It is an opportune time to have an in-depth look at the activities of CIE and, as the motion says, the arrangements for financing that organisation. CIE, as a State body are probably an organisation that have had more people looking at them, delving into them and writing about them than any other organisation in the State, and no conclusion has emerged as to the role that CIE should play in the organisation of transport communications within the State. The Minister in some way has decided that in future the social element will be considered to be 50 per cent of the board's revenue or 33? per cent of the board's expenditure, so in a sense in this year the social element to some degree has been set down. How was that figure reached?
It seems that since CIE have been looked at for so long it would be virtually impossible within the short length of time that the Minister has looked at this problem to be able to come up with a definitive social element within the operation of CIE. In the formulation of financial policies for the coming year and, as the Minister said, for years following that, the plan does not give any total expectancy of return to profitability, so I wonder how in one sense is he able to quantify the social element and then say the plan does not give a certainty of profitability under the new scheme?
I accept, as the Minister said, that a new positive and aggressive commercial ethos will have to be developed within the company. It seems to me that in 1984 it is time somebody decided such an ethos should be developed. I wonder why this commercial element has been missing from the company for so long. The debate so far seems to have tended towards nit-picking on various problems that individual Senators have come across rather than looking at the importance of CIE's contribution to the economy in terms of the large numbers of workers they have. The Minister gave a figure of 16,000. I am not sure exactly what the figure is. The numbers employed there are dispersed right throughout the State to give to local economies a large part of their incomes.
Unfortunately, there has tended to be in the past number of years a rationalisation programme which has tended to take away from smaller towns the employment given by CIE and has concentrated the employment factor in the bigger cities. I do not think this was a plan which should have been allowed to develop and I do not see that CIE have in any way improved their operations because of it. In this motion we have to discuss the public operation of transport and the private element.
Senator Kirwan in his contribution cast the aspersion that the private sector totally had milked the transport system of all available profitability and then went bankrupt. It is very hard to see how a company could milk the system, take all the profits and go bankrupt. There must have been other reasons why privatisation did not continue at the rate which I would consider to be necessary. One of the major inhibitions on privatisation was the fact that there was regularisation, by which people who were running old-fashioned steam engines back in the thirties were given road traffic licences based on the weight of their steam engines. After that, it was virtually impossible to get a road haulage licence: you had to purchase a licence from one of the holders. Over the past number of years there has been an attempt to deregularise the situation, or to give to private firms more rights or more opportunities to involve themselves in road haulage. There was a Bill recently which did just that.
Much has been made of the very bad relations between management and workers in CIE. There are many reasons for this. I feel that in CIE the workers would tell you that the distances from them of management and from the board to management are totally excessive and could not give the workers any degree of stability in their jobs or any confidence that the board or the management of the company was giving to them what they needed to do their jobs in a fit and proper manner.
That does not mean that at times industrial disputes have not taken place in CIE which could have been avoided if the trade unions operating in CIE had consulted their workers or members. Over the past couple of years it would seem that the development of a system of worker-directors in CIE has given to workers at least some contact with the board. Anybody who listens to the worker-directors speaking on the problems of CIE would see that not alone have they the interests of the workers at heart but equally they have at heart the continuity of CIE in a viable and worthwhile manner. It can be said by certain people that these worker-directors are very narrow in their attitude towards the operations. Because they are closer to the ground than management or directors of the board they do seem to have what the people are saying to them at heart and equally what their co-workers are saying.
Until there are better staff relations in CIE we will have continuing problems. The figure that was quoted yesterday was 50,000 work days lost in CIE in 1983 which was ten times the national average. Obviously somebody will have to sit down, whether it be the Minister or an internal commission, to work out exactly why those days were lost. Is it because there has been a lack of contact with or loss of confidence by the workers in their management? Is it because the workers have lost confidence in their trade unions? Is it that the trade unions do not see a future for their workers in CIE? Is it that there is total lack of confidence by all elements in CIE to overcome the problems that they have?
It would seem that lack of confidence is a major element in management-worker relationships. When it is boiled down, the board members of CIE are not known to the public and in many cases the management of CIE are not known to the public, but the bus conductor and the bus driver are known to the public, and the man driving the truck delivering goods is known to the public. The people working on the trains are known. They get the stick though it is not often realised that they are working in harrowing conditions. Any driver who has to work a full day in Dublin city, goes to work in the morning and is working in very bad traffic conditions all day. Then some person gives out to him because a bus is five minutes late. This is not conducive to him to sit down and distance himself at a trade union meeting from the problems that he has. One of the major things that has to be done in CIE is a major review of industrial relations.
