no question of requiring him to produce medical evidence in support of absences but the fact that an Assistant absents himself without sufficient reason should be borne in mind when considering his suitability for retention on the list of Assistants. Regular scheduling of duties for them for periods in advance is undesirable and attendances should, as far as possible, be arranged on the basis of suiting the convenience of the individuals.

These are official documents issued by the Minister's Department for the recruitment of people to man exchanges on a part-time basis. The idea is to give them no indication they will be on duty over any particular period. There is no provision for annual holidays, and so forth. The reason I mention that is to give an idea of the mentality at work inside the Department. To me that statement is a window into the mind of the Department. There are two things lacking if you read those statements, firstly, regard for the public and, secondly, regard and respect for the worker as an individual.

If you are to bring in people on such a basis it does not matter whether they are late or not or whether they attend or not and in such a situation the Department show no regard for the public. I want to make it clear here that it was due to the pressure exercised in this House and outside it, and an exposure here some months ago of the scandalous position in Dublin and provincial exchanges, that the Department, with the greatest speed, changed their decision on the recruitment of full-time permanent telephonists. Overnight the decision was altered to get away from the part-time basis and to bring in full-time telephonists. It is desirable, but it only came about because of the pressure brought to bear.

I do not believe the Minister or his colleague, the Parliamentary Secretary, Deputy Lalor, were aware of the position in the Department which was to get rid of full-time male telephonists and replace them with part-time telephonists. Neither of those two politicians was aware of that position in the Department as a result of a vendetta in the Department on the telephonists for fighting for their rights three or four years ago. Who suffered in all this? The general public did. Any Senator here who wanted to use a telephone during the months of June, July or August will have found that one could wait up to eight minutes to get a reply from the exchange. Why? Because 50 per cent of these part-time workers did not turn up. Why should they when one sees the terms of their appointment where it says that it does not matter whether they came in or not and that they were not to be asked where they were? This is a commercial concern and a concern, according to the Minister, which has regard for its staff. When I read through the debates recently in Dáil Éireann dealing with the telephones and the comments of the principal Opposition speaker and Deputy Childers, I thought I was down at the Kildare Street Club. It is a matter of "Hear, hear" and "Jolly fine work on the part of the Minister" and "Thank you very much, indeed, Deputy" from the Minister. The old school tie affair was going full tilt. There was to be no question of showing up the position inside the exchanges.

Mr. Childers wanted to turn the debate into an admiration society. We know that he does not like bad news. He wants good news, night, noon and morning on RTE. If he does not get good news he corrects the television staff for their manners.

An Cathaoirleach

Perhaps the Senator would confine his remarks to the business in hand. I have to indicate to the Senator that he is going very far outside the scope of the Bill. It is not a discussion ranging over the whole general telephone, postal and television services.

Mr. McQuillan

The Minister does not like the descriptions made. I suggest——

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator will appreciate that if he is allowed to make these remarks, the Senator will create the position where similar remarks may be made applying to him. The Senator will appreciate the difficulty of the Chair.

Mr. McQuillan

There is nobody more prepared to co-operate with the Chair than me. It is on that basis that I limit my remarks on the Minister to saying this: if we want to bring about the changes in the telephone system to give good telephone services to the community and if we want the public to pay the least possible price for them, then we will have to change the Minister. I do not think this Minister is the proper person to do the job in the way I suggest. I say that not because he is like Goebbels, as he has been accused of being. Goebbels had a twisted mind. He was a man of immense talent who misused it. That would be a completely wrong description of this Minister but a description which I read on the Sunday Times yesterday, by Ken Adams, former director of the BBC, on the position of the Postmaster General in England might be appropriate:

Postmaster-Generals tend to be a pain in the neck, either too old and too stupid to be put anywhere else or too young and ambitious to stay and find out what it is all about.

