Results 7,581-7,600 of 32,643 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: I am not a calculating machine. I cannot-----
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: Whatever facilities I have do not include being able to respond to such a question off the top of my head.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: Of course, were I to try, I would probably be wrong and then the Deputy would be correcting me tomorrow.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: The next time I appear before the committee, if the Deputy shares those figures with me-----
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: I will have an opportunity to work on and consider some of the scenarios to which the Deputy refers. However, as I have said, I take a different point of view from his on the matter.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: Not necessarily. It is possible for people to feel a recovery with paced and affordable increases in public expenditure. A big difference between the Deputy and me is that I believe over time - the mid-year expenditure report lays out a pathway for this - that Government expenditure will have to increase and should increase. We need higher levels of public expenditure to invest in...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: Increasing better public services for people is not all about hiring more people to provide those public services. It is also about what we could do with efficiency and the output per person. That said, the number of people employed to provide public services, particularly in our front-line services, is a very big part of the equation. We have seen that over time, in line with a recovery...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: Could I double-check that the Deputy is referring to the Public Appointments Service?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: No. The Public Appointments Service is the organisation that deals with the appointment of senior civil servants or board members, as opposed to the front-line staff we are discussing at the moment.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: The cost of full FEMPI restoration across a given year would be around €1.4 billion.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: I acknowledge the huge contribution and sacrifices that all our public servants have made. Our country would not be where it is now without that level of sacrifice. As to why we cannot restore the full amount, let us acknowledge what we are restoring at the moment. Under the Lansdowne Road agreement, by the third year of it, €840 million in wages will be restored, either through...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: I am not saying the cause of our crisis was simply our position regarding public expenditure, pay and our tax base. Other factors were at play, which I acknowledge, but it was a big factor in it.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: Of course it is a challenge but what is most important to me is that we have a rate of wage restoration that is affordable. The Deputy knows well that what would happen were we to reach a particular agreement on wages for the gardaí is that every other public servant would also expect it to happen.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: I have actually lost my phone, so it is definitely not me.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: It is back.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: I will begin with transport and the Chairman is right that some of the funding available, principally to the CIE group, via subvention might not be the study of Comptroller and Auditor and General but it is subject to Oireachtas scrutiny through the transport committee. When I was Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, I appeared before the committee regularly to discuss subvention and...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: The Department certainly does all it can to identify where tax money is allocated, what it is spent on and how it is spent. It works with all Departments on this matter. With regard to changes, I remember serving with the Chairman on the Committee on Public Accounts and the questions I could not get answered. Perhaps I now have a deeper understanding of some of these matters and the...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: I have.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: No, the policy is clear. It provides that if a business case is made for an increase in remuneration or length of service on the board of an individual, the Minister can make a decision on it. It is not the case that policy has been breached in the case mentioned by the Chairman.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2016: Department of Public Expenditure and Reform (29 Sep 2016)
Paschal Donohoe: The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Michael Creed, has made clear his view which I share, that in terms of sequencing, the appointment should have been handled differently by the board of Horse Racing Ireland, but there has not been a breach of policy. I do not want to create the impression that I support the view that Government policy has been breached.