Results 7,161-7,180 of 15,555 for speaker:Eoghan Murphy

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Senator.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I would like to say a couple of things in response to that. While the Government cannot interfere in the pricing of premiums, it cannot consider it acceptable for Insurance Ireland or anyone in the industry to look to set a signal around pricing because that would feed into the type of price-fixing or price-signalling behaviour about which people have raised fears. We have to understand...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: That is what we are working to achieve at the moment. It is one of the actions in the report.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I understand that. It is not for me to defend how they interact with their customers. That is their side of things. I recognise that the insurance industry is co-operating on a number of fronts. While the premium breakdown for drivers is important, there are things that are more important, such as building the national claims information database. They are doing a number of things. I do...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I do not want to say that we are going to force them to do that because I do not want to use that language. They are going to do it because we have mandated it in our plan and the protocol will be agreed by the end of June. That is the reporting deadline. It is going to happen.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Obviously we cannot price the premiums ourselves because of EU law, but there is a lot that we can do. That is the work that the Chairman has done in the committee's report and that we see is being done now in terms of the cost of insurance working group. We are getting on top of this. The trend is 2% down year on year but 6% down since July of last year. There have been five months of no...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: In terms of things not being done, when I was before the committee before Christmas 2016, I said we were not coming at this from a standing start. Work was already under way, for example, preparing to strengthen the powers of the Personal Injuries Assessment Board. That work had commenced last year. The book of quantum was published in October, I think. They were working on the new book...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Motor Insurance Costs: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: We have an excellent working group. People have put in a huge amount of time. We set it up in July and moved to subgroups in August, which were meeting every week. People had to take on additional workloads and have worked very well together. We are now looking at breaking into a new subgroup structure for the employers' liability and public liability, EL and PL, piece. I will be able to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: This is a matter that the Chairman has consistently raised during the six years that I have been a Member of Dáil Éireann and for the three years I served on the Committee of Public Accounts, when he was Chairman of it, during which time we examined the issue in detail. Having now had responsibility for a year for the Office of Government Procurement, what we have been trying to do...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: So far we have held them in Cork, Galway, Cavan and Dundalk, and Mayo and Sligo are next on our radar.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Yes, I would love to go to Kilkenny. We give advance notice through the industry representative bodies who contact their members. We also contact every Senator and Deputy in Fine Gael. Sorry, we contact all of the parties. I beg the Chairman's pardon for my slip. We have been meeting for two hours and my slip up was unintentional. It was a joke.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: No, we are good.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The purpose was to use Oireachtas representative from every party or none because they are very well connected to small businesses, in particular, in every part of the country, and they have invited along their contact base. When we were in Cavan we had almost 40 companies in the room who had been invited by local political representatives. On that occasion we received excellent feedback...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: It depends on how they have decided to set the threshold, which is a decision for each individual state. As we increase the threshold we will lose less transparency on what has been awarded. Again, this is public money. We will have less data, which I think is a con. The pro is that more Irish businesses will be successful in winning contracts. One of the things that I really want to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I have often heard businesses complain to me that we have placed too much emphasis on price and not enough on the quality of the service delivered. The Chairman has made the point that we do not place enough emphasis on price. We must strike a balance. Depending on what we are contracting for, the quality will have more of an impact than the price. With utilities one goes for price and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: Yes.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I invite the Chairman and the committee to carry out a helpful exercise, and I know it is because I have done it myself. I suggest that they go through a tender process in the offices of the OGP. They can see what a business must go through to get into one of the frameworks. Members will see the different steps that must be taken. We are considering ways to simplify the process further,...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: I cannot speak about a particular tender process or where there might be a mini competition under way at the moment. It is difficult for me.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: The weighting given to something such as management structure will depend on the competition. We have made improvements in terms of turnover. We have brought down the turnover that is required on a capital project. We have to be mindful the company has evidence it has the capacity to do the project. If the State was to engage the services of a company to do something and the company...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Procurement Issues: Minister of State at the Department of Finance (1 Jun 2017)

Eoghan Murphy: It would be helpful for the committee to make a site visit to the Office of Government Procurement. It is a complex technical issue across a whole range of Government areas, as the Senator has identified. It would be a good opportunity for the committee to really get into the detail of these different issues. The suggestion to only invite Fine Gael Members of the Oireachtas was a joke. It...