If we substitute "Minister for Posts and Telegraphs" it might suit the position of this country. Senators Quinlan and FitzGerald posed a query to the Minister as to why steps are not being taken to make the Post Office, or the telephone end of it, a public corporation. I am in a rather difficult position in this because I do not for a moment accept the idea that the telephone service should be hived off and made a public corporation. I think the entire Department should be included in a body which would be a public corporation.

It is a terrible tragedy for the people to see the shilly-shallying and the delay by the Government in making up their mind. When the Minister was queried about it in the Dáil he said that there was immense competition and the difficulties were tremendous. He suggested that the Devlin Commission might give him some guidance on this question, and I was under the impression that a decision in principle had been taken to make the Post Office, including the telephone section, a public corporation. However, it would appear that no decision has been taken in this regard. All I can do now is to emphasise at every possible opportunity that above all the sections in the Government in which we should have independence, the Post Office should have top priority, and there should be no slicing off at the telephone end, leaving the remainder in the hands of the Civil Service so that the other services could wither away.

I have been rather confined in the scope of this Bill—I know it is not the fault of the Chair: it is because the terms of the Bill are such—but in conclusion I ask the Minister to examine his own conscience on the whole question of industrial relations within the telephone exchanges. To my mind the Minister is in a very serious position at the present time if he is not prepared to improve the industrial relations within the Post Office while improving the technical end of the business.

The Minister is on record as saying everything is right so far as the staff in the telephone exchanges are concerned, and he is also on record within the last month as stating in the Dáil there were no complaints worth talking about and if there were the system of conciliation and arbitration which is available is the ideal one to look after the interests of the staff. If I am wrong in this perhaps the Minister will correct me. However, the Minister for Labour, Dr. Hillery, who should be the personnel officer for the Government, stated publicly he is sick and tired of trying to persuade the unions, including those in the Post Office, to take advantage of the improved conciliation by making the Labour Court available to them.

The Minister for Labour has deplored the fact that the alleged unions in the Post Office have failed to take advantage of the new thinking on his part, to take advantage of the fact that a grievance officer, or a union ombudsman, would be made available to them under the Labour Court. Surely, when the Minister for Labour was making that statement in the Dáil he was doing it as a member of a Government which included Deputy Childers, and Deputy Childers must take government responsibility for agreeing with Deputy Hillery that the existing conciliation and arbitration was not up to scratch and that the Labour Court was the place for the Post Office unions to go. What does Deputy Childers do? He says that the system of arbitration and conciliation in the Post Office is the best and he tries to dismiss members of the union because they wanted to go to the Labour Court. His colleague, the Minister for Labour, says that the Labour Court is the best place to go while Deputy Childers still insists it is not. Why should Deputy Hillery blame the unions in the civil service? Why does he not turn round and ask Deputy Childers: "Why do you try to sabotage the Trade Union Bill and any advances I am trying to make so far as relations in the Post Office are concerned?" It would appear to me there is a very definite split in the Government on this.

An Cathaoirleach

The Senator will confine his remarks to the Bill.

Mr. Childers

The Minister's speech meant something completely different to what Senator McQuillan says.

Mr. McQuillan

I wish to repeat that the Minister for Labour has, both in his opening and concluding statements, suggested that the Civil Service Association should take advantage of the Labour Court, and the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, in his capacity as head of the Post Office, has disapproved of that. He is on record over the last 12 months as disagreeing on this point with Deputy Hillery. It is time those two men decided what was right and wrong because many of the telephone operators are very anxious at the present time to know where the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs stands on this issue, and whether he will now change his mind and agree with the Minister for Labour. I do not wish to go any further into this and I hope the Minister will give us his views on this particular issue and let us know how wide the gap is between himself and Deputy Hillery.

