Results 5,101-5,120 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed): Climate Change Policy (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: 4. To ask the Taoiseach if he will report on the times the Cabinet committee on climate change and the green economy met in the past year. [7498/14]

Ceisteanna - Questions (Resumed): Climate Change Policy (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: The most recent report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change has intensified the debate on climate change around the world. Would the Taoiseach agree that in Ireland that debate is intensifying now because it is becoming clear that it is not just the poorest of the poor in far away places who have suffered disproportionately from climate change and weather-related events? In many...

Order of Business (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: We have appalling suffering and stress on a daily basis as families face homelessness through rent increases, rent supplement not keeping up, etc. Is it not incredible? The Library and Research Service tells us that in the 1970s we were building between 6,000 and 8,000 social houses per year.

Order of Business (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: The Government is building several hundred now as against the 90,000 plus in need of homes.

Order of Business (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: Will the housing (miscellaneous provisions) Bill make provision for an emergency response to this awful situation?

Order of Business (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: Does the Taoiseach realise how bad the situation is?

Commission of Investigation (Certain Matters relative to An Garda Síochána and other persons) Order 2014: Motion (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: While the issue of the secret taping of conversations in Garda stations is extremely serious and needs a thorough investigation, one can only be wholly cynical about how the Government rushed to set up this particular commission of inquiry. It is quite clear that it was, and is, a means of avoiding immediate explanations by the Taoiseach and the rest of the Government of what pressure was...

Written Answers — Department of Environment, Community and Local Government: Dublin Docklands Development Authority (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: 412. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will instruct the Dublin Docklands Development Authority to resolve financial issues with a construction company (details supplied) in order that a small subcontractor who is owed €650,000 wiil be paid. [17587/14]

Written Answers — Department of Justice and Equality: Ministerial Correspondence (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: 479. To ask the Minister for Justice and Equality if he has received a request to meet a person (details supplied); and if he is willing to meet them to discuss the serious matters that they have raised. [17568/14]

Written Answers — Department of Health: Hospital Services (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: 601. To ask the Minister for Health if he will appoint a person (details supplied) from the Health Service Executive to discuss a matter with a person in County Wexford who suffers from an aggressive from of motor neuron disease and is in need of invasive ventilation. [17617/14]

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Irish Stability Programme Update: Minister for Finance (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: The European semester, which was alluded to approvingly by the Minister, is supposedly about improving economic governance and so on. From my perspective, it is simply about subjecting the Irish economy and the Irish people's economic situation to the surveillance and policing of the overlords in the European Union - the troika - to make sure they continue to wear the yoke of austerity that...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Irish Stability Programme Update: Minister for Finance (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: Eight hundred and fifty thousand people amounts to a high percentage of the workforce, but it is a damning indictment of a low-wage economy. That is why workers are not in the tax net. The fact that the Minister does not think it significant enough to have a significant readjustment of income tax for 2014, in view of what is said to be 50,000 or 60,000 new jobs, suggests that he expects...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Irish Stability Programme Update: Minister for Finance (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: The Minister mentioned progressive taxation but he has captured many of the 850,000 people who are low paid through two new taxes, on homes and on water. This runs counter to the claim of a progressive tax system overall. The argument is that the tax base needed to be widened under a fictional notion that there is some mysterious income people have outside of their wages from which they...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Irish Stability Programme Update: Minister for Finance (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: Is there an estimate for how much water tax will be taken and how much we, the taxpayers, will contribute?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Irish Stability Programme Update: Minister for Finance (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: I heard the Taoiseach today and he repeated the same thing he had said many times over the past few months. We do not yet have the structure he proposes. When can the Minister tell us the structure and the amount he expects to be brought in next year by Irish Water? How much will the taxpayer pay above that, as we always have done, to provide water?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Irish Stability Programme Update: Minister for Finance (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: Will we know before 23 May?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Irish Stability Programme Update: Minister for Finance (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: I have one last question. I heard the Minister reply to one of the earlier questions about tax breaks that brought a wall of money into the country. I presume he was referring to property and real estate investment trusts. What is the logic of facilitating a new wave of speculation by the same type of vulture that caused the disaster for which people have been paying so dearly over the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Irish Stability Programme Update: Minister for Finance (15 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: The State will build them, as it did in the 1970s when we were much poorer.

Leaders' Questions (16 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: We got it abolished in the 1990s and we will do it again.

Order of Business (16 Apr 2014)

Joe Higgins: Is the Taoiseach at all embarrassed with regard to the suggested average water charge of €240 that is going to be imposed on people?