Results 3,821-3,840 of 12,631 for speaker:Willie O'Dea

Marine Accidents. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: Deputy O'Shea has posed three questions. First, no matter what happens we will need a replacement if we are to have a sail training season from May to September-October. On my instructions, the board of the Asgard is actively pursuing the question of a replacement. It has examined a number of possible replacement vessels with a view to leasing one for the season at least. I have asked the...

Marine Accidents. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: I would advise Deputy Deenihan not to take any interpretation from my tone. I am trying to remain neutral in this matter and am awaiting a report from the board. I will communicate with the Deputy as soon as I make a decision.

Marine Accidents. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: One does not have a dog and bark oneself. We get advice from the board. I can only give a rough estimate of the salvage cost due to the way the system operates. When the salvage operation is commissioned, from the time they start mobilising, one is paying for it. Even if a salvage operation were to take place, our advice is to delay it for a while until the weather improves. There is no...

Marine Accidents. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: We will see in due course. I know there are some objections to using the Jeanie Johnston. It has been suggested as a replacement vessel for the next sailing season with a view to using it as a permanent replacement for the Asgard. There have been a number of objections to that, however. I have asked the Department to give that realistic consideration. It may well be that the Jeanie...

Marine Accidents. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: Yes. As I said to Deputy O'Shea, we will have something in the meantime, and the Jeanie Johnston is one of those options.

Defence Forces Representative Associations. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: The position is that under the terms of the Defence (Amendment) Act 1990, the Defence Force representative associations are prohibited from being associated with, or affiliated to, any trade unions or any other body without the consent of the Minister. Accordingly, the representative associations, RACO and PDFORRA, cannot be affiliated to ICTU at present. A similar arrangement applies to...

Defence Forces Representative Associations. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: I appreciate what the Deputy has said. The difficulty to date is that it is felt to be inappropriate and that it might be a question of divided loyalties. For example, 2,000 members of the Defence Forces were recently trained to step into the prisons in the event of a threatened prison officer strike. It is felt there might be a conflict of interest in such a situation as they might be...

Defence Forces Representative Associations. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: If the request comes to me again, I will consider it afresh. I could not see the change being made in isolation. In other words, I cannot see a situation whereby we would let the military avail of the facility while the Garda is prevented from doing so, because the reasons it is not regarded as appropriate for one organisation are the same reasons for the other. However, if the request...

Military Medical Services. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: Military medical services and their facilities exist to maintain the health of the Defence Forces and to support them in operational and overseas activities. The focus of the military medical service is on primary care, occupational medicine, acute trauma management, preventative medical programmes and field medical training. A key issue in the provision of medical services to the Defence...

Military Medical Services. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: Deputy Deenihan asked if I was satisfied the current service is adequate. A number of issues are involved. First, it is adequate. Any soldier who needs primary care will get it. I agree there is a shortage of doctors in the Army, but we have an arrangement, as the Deputy will be aware, with civilian doctors who step into the breach. That has been the established position for many years....

Military Medical Services. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: Deputy Deenihan asked me a question about the medical board and I will answer it.

Military Medical Services. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: According to the official script I received from the Department, sick leave in the Defence Forces is not significantly out of line with the range across the public service and this is the information on which I am relying.

Military Medical Services. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: I do not accept for one second the contention that there is extra sick leave in the Defence Forces because people cannot see a doctor quickly. People in the Defence Forces can get treatment for primary medical conditions and see a doctor as quickly as anybody else. Even though we do not have sufficient doctors in the Army there is a very good arrangement between the Army and civilian...

Military Medical Services. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: So far as the consultants' report is concerned, I concede that I expected it by the end of last year. It has not arrived. I asked about it again today and I expect to have it within the coming weeks. I understand it was ready but was held back to make improvements which is fair enough. With regard to medical boards, I accept the point that there are delays due to the small number of...

Military Medical Services. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: We are examining urgently a way to speed this up. The minimum period is 56 days but it is running well beyond this in some cases.

Army Barracks. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: The closure of barracks and the consolidation of the Defence Forces formations into a smaller number of locations is a key objective of the White Paper on Defence. The dispersal of personnel over an extended number of locations is a major impediment to essential collective training. It also imposes increased and unnecessary overheads on the Defence Forces in terms of barrack management,...

Army Barracks. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: I have no difficulty with Deputy Deenihan's suggestion. The particular closures we are discussing and which have just taken place were part of a budget announcement and it is not permissible to discuss aspects of the budget in advance so we can prepare for their implementation. This was the difficulty.

Army Barracks. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: It was decided as part of the budget process. If further barracks closures take place it would be preferable if it were decided outside the budgetary process so advance consultation could take place. However, it could not take place in this case because it was part of a budgetary process.

Army Barracks. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: The savings we have decided on at present is almost €2 billion in current expenditure for the remainder of 2009. This is across Departments and includes the pension levy. As Members will have seen in today's newspapers, the Department of Defence has played its part. The savings contributed by the Department of Defence to this year's €2 billion, which is all we have discussed, does not...

Army Barracks. (4 Feb 2009)

Willie O'Dea: I made that commitment in good faith. The economic situation changed dramatically since then and the Department of Defence was asked to come up with savings. The only way we could make savings under some subheads was to close a number of barracks. This was done along the Border area where the British had closed practically all of their installations in view of the disappearance of the...