Mr. Dolan

Most fair-minded people will accept that a good telephone service is necessary and essential for the industrial progress of the country and this has been the thinking of the Government on this matter. Each year it leans over backwards with the resources available to try to provide a better service and to meet the demands made on it for more telephones et cetera. In the last five years it is worth noting what has taken place: since 1964, 76,000 new subscribers have come in and 209,000 miles of trunk services have been added; 479 kiosks have been provided and 190 underground and overhead cables have been laid. This is certainly something at which we cannot scoff. People have been clamouring to have telephones but the Post Office say there is no use installing phones until the necessary links and connections have been laid. For that reason it was necessary for the Government to provide extra equipment which is essential for a modern service and they took the line that until this groundwork was adequately tackled it would be useless to install phones.

What has been accomplished during the last five years is something that any country could be proud of. There may be people disappointed because of the delay but when they understood that these delays were necessary and that the Government were serious about remedying them as quickly as possible they accepted that. Over that period now we see what has been accomplished. It is true that when standards of living rise naturally people expect to have what have now become known as modern amenities, that under Government policy houses have been improved, roads vastly improved, and this naturally leads to the situation that people have got to have the telephone installed not alone for business purposes but very often to their private houses. This expansion can now take place because it has been well planned and it has been done in a systematic, intelligent way by the Government. In the five years ahead, as in the statement issued here by the Minister, he saw the projection for the future is tremendously bright and if we are able to spend £7 million per year for five years we will have come a long way to solving this matter of the telephone service in this country. Therefore, I congratulate the Minister and the Government on doing this, and I am sure that the people will realise that it is doing this very important national work which is highly appreciated by the business people and by the ordinary people of the country, and that they will recognise that and ensure that the Government will continue to bring this programme to a proper conclusion.

Mr. Murphy

I had not intended to intervene in this debate, but we seem to have strayed into the debate on the Industrial Relations Bill which is not yet before us. In that regard I would like to correct the position. Might I first of all join with the other Senators in complimenting the staff in connection with the telephones? We all have the experience of dealing with them and receiving every courtesy at all times even when some of us might be a little impatient trying to get calls through quickly. We have always found them most courteous in dealing with the public. In regard to the industrial relations part, and the industrial consultant, it might be no harm to make the point that the telephone section is part of the Post Office organisation as a whole, and the Post Office is organised by a trade union which represents about 80 per cent of the people employed and it is traditionally a well-organised and efficiently-operated trade union. It is, I believe, the viewpoint of that union and of other unions in the public sector that they would prefer to continue the present scheme of conciliation and arbitration which exists between the respective Minister and the Minister for Finance.

Mr. McQuillan

Are the members of the trade union consulted?

Mr. Murphy

I do not know the internal working of the union but I am sure Senator McQuillan will agree with me that this union does have an annual conference, does invite motions from the branches of the union, and does abide by the decision of the annual conference.

Mr. McQuillan

Are you speaking about CIE now?

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Cathaoirleach drew attention some time ago to the great danger of this debate being widened far beyond what is desirable. This indeed is now coming to pass. This is not an annual telephone Bill. It is a Telephone Capital Bill, and anything outside telephone capital should only be in the way of the briefest illuminating remark.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

Long distance is coming in.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Noise is coming out of the system.

Mr. McQuillan

The closed shop is coming in.

Mr. Murphy

The Cathaoirleach did rightly make the point that if a Senator was embarking on a particular line undoubtedly other Senators would want to reply to those points. That is what I have been endeavouring to do very briefly.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

The Chair is the judge of what is sufficient time to reply.

Mr. Murphy

I will of course abide by the decision of the Chair.

Mr. McQuillan

On a point of order, I should like to make the position clear that I do not want to be misrepresented. I made my position clear about the clash between the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and the Minister for Labour on the interpretation of whether the Labour Court should be available or not. If Senator Murphy now wants to take up the defence of the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs let him do so without bringing me into it.

Mr. Childers

This does not arise on the Bill.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator Murphy to continue.

