Results 721-740 of 21,404 for speaker:Mary Lou McDonald
- Industrial Relations (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2011: Second Stage (7 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: Thank you, Acting Chairman. I knew you would know the reference.
- Industrial Relations (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2011: Second Stage (7 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: The reality is that we would not be debating this matter but for the fact that Deputy Peadar TóibÃn tabled the Bill. With all due respect to the Minister and his colleagues-----
- Industrial Relations (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2011: Second Stage (7 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: That makes it all the more shameful. The position of the JLCs has been discussed and debated for several years. There were a number of legal challenges. People who read the political and industrial relations tea leaves, as no doubt Deputy Keaveney did, were very well aware that the minimal protection was under assault from various employers and their organisations and bodies. It should...
- Public Service Contracts (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: Question 43: To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he attempted to rescind the special severance gratuity payment and added years awarded to former secretary general (details supplied) to the Department of the Taoiseach as agreed by the Top Level Appointments Committee, in advance or upon their retirement as allowed for in sections 6 and 7 of the Superannuation and...
- Public Service Contracts (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: The Minister will be aware that Mr. Dermot McCarthy received a pay-off of â¬713,000 and that his package will cost the State in the region of â¬6 million. Whatever about the time of his appointment, his retirement occurred on the Minister's watch. Whenever I question the Minister on this matter, he constantly invokes the Top Level Appointments Committee, TLAC. What the Minister...
- Public Service Contracts (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: -----states that the Minister, if in his discretion so thinks proper, can grant to the civil servant a special severance gratuity not exceeding one half of the annual salary of the office of the civil servant. That severance gratuity payment can only be paid on the Minister's say so. I take it from the Minister's response to my question that he made no effort t rescind that payment to Mr....
- Public Service Contracts (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: I am sure the Minister will concede that TLAC cannot overrule the law of the land. I again put it to the Minister that he had the levers and discretion to stop the special severance payment, to put a halt to the award of additional years and to end the disgrace of this outrageous payment to this top civil servant but despite all of his rhetoric around change and transparency he failed to do that.
- Public Service Contracts (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: It is not grandstanding to say the Minister did not grapple with this issue, instead allowing this outrageous payment to go ahead. He also claimed there are other anomalies. What about the Secretary General of the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation who is supposed to retire soon with a large lump sum? The seven-year tenure of the Secretary General in the Department of Education...
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: Question 182: To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform the basis upon which he signed off on salaries to special advisors to Ministers in excess of the Guidelines on Staffing of Ministerial Offices issued by him in March 2011 in view of the fact that special advisors are to be placed on the Principal Officer standard scale with such appointments generally required to be at the...
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: The Taoiseach has two advisers, Mark Kennelly and Andrew McDowell, who earn â¬168,000, and the Tánaiste has two advisers, Mark Garrett, who earns â¬168,000, and Colm O'Reardan, who earns â¬155,000. I do not know how the Minister can explain to me, the House or the citizens how this is a value for money decision. The Minister said in the House that he has made exceptions in respect of...
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: The Minister sanctioned them.
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: The Minister told me in the summertime that the pay cap would be â¬92,672. That is a really good salary and is competitive for any level of professionalism yet the advisers in the Department of the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste's Department are on almost double that sum. One of the other exceptions is, ironically, the Department of Social Protection. This is the same Department that will...
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: They should not be excluded. I wonder about the quality of the advice given by special advisers in previous Administrations. I do not have a hang-up about special advisers, but there is a real problem with those salary levels. We have had the universal social charge, pension levies and welfare cutbacks, all of which had to be implemented because things are tough and we are all in it...
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: Absolutely.
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: They are. They are utterly excessive, and the Minister knows it.
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: No, it is not.
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: Were the people I mentioned party people?
- Ministerial Staff (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: I will ask that question again.
- Public Service Appointments (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: I thank the Minister for that information. Apropos a previous discussion, was Mr. Dermot McCarthy at any stage a member of TLAC?
- Public Service Appointments (11 Oct 2011)
Mary Lou McDonald: So he was an ex officio member of the body who made the contractual arrangement which the Minister could not challenge even with the pensions legislation.