That is not true. In any area there are CIE depots beyond which they will not deliver. There will always be people who will have to draw their goods from a CIE depot or dropping point. I do not think there is a door-to-door delivery service unless you pay extra for it. It may happen fortuitously that someone is on a CIE route or next door to a CIE depot, and he will not have to pay the extra charge, but, by and large, people have goods delivered to a central point whether it is a railway station or a depot, and must draw from there. CIE do not lightly or maliciously withdraw services in order to impede the progress of any area or to deliberately deprive an area of a service which they enjoyed up to that. Generally speaking, there is a sound financial reason, mainly lack of support by the local traders or local people.
That brings me to Deputy Faulkner's point about CIE's attitude to closing stations rather than promoting business. I would certainly agree with him that CIE should promote business and make as many services as possible economic and profitable, but we must face the fact that the Estimate we are passing today is for £52 million, and 60 per cent of that is a subsidy for CIE, £28 million of that £52 million. That is £500,000 a week or almost £100,000 a day to keep CIE operating. If a line is uneconomic and if CIE keep that line on and it continues to lose money, then it has not been supported by the people for whose benefit it is there. If there is a loss on it, that bill must be met by taxation. CIE must strike a balance between coming to the ordinary taxpayer for further funds or trying to cut back.
It must be remembered that this is what McKinsey recommended, the consultants who were brought in in 1970, to study the whole operation. They reported that CIE could not continue to operate the vast range of railway services which they were offering at that time, that they would have to curtail, solidify and modernise their handling equipment for goods in order to become competitive with the private haulier who was continually taking trade away from CIE. The legislation for private hauliers was originally designed partly to protect CIE, the national carrier, but of the goods hauled in this country at the moment, CIE are doing only 7, 8 or 9 per cent, something as minimal as that, and the private haulier is doing another 7 per cent, and about 80 to 83 per cent of haulage in this country is being done on what is called "own account" haulage—from the point of view of the economy the most wasteful method of carrying goods. This is because the firm owners who put their own transport on the road were evidently quite satisfied that they could not get either from the private hauliers or CIE a service to satisfy them at a price which they consider competitive. That is one of the reasons I brought in this Road Transport Bill because I want to discourage people from hauling their own goods as much as possible and to build up a fully professional road transport system that would be profitable to the road hauliers and be of economic benefit to the country in general.