Mr. Murphy

I did not know that I was defending the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs. I was making the point that the unions concerned representing the workers employed have decided on their own volition that they prefer to abide by the present machinery, and what is proposed by the Minister for Labour is not simply putting them in the same position as other unions in relation to the Labour Court but providing that the chairman will, instead of as at the moment being agreed between the associations and unions concerned and the Minister, be appointed by the Labour Court. There would be in fact a link in that way between the existing conciliation and arbitration machinery and the Labour Court. I do not want to enter into an argument as to which is the more desirable or better. This is not material for this particular Bill, but I am saying that the suggestion that the Labour Court shall be put in place of the existing scheme of conciliation and arbitration is not correct.

Mr. McQuillan

The point is that the unions within the Civil Service and amongst the Posts and Telegraphs do not agree. I would have thought that the Labour Party would be doing something else besides putting their noses into a row between two Fianna Fáil Ministers. That kind of policy will not get the Labour Party very far in the next election.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

Senator Murphy to continue on the Bill.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Senator McQuillan is getting unduly worried about this.

Mr. Murphy

I have made the point that there is a well-organised and efficient trade union representing employees in the telephones as well as in the Post Office. There are always dissidents. If the unions in CIE have done as good a job as the Post Office Workers' Union has done they might be much happier.

(Interruptions.)

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

If Senator McQuillan refrained from interrupting I had hopes that Senator Murphy would soon leave this point and move on to another.

Mr. Murphy

There are always dissidents and always people able to profit by such dissidents, but the position is that the union concerned is ready to make up its mind on the position and it is not a question of a quarrel between the Minister for Posts and Telegraphs and the Minister for Labour.

Mr. McQuillan

Of course it is. It is a good contribution to have from the Leader of the Labour Party in the Seanad on the issue of the expenditure of £50 million.

Mr. McDonald

I would like to welcome this Bill but I would like to see the people of rural Ireland getting better value for the reasonably large amount of money which it is proposed to spend in this service. I should like to know whether the Minister and the Department look on the telephone service primarily as a service that must pay for itself or whether there is any element of social service in it.

Whatever the answer might be, we should have more kiosks in rural Ireland and especially in these places where a 24-hour exchange service is available. It is unfair to the poorer sections of the community who, if they wish to make a telephone call, be it for a doctor or a vet or any other person, must inconvenience one of their neighbours and must be under some compliment to one of their neighbours in order to do so.

The erection of these kiosks should not prove too costly. Therefore, I ask the Minister to have a kiosk erected at least in every village, especially where there is a 24-hour exchange service. On our major roads, too, I should like to see more kiosks. There is an Automobile Association kiosk at distances of approximately 30 miles on our arterial roads and this provides a limited service for members of the AA but, unlike Northern Ireland or Great Britain where one finds kiosks at so many crossroads, the Department of Posts and Telegraphs here have done nothing in this respect. This should be corrected now, especially since a reasonable amount of money is being made available to the Department. Even if the Department were to erect a kiosk convenient to each repeater station on the main trunk lines, the maintenance of which should not present any great problem, it would be of great help to those in the rural community and to road users in general.

I also find that there is great concern among the farming community, especially at creameries where large numbers of farmers congregate. In places like these, there is great need for telephone kiosks. Time and again the Department say there is no public demand for a telephone service at any particular place but I ask the Minister how he knows there is no demand if there is no way of proving that the demand is not there. Surely it should be possible for an organisation with a monopoly in a service and, might I add, not a cheap service to the consumer, to make every effort to facilitate the public and particularly those in our community who cannot afford to pay the rather high costs of installation and rental charges for telephones in their own homes. I welcome this Bill and I hope that the Minister will be able to spend a little more money for this service in rural areas than he has done heretofore.

