Results 30,301-30,320 of 36,764 for speaker:Enda Kenny

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Yes, of course. There should be.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Certainly not.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Well, I would say to you, Deputy Higgins, to run a major party, obviously costs a considerable amount of money. The vast majority of Fine Gael's fundraising came from our national draw, and still does, from ordinary members of the party and supporters around the country. Any occasions of a social nature were certainly not in the terms that you described them there as and obviously would...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: I would say if anybody wished to participate or contribute in a Fine Gael golf classic, which no longer applies, or whatever, it certainly had no bearing, from our party's point of view, on any particular interest that they might have. I suppose, in any democracy, people are entitled to support who they wish but let me assure you that in so far as the Fine Gael Party was concerned, the...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: I don't know the extent of what Fianna Fáil representatives may have accepted from developers or whatever. I'd remind you that the Fine Gael Party was an Opposition party, struggling in opposition. That the vast majority of our fundraising came from our national draw and that anything else was in ... was strictly in accordance with the SIPO regulations. As I said, and make this very...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Well, any contributions to the political party were in accordance with SIPO. We have now ended corporate donations entirely.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: As I said Senator, the vast majority of Fine Gael's funds have come and always come from our national draw and from my time as leader, anybody who wanted to participate in any social fundraising activities such as applied in those early years of golf classics or whatever could do so. I did not go on a campaign of asking developers or anybody else to say "please give me money." If they...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: No I do not. I have never been on the trail of developers or contractors.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Well, of course, it is a political House as Deputy McGrath well knows and make your political points. But, like, for me, politics is first and last about people, and you cannot deal with those on the margins who are vulnerable unless you have a functioning economy. I will go back to the point, Deputy McGrath, indeed, before your time here as a Member. In respect of benchmarking, in respect...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Yes.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: We had a long campaign in the Dáil about the so-called PPARS project. I think I called it PayPal earlier on; my apologies to PayPal, Chairman.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: You had PPARS, you know, had the port tunnel, the overruns, you had grossly excessive costs, despite tenders and original estimates.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Well, the benchmarking process was the one-----

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: I remember being down in Killarney and saying this €500 million in extra charges is not on and I objected to that. I got a lot of stick for it within my own party at the time, indeed. But that and the general, sort of, looseness about public expenditure, without any, sort of, analysis of performance or delivery was an economy running out of control and it clearly went over the edge.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Yes, well, I'll make the point to you, Deputy McGrath, the Private Members' business in the structure of the Dáil is one element for political parties to raise issues of either national or more local importance. I am not sure where the greyhound doping business came into the Private Members' but it is of interest to some.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: But, obviously, both in my position as leader and, obviously, with Minister Bruton's position as financial spokesman at the time, you had other opportunities by way of priority questions, the presentations in respect of the budget. If you look at, I think, about 184 press releases from Minister Bruton, they were all about competitiveness, about effective spending, about analysis of that...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: I wouldn't paint the Fine Gael Party in the same box here as the noble party to which you belong yourself. We did point out and took a very principled stand on benchmarking and on decentralisation, at some political cost I might say, because populism was as rampant then as it is now and people seeing 53 locations for decentralisation on the back of an envelope said, "This is great." But...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: No. You see, we now have a situation where you have pre-legislative scrutiny for members of parties and none on all of these issues. The fact of the matter was, you went into the Dáil as an Opposition party. The Government had already done its deals with benchmarking, the process completely secretive, utterly removed from all of the scrutiny that would apply in the Oireachtas, and all...

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Indeed.

Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis: Nexus Phase (23 Jul 2015)

Enda Kenny: Thank you, Deputy McGrath.