Results 24,041-24,060 of 40,897 for speaker:Simon Coveney

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Commission on Domestic Public Water Services (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: It is important to be accurate. This commission will have worked for five months, not three. The people we have asked to serve on it are knowledgeable, successful and busy individuals. This has taken up a lot of their time, I suspect. Approximately half of them are not Irish but the chairperson makes the majority Irish. They are all experts in their fields and if we want to get good...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Commission on Domestic Public Water Services (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: I am not a member of the Business Committee but my understanding was that there was an agreement, in principle, in terms of the number of Members of the Oireachtas on the committee, which will be 20. I understand that the Government is to bring forward a motion that is consistent with that next week in order to facilitate establishment. I am not aware of any objection. I made a point of...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Commission on Domestic Public Water Services (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: It is grouped with Questions Nos. 27 and 33, just to be helpful.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Commission on Domestic Public Water Services (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: The Deputy sees the conspiracy in every sentence.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: I ask that the Chair give me a bit of extra time since I am dealing with three questions.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: I am pleased that these questions have been asked. Often, the debate around rapid build becomes very negative because the initial rapid-build project - which was something of a pilot project - was delayed and encountered problems. The easy thing would be for me to say that I am not going to answer for my predecessor and all the rest of it. However, the reality is that what the previous...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: No, one will not. Deputy Broughan is talking nonsense.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: All of the construction companies and developers that are tendering for this work are giving 60 year guarantees. Deputy Broughan should do his homework before he starts to ditch-----

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: These are good solutions. Has Deputy Broughan been to Poppintree?

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: The exhibition was about modular homes. They are not the same as rapid build.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: People should get their facts right before they start trying to undermine genuine efforts to get significant numbers of social houses built right across Dublin and in other parts of the country. It is not a silver bullet but one of the ways in which we can get the kind of numbers that others have been calling for here moving into good quality houses that have a lifespan of 60 years and...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: First, we should have been building many more social houses than we were able to in recent years but people conveniently forget the storm Ireland has come through. We were borrowing money with a lot of conditions attached, which made it virtually impossible to be able to fund the kind of social housing building programme that was needed during those years. We now have an economy that is...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: I agree it seems ridiculously expensive.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: It is a case of using the best available technology to get houses built as quickly as we can to try to meet the demand for social housing. It is as simple as that. If one looks at the reasons that the rapid-build programme has stalled and is taking longer than some had hoped, one can point to procurement, for example. It has taken the Office of Government Procurement some time to get...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: I totally agree with what has just been said. It has taken some time to put a procurement framework in place. Companies are tendering to build these kind of houses and they will be building them years to come. I suspect this is not just about the 1,500 we are planning. I believe it will go well beyond that, but that is what we are committing to for the moment. I have been in and out of...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: It is the norm for houses in many cases.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Housing Data (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: The issue here relates to standards, quality, certification and consistency, and the need for a high-quality procurement process that ensures we get we will get all of the latter from reputable builders. As it happens, I believe the vast majority of these houses will not be timber frame. They will be steel frame, but that is incidental.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Traveller Accommodation (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: We are looking at that. The Minister of State at the Department of Justice and Equality, Deputy Stanton, is leading on that effort. I have had long conversations with the Minister of State in respect of it. The Government is looking at that issue. In terms of the housing, it is important to understand the funding history here. My understanding is that the reason the funding for...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Local Authority Staff Recruitment (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: I propose to take Questions Nos. 9 and 64 together. The elected members of a local authority have direct responsibility in law for all reserved functions of an authority, which includes adopting the annual budget, and are democratically accountable for all expenditure by the authority. As such, it is a matter for each local authority to determine its own spending priorities in the...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Local Authority Staff Recruitment (17 Nov 2016)

Simon Coveney: I assure Deputy Ó Broin it will no longer take 18 months to get approval. There was an eight-stage approval process. It is now down to four stages. There is a real effort to streamline now. We have given a commitment to chief executives that once they get projects across the line in terms of the Part 8 process and once they make applications in respect of those projects to the...