Results 8,401-8,420 of 35,658 for speaker:Pearse Doherty

Written Answers — Department of Housing, Planning, and Local Government: Defective Building Materials (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: 522. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if it is planned to accept defective block scheme applications for rental properties that were registered and payments that were backdated after 1 November 2021 in cases in which delays were encountered with the Residential Tenancies Board online registration process; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1404/22]

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: I hope the Minister will present himself before this committee again soon on the following matter. We learned from RTÉ in the last week that the entire Disabled Drivers Medical Board of Appeal resigned en massein October. Nobody in this committee was aware of this to my knowledge and Members of the Oireachtas were not aware of it. This was seven months after the board met the Minister...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: As the ECB and the board of governors of the Central Bank have stated, there was an uncertainty regarding the pandemic and these companies needed to ensure their capital was preserved so they would not be dependent on taxpayer support in the future. Likewise, those companies should not have been allowed to pay out dividends at a time when they were receiving important money that the State...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: First of all-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Let me answer that question. That taxpayer has been named by The Irish Timesand its accounts are public. On the number of people who were retained in employment because of the EWSS, the answer is zero because all of the €1.8 million that went into that company through the EWSS was paid to the Isle of Man parent company in dividends. It is nearly the same amount; €1.76...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Yes, I did. The debate on this was limited. As the Minister is aware, it was truncated. I understand the reason. There was a-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: We only had one debate in the Dáil in respect of this. The Minister asked a question. I pointed it out to him. If he wants to blame me for his failures as a finance Minister, he can go ahead. I wrote to him stating that the scheme should be designed in such a way as to ensure the supports would not go to dividends or shareholders. I also raised the issue of profitable companies...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Nobody disputes that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: I understand that. The Minister cannot say how many companies actually paid out dividends. He cannot state how much money allocated in State support was paid out to shareholders through dividends because he never asked for that information and it is not a condition. This has nothing to do with profitability. What Britain and the Netherlands did was not about profitability; it was a ban on...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Did that advice come from the Attorney General?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: The Minister seems to be very hands-off when it comes to this issue, in spite of him being the senior Minister. I heard the Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, state on a radio programme that he wanted to find out how British insurance companies were not deducting these payments. The Minister is aware that it was not even 2021, but 2020 when the Association of British Insurers wrote to the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Has the Minister met Insurance Ireland on this issue?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Okay. Has the junior Minister met Insurance Ireland? The Minister referred to communication. Did the junior Minister send Insurance Ireland an email? Has he met the group?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Is that the meeting that took place in December?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: What action has the Minister taken? He is the senior Minister in the Department. What action has he taken in respect of the fact that tens of millions of euro that was given to these companies to keep them alive and afloat and keep their workers in place are ending up in the pockets of insurance companies?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: With respect, that section of the legislation in response to this issue is a joke. That legislation only asks the Central Bank to give the Minister a report on how much the insurance companies have pocketed in pandemic unemployment payments. That is all it does. It is a report to find out how much they took of the pandemic unemployment payments. It does not deal with the issue. We had an...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Does the Minister want the money back or not?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Absolutely, but let me say this.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Of course, I recognise it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Pearse Doherty: Let me say this. If I was in the Minister's seat, I would not have let the last year and a half pass without meeting a single insurance company or Insurance Ireland about business interruption. I would not have allowed that to happen. I would have asked them directly why their companies are taking some of our pandemic payments here when they are not taking them in the North, in Wales, in...