Results 30,941-30,960 of 32,583 for speaker:Richard Bruton

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Cooperative Societies Bill 2022: Discussion (15 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: It will come back to the committee to make a call in our response. Senator Garvey has indicated but is not indicating at the moment. I call Senator Gavan.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Cooperative Societies Bill 2022: Discussion (15 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: Would you need a legal protection of that or is Mr. Moyne content with the rule book stating it?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Cooperative Societies Bill 2022: Discussion (15 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: Will the Senator clarify if his concern is that small businesses could have a succession into a co-op or is he concerned about co-ops having no succession planning and becoming ossified?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Cooperative Societies Bill 2022: Discussion (15 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: It is not about the legal frailty of this legislation, it is more that there is not a channel to make it-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Cooperative Societies Bill 2022: Discussion (15 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: On the other side, is there a problem with co-ops ossifying? Some go into a situation where assets remain, nothing happens, they go into disuse and there is no avenue out to rejuvenate them. Is that an issue?

Written Answers — Department of Health: Dental Services (15 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: 155. To ask the Minister for Health if he has reviewed the adequacy of dental services for people who hold medical cards; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [7465/23]

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Climate Action Plan 2023: Discussion (16 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: I thank the Minister for coming in and for all his work in this area. We are moving on from setting targets to delivering on them. This is a more important phase than target-setting. I ask him to provide a rough picture of compliance with the plan across the sectors in 2022. I may be wrong but it seems that certain measures we thought would be relatively easy to get mobilised seem to be...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Climate Action: Climate Action Plan 2023: Discussion (16 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: On land use, the Minister has not set a definitive target and the measure of land use change seems to have dramatically increased. We are heading on an unchanged policy to, I think, 11 million tonnes of emissions from land use. Will there be a washback on to the other sectors if it proves that we cannot deliver? The EU has talked of us having a target of 3.7 million tonnes for 2030, which...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: I welcome the Minister of State and thank him for his presentation. I am interested in the output indicators that have been presented to us. I think the Minister of State needs to look at them afresh. There are two for the EPA: the number of environmental and radiological decisions and the number of air quality monitoring visits. The EPA is an organisation of 473 people. It is delivering...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: I would be delighted to try to come up with some but the Department taking responsibility for climate delivery ought to be suggesting more meaningful ones than are on this list, and more timely ones as well. While I agree with the Minister of State that we need to focus on outcomes and outputs, the extent to which the actions promised in 2022 were delivered by different Departments ought to...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: And the REV too. The REV is for 2020.

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: We are looking at the Department's stewardship of climate action, and then we look at greenhouse gases and get a 2020 figure of 57.7 million tonnes. We know that that is completely irrelevant to what is happening today. These output indicators should be taken seriously by the Government. I do not mean the political Government; I mean the Department of Public Expenditure, National...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: As for the penalty clauses, what happens if a Department is off target?

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: My question, I suppose, is whether the Department of the Taoiseach, in conjunction with the Minister of State's Department, has thought out what will be done if a Department is proving to be consistently off target. We can see that in 2023 and 2024, the budgetary requirement will not be met. What then happens? Is it a financial penalty? Do we just call them in? We probably need to move...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: Yes. I am just interested in it.

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: It is encouraging to see the substantial build up in retrofits under the warmer homes scheme, which may have been a bit suppressed in 2020 and 2021, compared to 2019 when there were more than 6,000 homes in the scheme. I presume the 6,000 new homes will be a much deeper retrofit . Does he attempt to distil from these programmes what the climate impact of them is? Presumably a lot of...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: No. I was referring to the take-up, whereby people opt for cheaper electricity at night. Many people have this capacity but the take-up is in single figures.

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: I understand the companies cannot say a customer's usage is X and that they could save a lot of money by switching to a certain arrangement. The initiative has to come from the customer's side. The customers must decide to behave in a particular way and examine the potential savings now that they have smart meters. De facto, many people are not volunteering to take up this mechanism. It...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: I do not know where the restriction came up. I presume there is access to some sort of personal information, such as when one is coming in or when one is having a shower. If such information were available to someone who wanted to burgle one's home, he or she would have a pattern. I presume it is a matter of that sort of thing but I am wondering whether we are shooting ourselves in the...

Select Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment: Estimates for Public Services 2023
Vote 29 - Environment, Climate and Communications (Revised) (21 Feb 2023)

Richard Bruton: Somebody in the Minister of State's Department should talk to the Data Protection Commissioner and determine whether the intention of data protection is to have customers miss out on something that there is now a national effort to achieve.