Mr. J. Fitzgerald

There are one or two points which I should like to mention in connection with this Bill. Reference has been made here by previous speakers to the delay and the long waiting list for telephone installations. This, in itself, is serious enough but there is also the situation whereby, after waiting perhaps many years for a telephone, the applicant is visited by an inspector and subsequently informed that, in order to have the telephone installed, he is required to pay about five years rent in advance—a sum of, perhaps, £80 or £90. I know of two such cases in my own area and both of the people concerned reside within two miles of an exchange and the telephone lines pass their houses. In one of these cases a householder who had had the telephone for many years decided to dispense with it and a neighbour, who lives a couple of hundred yards away, applied to have it installed. Now, having waited several months he has been informed that he will get the telephone on the condition that he pays five years rent in advance. This he has done but up to last Sunday week he had not got the telephone although the Post Office have received the cheque. I ask the Minister to look into this matter because this is a form of blackmail.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

False pretences.

Mr. J. Fitzgerald

This should not happen with a Department such as Posts and Telegraphs in this country.

Minister for Posts and Telegraphs (Mr. Childers)

I wish to thank the many Senators who paid tribute to the Department of Posts and Telegraphs for their courtesy and who, in general terms, welcomed this Bill. Senator Garret FitzGerald asked why we provided for a five-year programme. This is done in a number of telephone administrations because in relation to designing new automatic exchanges the period required for delivery can vary from 18 months to two years and even with the most reputable manufacturers of exchanges, there can be delay of up to five years so, therefore, it is advisable to plan over a five-year period. This applies to the major schemes and it does not apply, for example, to the putting up of some open wire cable between two small areas.

Senator FitzGerald also raised the question of the finances of the telegraph service and the Post Office service. It is true that the service operates on a method of financial analysis but, on the other hand, each year in order to examine the economic viability of the telegraph and telephone service, we prepare commercial accounts to indicate the profit and loss in connection with these services and from that we can carry out the general policy which is that over a period of years, taking one year with another, the whole service should balance.

That system will have to continue until there is some general change in the organisation of the Department. As I indicated in the Dáil, the question of a possible change in the organisation of the Department has been under examination. It is an immensely complicated business and anybody who will read of the steps taken in Great Britain will see that great difficulties have been experienced there in connection with the decision to make the entire service a State corporation. Therefore, we must examine this question at length. Senator FitzGerald and others spoke also of the waiting list. I suppose it is rather a feeble excuse to say that there is a waiting list for telephones in almost every country, even those with a very advanced telephone system such as Sweden and Switzerland.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

Can the Minister say if there is a waiting list in the United States of America?

Mr. Childers

Yes, there is in some parts but in other parts there is not. It would be very uneconomic to join every single potential customer for the telephone service to the network individually. We are now arranging for a clearance of the waiting subscriber applications by districts on a fairly regular basis. There are some parts of the country where a telephone can be had virtually on demand. It depends on the advance that has been made in providing sufficient outlets from the local exchange. That is continuing.

It is rather hard to give an average figure. Senator FitzGerald knows averages are extremely dangerous in many cases. They have to be broken down. I would say that the average time taken to connect subscribers at the moment is about three months. I wish it could be less but with the tremendous pressure put on us to improve the quality of the exchange service and to develop cables, trunks, the open wire system and automatic exchanges this is the best we can do. We have reduced the number of waiting applications in relation to the total number for which service is provided each year.

I think it is true to say that all pre-1968 applications in the remote rural areas will be given service this year. At the moment there are 8,746 applications and of these nearly 3,000 are in course of installation. A further 1,751 are being processed. That means there are roughly between 5,000 and 6,000 waiting applications and that is a lower figure than it was at a previous period.

Mr. Rooney

How does the Minister calculate the average waiting time? Some people have been waiting for two years.

Mr. Childers

I said that averages are dangerous figures. I also said that the vast majority of people who have been waiting for two years will be given service this year.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

May I ask the Minister what kind of waiting time there is in Dublin where the problem of low density which there is in the rural areas does not apply?

Mr. Childers

There again there are complications. There are new housing estates where difficulties arise and there is sometimes delay because of constructional development. In other cases people are able to get a telephone service in a reasonable time after the houses are constructed.

Mr. Garret FitzGerald

What about areas that are not new housing estates?

