Results 6,761-6,780 of 11,413 for speaker:Matt Carthy

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Horticulture Sector (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: The Minister of State will know there are some horticultural sectors, and I am thinking of the mushroom industry in particular, that need peat to survive. I hope an alternative to peat can be found and I would urge that efforts be intensified in that regard. For years we had the scandalous situation in this State of hundreds and thousands of units of peat being extracted from Irish land and...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Regulatory Bodies (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: 114. To ask the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine his proposals to ensure the unfair trading practices enforcement authority will have the necessary powers to improve and secure farmers' position in the market chain. [16812/22]

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Regulatory Bodies (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: Tá fáilte roimh an Aire. I have long believed a strong regulator is required for the food sector, for the meat industry in particular. The Minister has advocated for a food ombudsman in the past. Recently, he announced instead he would establish an office for fairness and transparency. I ask him to inform the Dáil what the distinction is between the two. What powers does...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Regulatory Bodies (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: I hope the Minister will accept that, to date, his response to this matter has been minimal. If he does not accept that, I would be apprehensive about the authority that is coming down the line. I want the new authority to work. I want it to have powers of enforcement that go beyond the current section within the Department which, being frank, has received no complaints since it was...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Regulatory Bodies (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: The difficulty is the Minister said the exact same thing about the timeframe this time last year. I followed the unfair trading practices regulation at an EU level throughout the entire process. I was a shadow rapporteur on the file and was part of the negotiations. I was disappointed with the final outcome because I feared the directive was far too minimal and member states would...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: I welcome the Commissioner and his colleagues. I apologise for my absence; I was in the Dáil Chamber. GSOC will appear before us next week, but I want to get a sense from the Garda of how its co-ordination with GSOC operates in practice. Does the Garda have an assessment of the budgetary cost of its interactions with GSOC? Is that delineated in any way?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: Does Dr. Coxon have an estimate for the number of human resource hours spent in engagements or interactions with GSOC?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: Does the Garda know the percentage of their time that superintendents and chief superintendents spend interacting with GSOC?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: I am referring to the industrial action that was in place from July of last year until this February. According to GSOC's correspondence with us, it had a substantial impact on the outworking of its investigations. I am trying to get a sense of how that arose and whether it was appropriate that industrial action was used in that way. Essentially, a group of workers implemented industrial...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: That action was described as a "go-slow" where the officers concerned were carrying out what were considered to be their core duties. Can we extrapolate from the industrial action that superintendents and chief superintendents do not consider their work on behalf of GSOC investigations to be a core part of their work?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: Where GSOC issues findings or fines, in how many instances has the Commissioner revoked them?

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: I have a report here from The Sunday Timesby the journalist Mr. Mark Tighe, which says that the Garda Commissioner "revoked fines and findings of negligence against two of the three gardaí who faced disciplinary sanctions over their handling of prosecutions against a Lithuanian driver who killed Shane O'Farrell.". Shane O'Farrell was a young man from my home town who was killed in a...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: I would welcome that. I accept that the Commissioner does not want to talk about specific cases but I want to use the case of Shane O'Farrell as an example-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: Unfortunately, there is no current investigation because gardaí have completed their deliberations and GSOC has completed its deliberations. This event took place 11 years ago. The man who was driving the car that killed Shane O'Farrell should have been in prison at the time. He had been stopped in his car by gardaí about a half an hour before the incident. He was in breach of...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: Essentially what is being conducted by a former judge is a scoping inquiry, 11 years on. The scoping inquiry may give options but in the broadest terms, where questions need to be answered, there have been tribunals and independent inquiries and other mechanisms used in the past. Does Mr. Harris have a view on the most appropriate way to get answers when serious allegations of a failure to...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 20 - An Garda Síochána (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: That goes back to my original point. If the gardaí concerned are able to assess that this does not form part of the Garda code and that their interactions with GSOC are not an integral part of their work, does Mr. Harris agree that there is scope for reform of GSOC to improve its ability to carry out investigations of this nature in a more timely and efficient manner?

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: I support the proposition that we write to InterTradeIreland. The Comptroller and Auditor General has explained this previously but how precisely does the audit process work when the body crosses two jurisdictions? Is he satisfied that the process is sufficiently streamlined and that there can be maximum public confidence in it? On the Royal Irish Academy and the deferred pension funding...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: We sought details to be included in the accounts of the remuneration associated with Accounting Officers. The reference to this was a request coming late in the timeframe for preparation and sign off on the accounts. This is information that is readily available within the Department and the letter and request from our committee was sent on 31 January so I do not accept that there would be...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: Deputy Murphy must be a very strict mother indeed. I propose we adopt a strategy my children use, which is to keep coming back until they get the answer they want. The reason I used the term "met"-----

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (31 Mar 2022)

Matt Carthy: The reason I used the term "met" in the context of remuneration is we know what the stated salary is. In one particular instance, the Accounting Officer in the Department of Health made a very public statement indicating he was waiving a portion of that salary. I want, and what I hope this committee is seeking, the figure relating to the remuneration when that waiver was included in that or...