Results 23,341-23,360 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar

Leaders' Questions (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: We published the detail of the cost of the unit in the budget because I wanted to be as transparent about this as much as I could be. We put the cost out there. There will be six staff. The total cost, most of it being for information campaigns, will be €5 million in a full year. It will be cost neutral because it is being fully funded from my Department's existing administrative...

Leaders' Questions (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: The Deputy is welcome to believe what he wants to believe and he can spin this any way he likes. He is doing a lot of spinning in respect of this. I discussed it with the Secretary General obviously before I appointed him - or before I asked if he would be available to be appointed. I certainly discussed it with the Secretary General before I approached him and he was formally appointed by...

Leaders' Questions (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Subsequent to that he was involved in the 1916 commemorations, which were again hugely successful. After that, he was approached to head up Creative Ireland. It is exactly the same thing that would have happened with Creative Ireland and the 2016 commemorations.

Leaders' Questions (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: This was a big Government project. It was something that we wanted to do and somebody in-house was asked to do it.

Leaders' Questions (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: I reassure Deputy O'Sullivan that we are certainly not ignoring Sláintecare. We very much support as a Government the principles behind it but it requires a bit of work. It requires proper costings for a start. We do not accept the costings in the report and they need to be done. The Labour Party seems to have accepted an obvious one in its alternative budget, which is the cost of...

Leaders' Questions (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: It is absolutely not our policy to ignore it; our policy is to develop a road map to implement it. The Minister for Health has been tasked with doing that and we will discuss it in more detail at the special Cabinet meeting on Friday. I have asked him to develop a roadmap to do exactly that before the end of the year. However, it requires development, which needs to be built on. I had the...

Leaders' Questions (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: It is approximately one third of the cost proposed in the Sláintecare report. I could just as easily accuse the party of abandoning two thirds of the report but I will not do that. It is a good report. The Government accepts the principles behind it but it is not, on its own, a roadmap to reform our health service and to provide the universal health care that we want to be provided...

Financial Resolutions 2018 - Financial Resolution No. 4: General (Resumed) (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Budget 2018 is taking place at a time when we are making good progress in a range of areas under our control. At the same time, as we look beyond our shores we see uncertainties, risks and a rapidly changing global economy. Thankfully, we have moved beyond crisis management and are now in a position where we can plan for the future. However, regardless of the choices we make, our journey...

Financial Resolutions 2018 - Financial Resolution No. 4: General (Resumed) (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Consider the benefits over a year or two of the USC and income tax reductions, the benefits of the pay increases that we have negotiated with public services, the pay increases in the private sector, the increase in the minimum wage as well as the reduction in the cost of living by reducing prescription charges and introducing subsidised child care. When one takes all of them together, one...

Financial Resolutions 2018 - Financial Resolution No. 4: General (Resumed) (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Interestingly enough, Sinn Féin's pre-budget submission from a couple of years ago was entitled "Route to Recovery" and was about going towards a "just society", something that also rings a bell because it was a slogan that Fine Gael used many times in the past. If history is to be repeated, I look forward to reading Sinn Féin's submission in a few years' time and its plans for...

Financial Resolutions 2018 - Financial Resolution No. 4: General (Resumed) (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: They would tax them to the hilt. It might have been better if their economic policies actually had been on the people's side during the worst years of the economic crisis. They offer easy answers but no real solutions.

Financial Resolutions 2018 - Financial Resolution No. 4: General (Resumed) (11 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: We on this side of the House - Fine Gael, the Independent Alliance and Independents - believe in improving living standards for people who work hard, get up early in the morning, work at night, and work weekends and shift work because we believe that work should pay, and we make no apologies for saying so. It is one of our objectives and part of our value system. Moreover, because we...

Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: It is always possible to learn lessons and strengthen future responses in the case of a national emergency. Today the Cabinet decided that it would undertake a full evaluation of our response once the clean-up was complete and power and water had been restored to everyone in the country. It will take place prior to the next meeting of the Office of Emergency Planning in November. I very...

Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: With regard to the dangerous trees, it is a very valid point and I will certainly ask the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to engage with the County and City Management Association to see whether there is merit in a special programme to assess and remove some of the trees that may pose a danger to the public in future. The national mitigation plan on climate change was published-----

Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: I do not have a date for the publication of the adaptation plan, but the mitigation plan was published a month or two ago after a special meeting in Celbridge. In terms of our response to climate change, Deputies will be aware of the budget announcements yesterday, which included provision for special incentives to encourage more people to use electric vehicles, additional funding for...

Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: This is a very complicated area. It is an area that took me quite some time to understand when I was Minister for Social Protection.

Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: Based on a lot of the commentary I have heard and even some opinion pieces I saw in the newspapers yesterday, I believe it is not fully understood by many of those who write about it or comment on it. With regard to the comments of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, it is very important to say his term "bonkers and unbelievable" referred to the existence of the marriage...

Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: It was not raised with me by Fianna Fáil or by Sinn Féin or by any other party in fact.

Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: The question I was asked was whether in the run up to the pre-budget discussions, Fianna Fáil raised the issue with me. Fianna Fáil did not. Did any other party? No, they did not. They might have done a year or two years ago but that is a different question.

Leaders' Questions (17 Oct 2017)

Leo Varadkar: That is not to say the matter was not raised in other discussions, perhaps with the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, but I was not at other discussions. As a Government we absolutely accept that there is a need to review this whole area, to examine anomalies and to come up with changes but those changes should not be made in isolation. If we are going to introduce pension reform we should do it...