Mr. Childers

There are certain areas in Dublin where there are cabling difficulties but we are overcoming them. We have done a great deal of cabling in the city and there is less complaint than there used to be.

Mr. Rooney

The average sounds very wrong.

Mr. Childers

I gave it as a difficult figure. I am not talking of exceptional cases.

Mr. Rooney

People on the waiting list will be shocked to hear the figure of three months.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

It is more like the minimum.

Mr. Childers

Of course part of the reason for the delay in supplying telephones is the explosion in telephone development that has taken place in the 1960s. There was a period when capital for the telephone service was restricted both here and in Great Britain. In the light of events that have taken place since, this may or may not have been advisable. In this country there is always competition for the available capital for all the services— social services, housing, sewerage and water schemes, the telegraph service and rural electrification—and it would be very dishonest for me to promise that in the next five years I would always be able to get the full sum required for the maximum telephone development. This would depend on industrial development proceeding at a very satisfactory pace and it would also depend to some extent on how far we could avoid inflation, not only inflation within our country but inflation without it which increases the cost of equipment.

Some Senators raised the question of the length of time taken and why we had not provided a certain type of subscriber trunk dialling system direct to Great Britain. There again the telephone service in Great Britain has been under great pressure and we are cooperating successfully with them. The time schedules of all these operations depend on joint consultation between ourselves and Britain.

Senator FitzGerald asked a question about the type of coins we hope to use in the coin boxes when decimal currency arrives. I am afraid I cannot answer that question. The Senator will appreciate that you can adjust the cost of telephoning under the decimal currency system by the coins used and the time you can take on the telephone.

All I can say is that we will not be allowed to inflate costs artificially in the telephone service because of the change-over. We have not made a final decision yet. It is being examined very closely at present as to the coins that will be used and the relation of one coin to another and to the various apertures in the coin boxes. It is highly technical and it would be impossible for me to go into that now. I can assure the Senator that for us to inflate the cost of telephoning due to the change-over to decimal currency would not be advisable from the point of view of revenue for the telephone service and it is not the wish of the Government that the telephone service should set any example to the rest of the community in the direction of an inflationary trend.

Mr. McQuillan

When you raise the telephone charge from 4d to 6d that is inflationary. That is what the Minister and the Government did.

Mr. Childers

I appreciate that it looks as if we will not be able to have a 6d call. It will either have to go up or down. Senator FitzGerald has a definite point there. It may be 4.8d. I do not know. I cannot go any further than that. Senator Sheehy Skeffington praised the staff. There was some cross talk between him and Senator McQuillan in regard to wages and conditions in the telephone service.

Mr. McQuillan

Very kind talk.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

Mutual approval.

Tomás Ó Maoláin

Birds of a feather.

Mr. Childers

There is a scheme of conciliation and arbitration. In fact they have been determined in this way and very substantial improvements in pay have been awarded to the staff, and improvements in working hours, holidays and so on. I hope that Members of the Seanad have received the statement I sent in regard to the financial position of the Post Office generally. There is a graph showing the rate of increase in wages in telephone and postal services. These improvements were well deserved because there was a period when in comparison with other sections of the community they were underpaid. Telephone charges had not increased at as fast a rate as the consumer price index. I am glad that worked out very satisfactorily. I should mention to Senator Quinlan that engineers in the Post Office had their pay adjusted under the C and A scheme and are not affected by the local government arbitration awards.

Professor Quinlan

Are the other engineers affected?

Mr. Childers

Not so far as I know. I was glad Senator Quinlan paid tribute to the telephone service. I admit that faults are still excessive on the Dublin-Cork line but they are better than they were two or three years ago. I hope that the service between Cork and Dublin will improve still further. Professor Quinlan should know that we have been in touch with universities with regard to attracting engineers to our service and that as a result of that and of other measures taken we have an increase of 18 in the number of our engineers since 1st January, 1968. Our total number serving on the 1st January, 1969 was 161. We have provided two scholarship schemes and a third scholarship scheme is being introduced this year. There is no need to give details of this but it shows that we are trying to have close relationship with the universities, particularly attracting them by the right type of public relations to join the telephone service, and offering various facilities and better rewards at the beginning of their service. Four scholarship holders are attending UCC.

