Results 21,941-21,960 of 29,533 for speaker:Brendan Howlin

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Value for Money Reviews (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy will concede and accept that getting value for money and ensuring that the taxpayer always gets value for money has been the hallmark of this Government for the past five years, unlike the profligacy of what went on before we came into office. That is why we established the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service. For the first time, we have a professional cohort of...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Value for Money Reviews (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: There is none so blind as those who will not see. It has proved positive, with respect to the economic improvement we have made over the last five years, that we are very rigorous in the analysis we do of public expenditure. I make two points. On the issue of modular houses, which the Deputy has characterised as prefab housing, we have a housing crisis. It is a policy decision, not an...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: Apparently, the biggest hallmark of failure now is health. Last week it was housing.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: With Sinn Féin it is the crisis du jour. Discussions between my Department and all Departments on the issue of expenditure take place very regularly. The Department of Health is no different. At ministerial level there is the Cabinet committee on health and at official level there is a senior officials group on health where discussions on all health and health funding issues take...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy is now falling into the same viewer trap Fianna Fáil did over the weekend, that is, to assume 2011 was year zero and we did not have a complete and absolute economic collapse. Trying to restore the public finances has been the most demanding focus of Government for the past five years. One cannot pretend we had resources available to deploy as we wished. We had to reduce...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: It is very easy for the Deputy - perhaps she does not have any ambition to be on this side of the House - to say we need to spend more on health, housing-----

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: -----and disability and to spend more-----

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: We have just had a discussion about value for money and-----

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: -----one of the approaches we have had is to rebalance staff within the HSE. For example, we now have a higher percentage of front line staff than we had when we came into office because we reduced, as far as we could, administrative staff-----

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: -----as we allocated resources to the front line. As I say, it is bizarre because the Deputy represents a party that wanted to destroy this country in 2011, pull down the troika agreement and send it packing. We would not have had a single hospital bed or nurse because we would have had nothing to pay them with by the end of 2011 had the Sinn Féin policies been implemented. That is a...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: Like Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin wants to believe that the economic collapse and-----

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: -----the loss of 330,000 jobs never happened and that we did not have to go through the difficult adjustment period the Irish people have endured for the past five years to put us in a position to start again-----

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Health Services Expenditure (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: -----investing in quality public services.

Other Questions: Economic Policy (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy will recognise the pivotal role played by my Department in successfully delivering on key Government priorities such as securing fiscal stability, sustainable economic growth and social progress. As a result, Ireland was on course to exit the excessive deficit procedure at the end of 2015, with a forecast general Government deficit of close to 1.5% of GDP for...

Other Questions: Economic Policy (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: That is a good and prescient question, to which there are two components. First, it is incumbent on any Government to live within the Stability and Growth Pact, the legal binding agreement to which the State has signed up and for which the people of Ireland have voted. There are choices within this to examine the fiscal space available in the next few years and to decide on how it should be...

Other Questions: Economic Policy (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: Again, there are two answers to that question. The first concerns the fiscal allocation one gives to each Department and what one wishes to do with it. There will be a political debate about that matter because every party will have its own policy platform to put to the people and the make-up of the next Government in a few months time will determine how much money will be deployed in each...

Other Questions: Public Sector Pensions (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: As the Deputy is aware, the Financial Emergency in the Public Interest Act 2015 provides for incremental increases in the threshold before the public service pension reduction, PSPR, applies this year from 1 January, next year and in 2018, ensuring that from 1 January 2018, all public sector pensions with values less than €34,132 will be exempt from the pension...

Other Questions: Public Sector Pensions (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: They get the chunk up to the figure of €50,000.

Other Questions: Public Sector Pensions (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: One cannot exempt it either.

Other Questions: Public Sector Pensions (19 Jan 2016)

Brendan Howlin: One cannot spend money and not have the wherewithal to do so. As a general principle, I would like to be able to deploy more resources to improve public services. I agree with the Deputy. I have had a number of meetings with the representatives of public sector pensioners and I am conscious, as I said to the Deputy during the debate on the FEMPI 2015 legislation, that, unlike pay...