Results 19,041-19,060 of 35,924 for speaker:Pearse Doherty

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: Is there any vision or ambition for the SBCI to apply for a banking licence in the medium to longer term, for example?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: On the support that SBCI provided to individuals and SMEs, what proportion of those loans, to Mr. Ashmore's knowledge, are in default or are non-performing?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: Not with the recoverability of any of the loans?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: It is early days yet.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: I thank Mr. Ashmore. We welcome the work that he and his team are doing in that area. I welcome the establishment of an EIB office here in December. Mr. Andrew McDowell said last year that if he was giving Ireland a report card, it would read "could do better". Last year, the EIB group invested €950 million in the country through the European Investment Bank and the European...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: I am not criticising Mr. McDowell for that, because there is an issue with Ireland. It is not just the State. These are private corporations that apply for funding from the EIB. To come up to the European average, we should be at approximately €1.4 billion per annum, yet we have the worst percentage of public investment in the European Union. The European average is made up of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: On Mr. McDowell's comment on Brexit - and the British Government's role in and part ownership of the EIB will still have to be worked out - his view that the EIB will do less lending in the UK is natural, although it lends outside the European Union. Can he address concerns about the EIB's involvement in the North of Ireland? As we know, the population in the North voted to stay within the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: Regarding social housing, there was a recent announcement of a €200 million investment by the EIB, forming part of an overall €405 million social housing package, to construct 1,400 new houses. What is Mr. McDowell's understanding of the timeframe for those house completions? Why are we not seeing a more ambitious programme? While we welcome what is the EIB's second round of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: We have discussed this matter and the French model and, without knowing the details, I am encouraged to hear that there will be an announcement on social housing investment involving the EIB. Mr. McDowell mentioned structure funds. We have a fund, namely, the old pensions reserve fund. We have €8 billion in a discretionary portfolio. Some of it is used in the Irish Strategic...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: My final question is on capital investment in general. We know the serious problems that Ireland is facing as we enter into a number of decades of demographic pressures. Those problems will present acutely in terms of our infrastructure, for example, the road network. There is a view that investment from the EIB has allowed member states to reduce public investment. For instance, building...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Improving Investment Opportunities in the Wider Economy: Discussion (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: We might not be eligible to apply for the investment clause, but there is a strong argument that we would be eligible to apply under the structural clause, which would allow us to deviate from the mid-term budgetary objective, MTO, by up to 0.5% of GDP, which is a significant level and represents more than €1 billion in public investment, if we can show that the structural reforms to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: Cuirim fáilte roimh Mr. Dalton and I thank him for his presentation. I shall start by referring to the concern raised by IBEC and a number of multinationals. Am I correct that the regulation just deals with the larger companies or multinationals? I have read some of the minutes on CSO meetings and know a concern was expressed about the definition of an enterprise. It was commented...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: Yes. The regulation is still limited to the larger companies. I mean 2,000 companies out of a large pool of companies. The regulation affects the higher level but it does not just affect multinationals.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: Yes, I appreciate that aspect. When the CSO conducts its surveys and gathers data are all of the companies legally obliged to provide the requested information?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: Mr. Dalton has said the regulation "could seriously impede the CSO's ability to collect important commercially sensitive data from the large multinationals that are so critical to compiling Ireland’s economic statistics." Why? Can a legal obligation not be placed on the companies?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: I can understand where businesses are coming from. Can Mr. Dalton explain to the committee why businesses would have concerns, given that all of the other collection agencies, whatever form they take, will be bound by the same legal confidentiality that currently applies to the CSO?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: Is it not mandatory to provide that?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: Let us park the issue that some multinationals and other enterprises might not readily give the information to the CSO despite having a legal requirement to do so. Let us imagine that they were providing it to us. Does this improve the situation or not in the medium term? Mr. Dalton has said that in the short term, the CSO will continue to gather export and import data. Six or seven years...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: I presume other countries are looking at us and saying this is a bit rich coming from the Irish, in terms of our GDP revisions and all the rest. I understand that the data says what it says. The problem is how far we were able to rely on those type of indicators and benchmarks in the past. I presume the calculations are correct. Eurostat has looked at all of this and given the CSO a clean...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Scrutiny of EU Legislative Proposals (4 May 2017)

Pearse Doherty: I thank Mr. Dalton. He has made a strong and convincing case in respect of the impact this would have in terms of our national accounts. We have many challenges in interpreting the data as policy- makers, especially in trying to figure out some of the anomalies we have seen from different data. Can Mr. Dalton comment on the reduction that we are seeing in the unemployment rate, which has...