Professor Quinlan

These are positive steps but I think you have to do something bigger at the other end of the scale.

Mr. Childers

Professor Quinlan raised a question too big for me to deal with in regard to a computer electrical general centre. I would say that the Department of Finance are interested in co-ordinating all use of computers in the public sector. We are examining the question of introducing computers into the workings of the Department but we have not made any final decision in regard to it. It would be for the Department of Finance to co-ordinate this whole matter. I myself could not do it as Minister for Posts and Telegraphs.

Senator McQuillan raised verious matters in relation to industrial relations. I would say that the commercial accounts reveal a surplus in telephone operation of 7 per cent after paying interest and principal on loans. It is a genuine return on capital. Telephone charges have been mentioned by me already and have risen less than the general cost of living index up to a recent period. Selling the telephone service depends on raising sufficient capital. It would not be possible for us to advertise the telephone service at present because we have to develop the system. We have not reached the positiona tion of advertising the telephone service and there are many other countries in the same position. I should mention that trunk call fees were not increased in 1969 in order to attract more custom in this direction. There is no alternative method of raising capital under the present conditions of inflation. It would be more satisfactory than the method by which capital is provided by the State. If there was less inflation it might be possible. I cannot see it happening at the moment. Even if the service was a State company or a private firm or whatever it was I think the company concerned would hire a firm of specialists for the telephone classified directory which is a very special kind of activity.

I want to say in relation to staff relations within the Post Office that the Parliamentary Secretary is immediately in charge of these matters. We discuss every problem together. We have a new Staff Relations Section within the Post Office. We are doing everything in our power to make the C and A system work as efficiently as possible and to the satisfaction of the staff concerned. We have been examining the grievance procedure to see, in the light of changes which have taken place in industrial relations generally, whether they require amending. We have provided social welfare officers. We have used personnel management courses wherever they are required by different types of staff. We have made every effort to ensure that the C and A system relates to the modern world and modern concepts in regard to the way workers should be treated and their grievances examined. We will continue to make progress in this.

Senator McQuillan spoke about the electricity system in particular exchanges. The system broke down and was repaired. So far as I am aware, heating is provided in all exchanges throughout the country. If it was not provided, then this matter can be raised under the grievances procedure. I have no recollection of complaints of lack of heating at telephone exchanges with the exception of the breakdown that took place.

Mr. McQuillan

The Minister refuses to talk to the people who put the grievances before him. He has refused point blank.

Mr. Childers

The use of exchanges where the staff are crowded are being replaced as rapidly as possible. Every effort is being made to improve staff working conditions. They are by no means completely satisfactory but there is a marked improvement in the last five years. He referred to the temporary telephone officers in the Post Office. This is purely temporary, seasonal employment. Having noticed the way these particular temporary officers did not come into their work, it was felt wise to be absolutely frank in their conditions of employment and the people themselves did not object to this. We have to examine continuously the need for operators of various kinds. We have advertised for telephonists and permanent night male telephonists. That policy is being continued and there is no suggestion of some extraordinary plot to deprive people of permanent work in the telephone service.

Senator McQuillan referred to the waiting time for trunk calls having been rather long in certain periods of last year. It was long, due partly to the increase in cross-Channel calls in particular, which was greater than was expected even allowing for the increase of tourists travelling by motor car or otherwise, which took place in July, August and September. We had a further difficulty because we had one of the eleven good summers since 1880 and people tended to crowd their calling into the six to ten p.m. period. I do not think I could design a service to provide operators on the assumption that we were going to have such splendid summers. We had only eleven of them since 1880. I could not always be prepared for an unprecedented calling rate even between 10 p.m. and midnight in rural areas from tourists who are out in the sun all day when we did not have the little showers we are accustomed to in our weather in the ordinary course.

