Results 6,881-6,900 of 32,583 for speaker:Richard Bruton

Employment Regulation Orders (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: I thank the Deputy for his good wishes and I pay tribute to his work while Minister of State with responsibility for labour affairs. He is correct to say that no progress has been made towards publication of the report but I remind him it was he who set the timeframe for the report to be presented and that date has not yet been reached. It is expected that this report will be on time and...

Employment Regulation Orders (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: The issue of the minimum wage is under consideration and it is a commitment in the programme for Government. I believe that in order to be successful, these projects need to be kept in harness. As part of increasing the minimum wage a balanced package will require greater flexibility in setting wages and other terms and conditions related to it. I would regard these two processes of...

Job Creation (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: The programme for Government is a national programme, aimed at fixing the banking system, restoring growth and confidence to the economy and supporting the protection and creation of jobs. As Minister with responsibility for jobs, enterprise and innovation, my objective is to create the conditions across all sectors of the economy and in all regions – including the Border region - to...

Job Creation (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: I must first thank the Deputy for his good wishes which are very much appreciated. I recognise the problem described by Deputy Tóibín that people living in the Border region have to deal with currency movements, differences in tax regimes and in inflation rates and these are serious problems for them. A Government which is committed to finding an extra €9 billion through either tax...

Job Creation (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: I accept that the challenges are huge, but the clear commitment of Government to introduce something in the first 100 days shows a serious sense of urgency in this regard. Equally the Deputy will be aware that we need to design workable proposals and time needs to be taken to ensure these are effective. The notion that we ought to harmonise our tax regime with Northern Ireland, the UK or...

Programmes for Government (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: Job creation is central to our economic recovery and the programme for Government has job creation at its core. The role of my Department is to ensure we have the right policies in place that will support and increase our enterprise base in order to facilitate both job creation and job retention. It is only by creating the right environment for businesses to expand that we will see new jobs...

Programmes for Government (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: I thank the Deputy for the question. Obviously I am restricted in answering a question to account for my own stewardship, if one likes. My area of responsibility refers to the enterprise sector predominantly. There are targets; it is not that we have not set targets. To be fair to the previous Government, targets have been committed to by Enterprise Ireland to create 60,000 jobs over the...

Economic Competitiveness (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: The retail sector, like every other sector of the economy, has been affected by the global economic crisis and by the loss of competitiveness in our economy. While Ireland has regained some of its competitiveness in the past two years, for example through reductions in electricity and gas prices for business and the reduction or freezing of local authority rates in 2010, this Government is...

Economic Competitiveness (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: I will have to curtail the answers to stay within the requirements of the Chair.

Economic Competitiveness (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: The Deputy asked many questions. I nearly needed notice of many of them. The revaluation process is something I will bring to the attention of my colleague, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. To give credit to the Deputy's Government, there was a review of local authority costs which indicated the capacity for, I understand, a cost reduction of €500 million...

Economic Competitiveness (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: The details of the scheme are currently under examination. We will look at how that can be developed. This will be a targeted scheme. We are not in the business of substituting for bank commitments that have been made under the recapitalisation programme. The scheme will be targeted at the areas of greatest need and how we will do that is yet to be finalised.

Departmental Agencies (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: I propose to take Questions Nos. 34, 36, 39, 52 and 60 together. The Government believes that Ireland's economic recovery must be export led and as such, is committed to taking the actions necessary to support that export growth to the maximum possible. We are also committed to promoting the long-term development of new markets. The programme for Government has outlined the Government's...

Departmental Agencies (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: As I indicated in reply to an earlier question, we are developing within my Department a jobs programme into which each of these initiatives will slot. We are examining the existing operations and how they can be improved and amplified by proposals such as the Source Ireland portal and the other initiatives specifically targeting exports. No doubt many small businesses have the capability to...

Departmental Agencies (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: The idea of introducing trade into the Foreign Affairs brief is to get a better focus from the diplomatic service on the need to make those embassies the selling point for Ireland, both in investment and in trade. The need to use that instrument in which we invest to best advantage is shared widely across the House. To be fair, many of those embassies are already doing that. That is the...

Enterprise Support Services (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: I am discussing with Enterprise Ireland how its programmes could be better adapted to help small and medium enterprises to develop export opportunities. The programme for Government includes proposals to have a better system to allow foreign buyers easily source Irish products and to help companies now operating principally in the home market to launch into exporting. There are a number of...

Enterprise Support Services (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: We are proposing the creation of a €100 million micro-enterprise fund that will be aimed specifically at such companies. We hope it will be rolled out in what is a competitive area. It will not only be confined to county enterprise boards, although they could be a feature. There are other useful groups supporting new start-ups such as First Step which is predominantly based in Dublin...

Enterprise Support Services (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: The co-operative model is one of a number of legal options available to those considering establishing themselves in business and the different models have their own distinct characteristics. It is, of course, up to each individual operation to choose the model that best suits the nature of the business and the desired ethos of the entity. The Department issued a consultation paper on the...

Written Answers — Intellectual Property: Intellectual Property (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: The Government for National Recovery Programme commits to examine how an International Content Services Centre could be developed to make Ireland a world leader in managing intellectual property. The concept of the International Content Services Centre involves establishing Ireland as a centre for funding, trading and distributing content and arranging the back office fulfilment for global...

Written Answers — Commercial Rent Reviews: Commercial Rent Reviews (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: Rental costs are an important factor for the competitiveness of businesses in the economy. Over recent years, upward-only rent reviews kept rents for many businesses at an artificially high level, despite the fall in property values and open market rental trends. Under the Land Conveyancing and Law Reform Act 2009, upward-only rent reviews were abolished for all new leases signed on or...

Written Answers — Work Permits: Work Permits (29 Mar 2011)

Richard Bruton: The UN Convention to which the Deputy refers comes within the remit of a number of Departments including Justice, Equality and Defence as well as Foreign Affairs and Trade. I understand that Ireland has not signed, nor has it any immediate plans to ratify the UN International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of all Migrant Workers and Members of their Families, adopted in December...