Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 22 November 2023
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 11 – Office of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (Supplementary)
Vote 12 – Superannuation and Retired Allowances (Supplementary)
Vote 13 - Office of Public Works (Supplementary)
Vote 14 – State Laboratory (Supplementary)
Vote 17 – Public Appointments Service (Supplementary)
Vote 18 – National Shared Services Office (Supplementary)
Vote 43 – Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (Supplementary)
Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source
I am sure the Minister of State was not. I am conscious that in my area, some of the stations have been sitting empty for quite some time and I would like to know how all that process is going.
With the Covid-19 changes and all the rest of it that the Minister of State mentioned, are we left with buildings we either own or lease that now are very significantly underutilised because a lot more people are working from home? Has a review of that happened to see whether the best use is being made of buildings or whether certain buildings are needed at all given the changes due to Covid-19 and the greater number of people working at home? Can the Minister of State provide any information on how those changes have impacted on the use of buildings? Who is in charge of assessing the property portfolio and whether State leases or buys, and what it needs or does not need? What sort of expertise does he or she have in the area of property? Will the Minister of State run through that?
I have one other question. Representatives of Falun Gong were into to see me a few times. They have a cultural wing called Shen Yun and do performances about pre-communist Chinese culture. I am not a subscriber to Falun Gong at all, but I know they are a persecuted group in China by the Chinese Communist Party. They had previously put on a big cultural event in the convention centre, possibly on a few occasions, and then all of a sudden they were told they could not have it. In the meantime, the Chinese Communist Party had a big event in the centre. The representatives of Falun Gong are pretty convinced that the Chinese Communist Party put the kibosh on the group's ability to use it. I took a quick flick on the Chinese Communist Party's website. People would want to read some of the stuff the party is saying about them. There is fairly widespread and credible allegations of massive human rights abuse of Falun Gong by the Chinese regime. The representatives of Falun Gong could not get any explanation from the convention centre as to why, when it was given to them previously, they could not get it again, but they put two and two together. Is it correct that the OPW is involved in the convention centre in a public-private partnership.
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