Results 4,141-4,160 of 7,961 for speaker:Imelda Munster

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 8 - Control of Humanitarian Assistance Funding
2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 27 - International Co-operation
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade (24 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: Is there none whatsoever?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 8 - Control of Humanitarian Assistance Funding
2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 27 - International Co-operation
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade (24 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: I want to touch on the registration of foreign births, which Deputy Sherlock asked about this at the beginning. If we take 2019 as a baseline year, there were 32,000 applications for FBR in total to be processed by the Passport Office. To the best of my knowledge, that has risen from 6,000 pre-Brexit in 2015. What is the current backlog?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 8 - Control of Humanitarian Assistance Funding
2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 27 - International Co-operation
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade (24 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: Going by 2019, that would be the equivalent of a full year of applications. Is that approximately correct?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 8 - Control of Humanitarian Assistance Funding
2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 27 - International Co-operation
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade (24 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: Am I correct that this particular type of application takes 12 to 18 months to process?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 8 - Control of Humanitarian Assistance Funding
2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 27 - International Co-operation
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade (24 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: That is what I was asking Mr. Burgess. He said earlier that the Department is prioritising emergencies and that is fine. However, it takes between 12 and 18 months to process applications, there is a backlog and the Department will only start to look at it in the autumn. He can correct me if I am wrong on this but I understand that photographs for passport applications are only valid for...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 8 - Control of Humanitarian Assistance Funding
2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 27 - International Co-operation
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade (24 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: Given that and the backlog, does Mr. Burgess have any idea of the number of people who believe that their applications are being processed at the minute and who are unaware that they are not? If six months have expired since they first applied, they would have to apply again. Is that correct?

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 8 - Control of Humanitarian Assistance Funding
2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 27 - International Co-operation
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade (24 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: That is great. With regard to the photograph and the requirements relating to the six-month period, do the witnesses know the number of applications that would have been cancelled since the onset of the pandemic because of those requirements and the backlog? Perhaps they do not have that information. The applications may have gone past the six months so people would have to resubmit and...

Public Accounts Committee: 2018 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 8 - Control of Humanitarian Assistance Funding
2019 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 27 - International Co-operation
Vote 28 - Foreign Affairs and Trade (24 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: That is great. I thank Ms Jones.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: Much of this response arose out of RTÉ's misclassification of workers as self-employed. We all know that this practice and the use of freelancers as staff are rife in the media. Let us call it what it is: it is bogus self-employment. It does not do RTÉ any credit to drag its heels. It creates an air of a lack of transparency. We asked RTÉ some weeks ago to respond to the...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: Okay.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: I ask that we write to RTÉ again seeking answers to the exact questions we asked.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: Chairman, you said it was 14 May. What was the date after that on which we chased it up with RTÉ again?

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: That is totally unsatisfactory. It is just unacceptable. I suggest we write again and highlight the fact that this is the third item of correspondence and that we expect an answer. At this stage, if RTÉ is hoping just to run down the clock or that the issue will go away, it might be no harm to flag to the Minister the fact that we have not received a response to the questions asked...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: I wish to intervene for a moment. Bear in mind that when we first raised this issue with RTÉ when its representatives were before the committee, they denied any knowledge of it on two occasions before at the third attempt by you, Chairman, they then said that they had made a settlement. On two occasions in the space of half an hour prior to that, they said they were not aware of any...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: That response is totally unsatisfactory. It is not surprising in any shape or form. The entire management of this project has been a farce from the beginning. God knows when we will see the end of it. Given it is highly unlikely it will come in this side of the summer break, I suggest that we schedule it to come in as one of the first sessions after the summer recess?

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: Has it given definite clarification that it will come in on 13 July?

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: Given what we have seen thus far, I hope I am proven wrong and it does come in on 13 July but if it does not, we should reschedule it for one of the first sessions after the summer recess.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: It was reported a fortnight ago that the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, advised EirGrid to prioritise connections for data centres in areas where the grid was not already squeezed but the response from An Bord Pleanála regarding the data centres paints a bizarre picture. There was only one data centre An Bord Pleanála did not like and even that was overturned on...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: I do not know what exact action we can take on this. This is about the lack of infrastructure, the strain this is going to put on the grid and the sheer volume of data centres that we have in this country. We have to bear this in mind unless other members have suggestions on what else we can do. The fact that there is no national oversight is worrying because it is only in years to come...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (22 Jun 2021)

Imelda Munster: It is worrying that there does not seem to be any national oversight of the impact of these centres. It is a question then of whether we write to the Minister or whatever. If it is left as it is, given the volume of proposed data centres, the fact is that there was only one such centre with which An Bord Pleanála had a problem, a decision on which was later overturned on appeal. An...