Results 11,261-11,280 of 12,604 for speaker:Willie O'Dea

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I take the Deputy's point. I cannot announce all the events because there is a window of opportunity in the afternoon of the day itself. The parade will take place in the morning followed by a reading of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic outside the GPO. At approximately 7 p.m. there will be a State banquet in Dublin Castle. We had envisaged Government members meeting relatives of the...

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: If Opposition parties have other useful suggestions or ideas for what we could do in the afternoon I am willing to take them on board.

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: We are going ahead with the meeting next week because while it is the committee's main function to begin planning the centenary in ten years time——

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: We want to give the committee representatives an input into the immediate event. They may come up with some useful suggestions for the afternoon rather than the high-society event. Next week I have a meeting with the President of Liberia and have to visit our troops there and see the situation. People from the Taoiseach's office will chair the backup committee and I will be ably represented...

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: Yes it will include representative of the Labour Party, Fine Gael, the Technical Group and Sinn Féin. I thank everybody, Deputies Ó Snodaigh and Timmins, representatives of the Technical Group and Deputy Gregory who kindly agreed to change their schedules to be available today. Unfortunately Deputy McManus was not available so I did not want to go ahead in her absence.

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I am saying nothing.

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: We are reviving what went before until 1971, an annual celebration the centrepiece of which was a military parade. We have the chance to change it. On the Deputy's suggestion that we do something in addition to the military parade to commemorate the principles underlying the Proclamation, I am open to suggestions. We have a window of opportunity in the afternoon after the military parade and...

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: First, my party has no need to reclaim nationalism from anyone. We are the constitutional nationalist party and will continue to be such.

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I already answered Deputy Gormley's second question in my reply to Deputy Gregory. If the Deputy has a practical suggestion to make on how we should commemorate those principles, I will be quite prepared to listen to it. He can make suggestions either directly to me or through the committee. If the 1916 men were to come back today and see the wonderful and terrific strides we have made over...

Commemorative Events. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: We cherish all the children of the nation much more equally than they were cherished in 1916. We are a far more equal and prosperous society and an infinitely better society. I would prefer to live in 2006 than in 1916.

Defence Forces Recruitment. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I propose to take Questions Nos. 7, 23 and 69 together. Entry to the Permanent Defence Force is either through the cadetship competition, apprenticeship competition, general service enlistment or direct entry competitions that are held to fill vacancies in specialist appointments. All applicants for each of these entry streams are required to meet qualifying criteria. The question of the...

Defence Forces Recruitment. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: As I said, our emphasis at the moment is to prevent people of foreign and ethnic origin from being discriminated against when they apply to join the Defence Forces. I take Deputy Sherlock's point about the efforts being made by the Garda Síochána, but the Garda is a different type of organisation from the Defence Forces. Whereas we need gardaí who can relate to people in ethnic...

National Emergency Plan. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I propose to take Questions Nos. 8, 14 and 39 together. The Government task force on emergency planning has worked since it was set up in 2001 to co-ordinate emergency planning and response arrangements across the Departments that would lead and support the State's response in an emergency. The task force continues to meet regularly, most recently on Wednesday, 8 February, which was two weeks...

National Emergency Plan. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I am familiar with the work to which Deputy Gormley referred but I do not agree with that conclusion. We have a detailed twofold plan that specifies how the various aspects of the public would deal with a specific emergency and provides a number of specific disease-related plans for dealing with an outbreak of pandemic influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome, smallpox and so on....

National Emergency Plan. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I am not familiar with that specific incident, though I can make inquiries. One thing I have emphasised strongly for the emergency task force, which it does now on a regular basis as people such as Mr. Tom Clonan acknowledge, is that it conducts exercises. There have been quite a number involving crashes and pile-ups, train and car crashes etc. We saw the emergency services in action in the...

National Emergency Plan. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I will make inquiries into that. I am not familiar with it.

National Emergency Plan. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: My information is that the air rescue service is working very well. I am not aware of any instances, especially, where people died because of any fault or slowness in the services. When we were operating a helicopter rescue service using Army aircraft rather than the current arrangement, we ran out of capacity to provide a full 24-hour service because of industrial action — the Air Corps...

National Emergency Plan. (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I look forward to getting those.

Written Answers — EU Battle Groups: EU Battle Groups (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I propose to take Questions Nos. 9, 21, 25, 26, 30, 33, 35, 38, 43, 47, 49, 51, 53 and 64 together. The ambition of the EU to be able to respond rapidly to emerging crises has, and continues to be, a key objective of the development of the European security and defence policy, ESDP. The tasks to be carried out under ESDP, the so-called Petersberg Tasks, are defined in the Amsterdam treaty as...

Written Answers — Defence Forces Personnel: Defence Forces Personnel (23 Feb 2006)

Willie O'Dea: I propose to take Questions Nos. 10 and 37 together. I am aware that there were some media reports along these lines last year. The military authorities advise me that they have no knowledge of any serving Permanent Defence Force personnel, who are on career breaks from the Permanent Defence Force being in Iraq. Nonetheless, at the time when these media reports appeared, the military...