Results 3,861-3,880 of 26,843 for speaker:Richard Boyd Barrett
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Role and Contribution of Public Interest Directors in Financial Institutions: Discussion with Permanent TSB (19 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Okay.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Role and Contribution of Public Interest Directors in Financial Institutions: Discussion with Permanent TSB (19 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: When Mr. MacSharry says that 20% of the bank's residential mortgages are in trouble, would it not be fair to say that a lot of those people, if not most, have lost their jobs?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Role and Contribution of Public Interest Directors in Financial Institutions: Discussion with Permanent TSB (19 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: In most cases, they are in arrears because they have lost their jobs.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Role and Contribution of Public Interest Directors in Financial Institutions: Discussion with Permanent TSB (19 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Is Mr. MacSharry telling us that if a person has lost their job they are also going to lose their house?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Role and Contribution of Public Interest Directors in Financial Institutions: Discussion with Permanent TSB (19 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Nothing Mr. MacSharry has told us gives us any reason to believe other than the fact that if a person has lost their job they will lose their house.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Role and Contribution of Public Interest Directors in Financial Institutions: Discussion with Permanent TSB (19 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: That is a fair point.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Role and Contribution of Public Interest Directors in Financial Institutions: Discussion with Permanent TSB (19 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Every member of the joint committee has expressed a frustration which represents the public view on mortgage relief and, though we did not go into it, lending to SMEs. We have invested a great deal in the banks and the public is getting very little in return. I ask the witnesses to disregard their current roles and to tell us objectively who is responsible for bringing about the change...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Role and Contribution of Public Interest Directors in Financial Institutions: Discussion with Permanent TSB (19 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Can the Minister tell Permanent TSB to write down the debt to sustainable levels?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Role and Contribution of Public Interest Directors in Financial Institutions: Discussion with Permanent TSB (19 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Nobody is responsible.
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: That is not a point of order.
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: I wish a happy Christmas to all of the Deputies in the House, all of those who work here and to the public outside. I wish to ask the Tánaiste a "Christmasy" question.
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: One of the aspects that I love about Christmas, and I suspect that many do, is the Christmas tree. Most families in this country will have a Christmas tree in their homes. It is like having a little piece of Ireland's woodlands in the sitting room over Christmas. When one is surrounded by family, friends and the community, it is a time around the Christmas tree when people consider those...
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Money does not grow on the trees that are in people's front rooms during Christmas.
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: However, does the Tánaiste agree with me that money and jobs grow on those trees on Coillte lands and that, when our country is being crucified with unemployment, austerity and cuts, it is a crime against the nation that the Government is planning to sell our nation's trees to private interests when those trees could generate thousands of desperately needed jobs and revenue for the...
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: The problem is that the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, does believe that money grows on trees. Otherwise, he would not expect people who are in mortgage distress, on social welfare or whose incomes have been slashed to pay property charges and endure other cuts to their income. My point is that while money does not grow on the Christmas trees that are in people's front rooms...
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Leaving aside private interests, even Coillte itself, as it prepares for privatisation, does not actually generate jobs or revenue for the State. What it does is asset-strip our woodlands and sell them off for a song. One need only look to Switzerland, a country half the size of Ireland, to see what can be done.
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Some 100,000 people are employed on its woodlands compared with 11,000 in Ireland. Those numbers will be further reduced when the Government sells off the trees to private interests which see them only as a cash crop that will make a quick buck. They have no interest in maintaining them as woodlands or developing the woodland industry to create jobs. That is the point I am making.
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: It is interesting that one of the companies that is in the bidding to buy our forests is a Swiss bank, a subsidiary of which is headed up by Bertie Ahern.
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: That company understands the value of our forests because it knows how to manage them properly. Why does the Government not keep them in public ownership, to generate the jobs that could put our people back to work, instead of selling them off to asset strippers who want only to cash in and have no intention of creating jobs or revenue for the State?
- Leaders' Questions (20 Dec 2012)
Richard Boyd Barrett: It is the same payment the Tánaiste and his colleagues receive under the party allowance.