Of course the public do not get from management the type of information that is needed. It is virtually impossible in places to find out at what times trains and buses will run and parcels can be delivered. There is a need for a better information service from CIE, and I do not mean a PR exercise. One thing that they seem to be great at is in providing a PR expert for every situation. He glosses over the problem, goes back to his office, sits down and says, "I have done a very good job," but nothing has been done to help the public.
This year we have each Department in Government fighting a case to get a share of the nation's finances, and it will be extremely hard for CIE to get the type of money that they need to run their operation in this new, positive and aggressive way. The health boards and the Department of the Environment are roaring for money. Where is the money to come from? It will come from the taxpayers' pockets. What we have got to do is to ensure that every penny that is spent in CIE will be spent in a positive manner, because the public's perception of spending is that money is being spent in a positive manner.
The unfortunate thing about rolling stock and the maintenance of the property of CIE in the coming year is that too much of the moneys on the capital side are to be expended on the electrification scheme for the greater Dublin area and on 64 new carriages for mainline trains which will not do very much to upgrade the mainline rail system.
Reading some of the newspapers recently one would imagine that the trains in Ireland had never been cleaned, that they are filthy always. I travel by train quite a lot and in general it can be said that Irish trains and buses are as well maintained, considering their age, as any system in the world.
When we look at the situation around the country, it is a problem when we see much of this year's capital allocation going into the electrification of the Bray to Dublin line which, it would appear, will never make a profit. Of course, if we take the social element into account and if 50 per cent of CIE revenue will be subsidised by the Government, it can be taken as a social input. Therefore, it is a mistake to say that the Bray-Howth line will pay its way in the sense that we are going to take that 50 per cent of the revenue of that line as social revenue which will not come out of this commercial ethos element.
It is right and proper that we should be discussing electrification. I saw that beautiful new set of stamps that are being brought out this year which shows the Dublin to Kingstown railway. One of the things that was said in the first-day cover is that it was among the world's first railways, that it was the first railway to be opened in Ireland. It was the first railway ever to build an engine for its own work when it built the "Princess". The 23-piece stamp set features the engine "Princess" and train approaching Blackrock.
I travel a lot in that area and that engine approaching Blackrock is one thing, but when we get the newly electrified railway, and the trains are passing by Blackrock every five minutes, I hate to think what will happen to anybody who is on the sea side of the railway gates near Blackrock College, right back into Westland Row. I think there are 17 road crossings. At present in the mornings it is virtually impossible to cross those lines. If you are to have a system with a train passing every five minutes, there is only one way people will be able to get from Strand Road, Sandymount, from Ringsend, from the sea side of Lansdowne Road — to use public transport, which may be the object of the exercise. If everybody in that area have to leave their cars at home because they cannot drive across the railway lines it will mean that they will have to use the new train. Of course, that is grand if they are only going to Dublin, but if they are trying to get out of Dublin they will have problems.
The Minister in his speech said that a greater number of people used the buses in Dublin in 1983 than in 1982. If one looks at the state of the motor industry in Ireland and the cost of keeping a motor vehicle due to tax, insurance and everything else, it is quite logical that people could not afford to use their cars any more. Indeed there are more cars being sold without new cars being bought than the other way round. This is one of the reasons why there was extra traffic engendered in 1983 over 1982.
One of the things that has been most noticeable in 1983 over 1982 is the greater number of buses leaving Dublin city every Friday evening for places all over the country, and indeed coming back late on Sunday night and early on Monday morning. These private bus companies are giving a service to the public which CIE have not done, and because of the constraints placed by union regulations and so forth they cannot do it. I feel that CIE should decide to leave that type of business to the private operators, who do a fantastic job. I meet those club buses very far down the country. They go down on Friday night and they can be used on Saturday to bring shoppers back to Dublin, they go back down the country again and the club again brings them back to Dublin on Sunday night, leaving County Mayo or maybe Kilkenny or Cork. They go back to Dublin at a reasonable hour on a Sunday night so that connections can be got by people living in the suburbs and they will have had a good weekend at home. Alternatively, they can leave very early on Monday morning and get into Dublin at 9 o'clock. That type of service can be done best by the private bus companies. If one looks at the overall transport system and the difference between CIE and private hauliers and private bus companies, one of the major things he will notice is the adaptability of the private companies.
