Results 5,061-5,080 of 19,162 for speaker:Alan Shatter

Expenditure Reviews (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: It has no relevance to the visits. It is a question of ensuring that, generally speaking, the Department tries to comply with the overall financial envelope provided in circumstances where the Deputy's colleagues in government substantially underfunded a number of the Votes within the Department of Justice and Equality thus giving rise to particular difficulties. We are trying to ensure...

Garda Stations (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: I propose to take Questions Nos. 39 and 41 together. Members of the Garda Síochána who have reached 50 years of age and have at least 30 years service are eligible to retire on full pension. There are some 900 members of the force currently in this category. It is estimated that the total number of departures from the force in 2011 will be approximately 500 but we do not yet know how many...

Garda Stations (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: It is important that the Deputy realise that, if savings are to be affected, they will be necessary. We must reduce public expenditure in 2012 by a minimum of €3.6 billion to meet our EU-IMF requirements. In the context of my Department, I must identify savings that can result. The Garda Commissioner, as the person in charge of the Garda and making operational decisions, must identify...

Garda Stations (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: I expect to receive the Commissioner's draft plan by the end of October - if not by the end of this week, then next Monday. It is a draft plan to which detailed consideration must be given. I am conscious that the Commissioner is the correct person to make operational decisions and I should not interfere with his operational judgment, but I will give careful consideration to the draft plan...

Garda Stations (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: I remind the Deputy that this State is effectively in receivership and that under the EU-IMF agreement we have an obligation by the end of this year to reduce Garda numbers from 14,500 to 13,500. The previous Government signed up to that commitment but there was no prospect of that reduction being achieved. At best, the Garda force numbers in the context of that agreement will reduce to...

Proposed Legislation (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: In line with a commitment in the programme for Government the personal insolvency Bill is in the course of being developed in my Department to provide for a new framework for settlement and enforcement of debt and for personal insolvency. The commitment under the EU-IMF Programme of Financial Support for Ireland is to publish the Bill in the first quarter of 2012. It is my objective to...

Proposed Legislation (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: There are difficult decisions to be made in this particular area with regard to the number of years. It is not a matter of my personal preference. It is a decision that the Government must make. The period for bankruptcy and extricating from bankruptcy, for example, in England was reduced to a period of one year. In other states there are different periods of years. There are a number of...

Proposed Legislation (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: The reason for publishing heads of Bills once the Government has given detailed consideration to the applicable principles is to afford Members of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Justice, Defence and Equality, and also Members of the House who wish to attend a meeting of that committee, time to consider them and to give their own input also into the substantive provisions that we ultimately...

Departmental Bodies (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: The Deputy will be aware that the Government considered the circumstances of women and girls who resided in the laundries at its meeting on 14 June 2011. As a first step, the Government decided that it was essential to establish fully the true facts and circumstances relating to the Magdalene laundries and a number of actions were agreed. This included the setting up of an interdepartmental...

Departmental Bodies (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: When the Deputy sees the interim report which is being published this afternoon she will note that Senator McAleese describes in great detail the progress that has been made. All of the religious congregations have co-operated with him to the extent that all of their records going back over 90 years have been made available to him and to his interdepartmental group. Substantial work is...

Garda Traffic Corps (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: The function of An Garda Síochána is set out in the Garda Síochána Act 2005 and includes regulating and controlling road traffic and improving road safety. I am informed by the Garda authorities that Garda management, to the greatest extent possible, ensures that the deployment of Garda traffic corps personnel reflects and coincides with identified peak periods of commuter traffic to...

Garda Traffic Corps (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: As someone who was in the city centre yesterday, I can say the weather conditions were exceptional. There was flooding in all sorts of locations. I would like to praise all of those working in the employment of the city council, the Garda Síochána and the fire service for the extraordinary work they did yesterday in very difficult circumstances. They dealt not only with traffic jams but...

Garda Traffic Corps (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: The Garda Síochána traffic control centre liaises directly with the control rooms of the national traffic control centre, Dublin City Council traffic control, South Dublin County Council traffic rooms, the Dublin Fire Brigade, Luas, Dublin Bus, Dublin Port Tunnel, the M50 concession and, in partnership with these agencies, it directs responses to incidents when they occur. There is...

Legal Costs (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: I propose to take Questions Nos. 44, 66, 72 and 78 together. In the Programme for National Recovery 2011-16, the Government made a commitment to "establish independent regulation of the legal professions to improve access and competition, make legal costs more transparent and ensure adequate procedures for addressing consumer complaints". The Legal Services Regulation Bill 2011, published on...

Legal Costs (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: I am conscious that this is a detailed and complex Bill. As such, I wish to afford time to Members opposite and to those affected by the Bill, including consumers of legal services and the legal professions, to consider its provisions. It is anticipated that Second Stage will not be taken until after the second week in November, at the earliest, to afford an opportunity for the fullest...

Legal Costs (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: The Bill was 300 pages in typed print, but when it was printed by Cahill Printers it turned out at approximately 100 pages.

Legal Costs (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: Yes. I will be pleased to show the Deputy my very thick folder of typed content. To be specific, there were originally 298 pages of content in typeface, but the printing process reduced that substantially.

Legal Costs (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: A broad range of issues must be addressed to bring about a reduction in legal fees. Legal fees will be reduced as a consequence of this Bill, first, because of the new transparency that will apply to the charging of legal fees; second, the adjudicative process will cease to be a mystery both to some members of the legal profession as well as to the entire general public by the publication of...

Legal Costs (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: The Deputy may have missed hearing me say that an important element of the new reform is that the legal costs adjudication office will have to maintain a record of decisions delivered by it and that they will be published. In the context of the way the legislation is drafted, I hope there will be a facility, for example, for those decisions to be on a website. In the context of the family...

Legal Costs (25 Oct 2011)

Alan Shatter: I do not have a graph I can produce for the Deputy but I refer him to the initial report and the final report of the Competition Authority published towards the end of 2006 which regarded a range of difficulties within the legal professions as restrictive practices which unduly added to the legal costs for the consumers of the legal profession. I see the legislation to be published as being...