Mr. McQuillan

We all welcome the good summer but the point I made was that there was 50 per cent absenteeism on the part of the telephonists in July and August which is the time the Minister is talking about.

Mr. Childers

We have issued a requirement to provide what we hope will be the optimum staff in the coming year.

Mr. McQuillan

It is pointless to say that the delays were due to the fine weather. The staff stayed out in it. I am glad to see that the Minister has altered the position very much by recruiting a bigger percentage of fulltime personnel.

Mr. Childers

Senator Murphy answered the questions by Senator McQuillan in regard to me. I am not allowed to get into this debate. So far as I know, whatever great differences we may have in social and economic policy from either the Labour Party or the Fine Gael Party, I do not believe the Labour Party approve of the fragmentation of worker representation. Moreover, I recall the late John Conroy about two years ago saying that he saw the inevitable development at some stage, however difficult the course might be, of industrial unions. Further to that, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions have——

Mr. McQuillan

With access to the Labour Court.

Mr. Childers

——publicly disapproved of the fragmentation of the postal and telephone system of arbitration and conciliation. There is a public service committee within the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to which the members of unions could make appeals and discuss problems if they choose to do so. Senator Murphy has explained that there is no difference of opinion between me and the Minister for Labour.

Mr. McQuillan

Of course there is.

Mr. Childers

The Minister for Labour was trying to co-ordinate the use of the Labour Court for the general system of conciliation and arbitration. He was not suggesting that if post office workers were discontented with that system of conciliation and arbitration they could say: "We will not go through conciliation and arbitration. We will go straight to the conciliation officers and to the Labour Court itself". Senator Murphy was perfectly correct in saying that the Minister for Labour was saying that they would have two separate courses to adopt in discussing wages and salaries.

Mr. McQuillan

The Minister for Labour wanted them to go to the Labour Court but neither the Minister nor Senator Murphy want them to go.

Mr. Childers

Finally, Senator McDonald asked me a question on the social service aspect of the telephone service. The position is that the profit accruing from the denser areas subsidises a very considerable proportion of the rural telephone network operation. Far more profit is made from people who are constantly using the telephone in Dublin than from the person who may make one or two calls on business or social matters each day in some remote part of the country. That is how the element of social service operates.

We are increasing the number of kiosks. Most population centres of 200 or more have one now, and the numbers are growing steadily in areas where we have no kiosks. I have found since I was appointed Minister for Posts and Telegraphs for a second time, that there is not any area where a telephone of one kind or another is not available for emergencies. Kiosks must pay their way and for that there must be certain minimum requirements. In areas where a local authority consider there should be a kiosk they can enter into an arrangement with the Department to subsidise the kiosks and if the kiosks actually begin to pay then the rate of subsidy each year would be very small. I think one local authority are taking advantage of this arrangement but I should say that we, in accordance with our general custom, are examining the whole kiosk position to see whether we should develop kiosks at a faster rate, whether we can afford to do so or not, and at the same time keep down the cost of telephones generally.

Mr. Rooney

Does the Minister know what kiosks are costing?

Mr. Childers

I am afraid I have not an up-to-date figure. We are examining what the receipts should be, and as the Senator will appreciate, this can be calculated in different ways. There was a period when a kiosk was some £75 a year, but I cannot say what it is at the moment.

Dr. Sheehy Skeffington

Is there any move to persuade the Department of Posts and Telegraphs to change the design of the kiosks?

Mr. Childers

I have not yet persuaded the Department to do that. I agree with the Senator they are not very beautiful, but I hope we shall be able to do something about that in the future. I think I have answered all the questions. I thank the Senators for hearing me out.

Question put and agreed to.

Agreed to take remaining stages today.

Bill put through Committee, reported without recommendation, received for final consideration and passed.