School buses were referred to. A school bus in CIE is a school bus and is not allowed to be used for any other purpose. Generally speaking, the work of a school bus finishes in the morning at 10 o'clock and in the evening at approximately 6 o'clock, only working from 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock, and for the remainder of the day it is not used at all. At weekends it is not used, and during the long summer holidays it is not used, whereas with the private operator you will find that the school bus is being used as a school bus in the morning, it is being used for other social purposes which CIE are not providing in smaller towns around the country — it is being used as a commuter transporter during the day. On Sunday it is being used to provide transport, which is much more reasonable than CIE, for matches, social functions or whatever. Of course, it will be used for driving a large number of people at night to bingo halls.
Ambulances drive patients to clinics at times when CIE school buses are not being used. People talk about cutting down on public expenditure. You have ambulances, taxis, every form of transport, bringing people to clinics which are at set times on set days, and you have school buses lying idle. It is a public disgrace. I cannot see why a system cannot be arranged whereby school buses could be used to better advantage. In the school bus system I feel the best service is being given by the private sector but they are managed by CIE. The Department of Education finance the school bus system but CIE manage it and in the main private companies run it, which leads to duplication which is totally unproductive and unprofitable.
CIE's place in material handling has to be analysed very carefully. CIE do a fairly good job. Somebody said that CIE should get into warehousing and distribution. Any railway station which has a commercial end to it has a warehouse. There is no difference between a railway station with goods in it and a commercial warehouse down the road. There is not the adaptability in CIE regarding the transporting of goods that one has in the private sector. There should not be conflict here. There is a place for CIE and for the private sector in material handling. The private sector, through the liberalising that has taken place over the past number of years, have played a major part in the transportation of our manufactured goods, of goods generally and in the export of goods.
It was said yesterday that it was a shame to see at most of the meat factories, and other factories around the country which are exporting goods, that it is mainly foreign vehicles which are transporting these goods. Foreign vehicles are doing most of the transporting because the cost of providing transport has gone up enormously over the past number of years. The initial cost alone of the smallest vehicle capable of doing a trip to the Continent with a container behind it is probably in the region of £75,000. This is one reason why we see so many foreign vehicles. When one considers the cost of tyres, insurance, tax, and replacement parts, there is no country which does not pay less than we do for one of these vehicles.
The main reason for this is the tax element involved. The amount of tax taken by the Revenue Commissioners is too high. There is absolutely no way one can foresee a future for the transporters of exports unless there is some change. If a person is using a vehicle and containers mostly on export business his company tax should be the very same as if he were an export company. The profits he makes should be taxed at the 10 per cent company export profit rate rather than the internal company profits tax. If this were done it would at least ensure that even though the input into the motor vehicle would still remain above the level of our European and British competitors at least if profits were made these profits would only be taxed at the export rate. Let us be fair about it. There is no way our exporting companies could stay in business without the transportation of goods to markets abroad.
Mention was made of the enforcement of common European regulations. In 99 per cent of the cases these common regulations should not apply in Ireland. We do not have the roads and we do not have the same length of very good roads they have in other countries. There should be a more liberal attitude with regard to the regulations on the tachograph here. Under the regulations a man who is sending a load to Cork has to have two drivers. When driving on a motorway in England, an autoroute in France or Spain, or an autobahn in Germany, the length of time the driver spends on the roads is less, and his average speed is greater. Therefore his driving is reduced and he has not to stop after the statutory limit that is there at present.
Liberalisation gave an opportunity to private individuals to increase the number of their vehicles but you can only increase the number of your vehicles if you have the cash to do so and have the returns from the business. The way Irish business has gone in the last couple of years, the cost of the inputs into the enormous cost of trying to purchase new vehicles have inhibited people from increasing the size and type of transport they have available. Even though we have had liberalisation there have not been a great number coming in to create problems for those already in the industry.
