Results 4,401-4,420 of 10,459 for speaker:Bertie Ahern

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: Does Deputy Rabbitte believe that?

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: I made no comment about the Judiciary.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: I will briefly make the points again. Murder sentences amounted to seven years when the Deputy was in Government. Now it is 13 and the parole board is raising it to 15. I think it should be higher.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: Garda numbers are at an all-time high, as are Garda resources.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: If the Deputy wants to interrupt he can say why his party opposed the ten-year minimum sentence for substantial drug dealers.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: Maybe Members opposite will also say they will support the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform when he brings in legislation to deal with such crime. Going by their record they will not. There has been an increase in murders and we must take a tougher position, and in that regard there has been a twofold increase under the current Minister. He has brought about a massive decrease in...

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: Opposition members were told to come to the House today to rant. They do not want to listen.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: I will finish where I started. The cold-blooded killing of Donna Cleary was an act of barbarism and all right-thinking people will agree we must get much tougher on those who under legislation passed by this House are given a mandatory sentence and are dealt with by the Judiciary as they must. Some, though not all, were released after seven years but that is now 13 years. The parole board...

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: It used to be seven. As I said yesterday, it is nothing to do with the legislation or the Judiciary, but with the fact people thought it acceptable if people had served a certain number of years, other than in exceptional circumstances, of which there have been three or four cases. We should be tougher, so that a life sentence means life.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: I hope Deputy Stagg will not vote against tougher laws on crime again.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: As long as I have been in this House, Deputy Rabbitte's party has always been soft on criminal justice legislation and he knows that.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: And in the House.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: Deputy Ó Caoláin is aware that when we introduced the Planning and Development Act 2000, it was the first time in three decades that the issue of trying to improve affordable housing on zoned land had been dealt with since the Kenny report in 1970.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: Part V was introduced in 2000 and continues to gather momentum. Provisional figures available show that numbers are increasing this year. Not all housing developments are subject to Part V. An important point tends to be ignored — the Deputy, looking at recent figures, has done so as well. It is not correct to take 81,000 units last year, divide by two and multiply by 20. It gives a totally...

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: The Deputy's party has quite a lot of support in this city. Perhaps he will encourage it to try to press the issue along. Record levels of funding are being provided for social and affordable housing programmes. Additional funding has been secured in the budget. The provision for this year is in excess of €2 billion, which is more than double the expenditure when the Planning and...

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: ——and further households will benefit from the rental accommodation scheme. In the region of 13,000 households were assisted through the full range of social and affordable housing measures in 2005 and 23,000 new units of social housing will commence between 2006 and 2008. A total of 15,000 units of affordable housing will be delivered in the same period. This Government was anxious to...

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: Whatever changes we made did not stop the Minister for Finance this year putting more than €2 billion — double the expenditure — into affordable housing. I hope the Deputy in his next two minutes will outline what efforts his party with its new support in local authorities might make to press them to try to help the Minister's policies.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: I will tell the Deputy in a minute.

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: As the Deputy knows, local authorities are allowed to use discretion and flexibility in this area. The Minister, Deputy Roche, would like them to do so and has urged them to do so. Such flexibility exists. The Deputy suggests nothing is happening in this area but I remind him that more than €2 billion will be invested in social and affordable housing. The needs of some 14,000 householders...

Leaders' Questions. (7 Mar 2006)

Bertie Ahern: For example, from last year's total output of 81,000 units, more than 8,000 were built under social and affordable schemes and, along with 25,000 one-off houses, these would not have been subject to Part V and must be subtracted from the calculations. We estimate that more than 10,000 units of total housing output were subject to Part V last year. Deputy Ó Caoláin is basing his calculations...