Results 4,801-4,820 of 12,637 for speaker:Willie O'Dea
- Written Answers — Department of Social Protection: Labour Court Recommendations (8 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: 317. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will review her response to Parliamentary Question No. 297 of 15 November 2011 in view of the fact that the Labour Court did in fact consider submissions made to it by FÁS; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [16705/14]
- Order of Business (2 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: There is a commitment in the programme for Government to introduce a petitions system in this Parliament along the lines of what happens in the European Parliament. What is the position in that regard? There is a proposal in the programme for Government to have at least a fortnight's delay between different Stages of legislation. What is the latest status of that given it will require a...
- Order of Business (2 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: This was promised three years ago.
- Order of Business (2 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: What about the petitions?
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: -----telling us there was nothing to see and we should move on? Why are there now no less than four inquiries into alleged maladministration, all centring on how the Minister handled these vital issues? Perhaps the clue can be found in an article in last Saturday's Irish Independent by Fionnan Sheehan in which he stated that not a member of the Opposition, a journalist or other outside...
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: The problem is that the Minister, Deputy Shatter, does not deal with people on an equal basis. He sees everybody at a distance from the towering heights of his own regard.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: The Minister's name has become a watch word for hubris, arrogance, intellectual superiority and the inability to admit even the slightest mistake.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: The history books tell us that Joan of Arc was influenced by voices. The only voice to which the Minister, Deputy Shatter, ever listens is his own.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: He does not do humility either. He cannot even fake that. Having refused for six months to apologise for the slurs on the characters of two honourable men, which he deliberately cast across the floor of this House and repeated elsewhere, an apology was dragged out of him by his colleagues in Government of both parties, who made it clear to him that he apologise or else. Reluctantly, the...
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: I sat here while the Minister was delivering those words. He delivered them with all the enthusiasm of Munster supporters cheering on Leinster in a Heineken Cup final. I know that my colleagues on this side of the House intend to appeal to the almost absent Labour Party - the only member of that party here is a former member of Democratic Left - to do the decent thing.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: I do not wish to dissuade them but I do not intend to hold my breath either.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: I cannot help feeling like the Greek philosopher Diogenes, who, when found begging alms from a statue said that he was practising disappointment.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: I recall the febrile atmosphere of December 1993 and the ferocious head hunters arriving in the Taoiseach's office saying they would be satisfied with nothing less than a head. They had no intention of leaving the building without a head and did not particularly care whose head it was.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: It is sad to see the ferocious head hunters of 1993 have been reduced to the chinless wonders of 2014.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: The Labour Party tells us it must be satisfied in relation to the timelines. When stripped down, this means that it does not matter what the Minister, Deputy Shatter, did or did not do once he did so or did not do so within the timelines mentioned. For example, the Minister has told us that it took four months from the time the Attorney General received the information for it to be reported...
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: What a pathetic position for a once proud party.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: Deputy Byrne's party has all the credibility of Oscar Pistorius's defence.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: In the miasma of fog, spin, obfuscation, misrepresentation and innuendo two things are clear. First, the administration of justice in this country has been reduced to a shambles. Second, the man who presided over that process is not the man to turn the tide. That is a fact. I have nothing personal against the Minister, Deputy Shatter. The best thing he can do-----
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: -----for his party, the Government and for the people, to whom all of us here are supposed to be beholden, is, having exhausted all other possibilities, do the right thing and hand in his seal of office. Frankly, he is finished as Minister for Justice and Equality. He is holed below the water line. He has lost all confidence and trust and can never do anything to restore it.
- Confidence in the Minister for Justice and Equality; and Defence: Motion [Private Members] (1 Apr 2014)
Willie O'Dea: There is a village somewhere looking for an idiot.