There are development which are helping to cut down the overall cost in the sense that own account transportation is getting smaller and the companies which were transporting their own goods are now depending more and more on road hauliers because the capital cost of the vehicles, the maintenance costs and the labour costs have gone too high. Every company who have to deliver goods of their own manufacture should carefully look, before purchasing a vehicle, at the economics of bringing in an outside haulier, whether that haulier be CIE or a private haulier. The importance of the road haulage system cannot be over-emphasised. The cost of double handling, if we use CIE, of taking goods from the factory, bringing them to the railhead, shipping the goods and taking them off again is so high that in 99 per cent of cases it is more economical to do a factory to warehouse or a factory to customer single delivery.
The amount of money the Department of the Environment are providing this year for capital projects is £6,000 less than it was last year. This means that the maintenance of our roads and making new roads is slowing down to an enormous degree. This means increased costs for the transporters of goods.
The role of other State agencies has to be taken into account when we deal with CIE and their financing. CIE have to depend on the Department of the Environment as have every other group who use the roads. Anybody who does a lot of driving will notice that in the past 12 months they had more left-hand front and left-hand back punctures than was the case previously. This is because of the state of the verges and the potholes on the off side of vehicles.
CIE have a major role to play in our economy in regard to tourism. In certain areas, because of the lack of finance and a lack of knowledge of what tourism needs at present, CIE are not doing for this country the job they were set up to do and which we expect from them. Throughout the Continent at present there is an ever-increasing number of young people travelling. They tend to use public transport, particularly the trains. There is an argument that these people do not spend money in the countries to which they go. It is a false argument because no matter where they go, they have to eat and if they are travelling they will use some sort of transportation. It is not the money that they spend while they are in the country as young students that is important, it is the amount of money that there is a potential for them to spend when they leave college or get into the work area and into what is considered normal tourism. If they have travelled throughout a country and enjoyed it as youngsters, they tend to go back to that country.
CIE will have to look at the possibility of tying in more closely with the inter-rail system in Europe to provide the type of transportation that these people can use. There is no use telling people to come to Ireland and use the student's rate or buy a tri-monthly ticket if they cannot get by train from Rosslare to Limerick without having to wait, perhaps 12 hours, or even 24 hours. A large number of these people come in through Rosslare. Rosslare is an area which as a tourist entry point will have to be looked at very carefully.
For a number of years CIE have been trying to get money to complete the facilities in Rosslare and have not as yet been successful in doing so. Unless the money to develop Rosslare is forthcoming our tourism base there will drop. This applies to the facilities available at the port for passengers and ships, the facilities for getting away from the port and the provision of proper information about the tourism potential of the country in terms of cheap travel.
There has been a lot of controversy about the closure of lines. There are a number of lines under threat in that area — the connecting line between Waterford and Rosslare and down to Limerick Junction. There have been various plans put forward over the years about what would happen in that area. We have not yet co-ordinated the traffic plan from Rosslare to the rest of the country.
Over the last few months we have seen the controversy about the role of the hotels within CIE's ambit. These hotels have been run very well by the people who operated them. From time to time, these people did not get support from CIE. It will be interesting to see if CERT will do any better in terms of getting the necessary capital that is needed and in getting promotion from CIE from outside the country. There is absolutely no reason why tourist promoters, whether they are working totally for CIE, Bord Fáilte or for any other State enterprise, cannot jointly bring tourists to Ireland. It is incredible that they cannot fill four hotels at least to an 80 per cent capacity basis for 12 months of the year. If it is not within the capabilities of CIE to do that I cannot see how they could have the capability to run a transport system of any size.
There will have to be more than just constraints put on CIE in terms of subventions and a stated social objective if they are to succeed. There will have to be co-ordination at all levels within CIE to give back to the workers the confidence they need in this major industry. There will have to be co-ordination between the role of the board of CIE vis-à-vis the deplorable personnel problems they have. In terms of the problems that are encountered by CIE and other people involved in transport in Ireland, there will have to be a co-ordination of effort from the Departments of the Environment, Finance and Transport to see how we can have a better transport system which is workable, whether it is run by the private or public sector.
We will have to give workers back security in their jobs and encouragement to meet the public and not constant harassment from all sides whether it be here in the Houses of the Oireachtas, in the streets or whether it be from management at the top level who seem to be as far away from them as the 1884 Dublin-Kingstown railway is from the Dún Laoghaire-Dublin new railway.
