Results 1,121-1,140 of 2,283 for speaker:Matt Shanahan

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: School Costs (14 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: Will the Minister outline the steps her Department is taking in terms of supporting back-to-school expenditure?

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: School Costs (14 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: I thank the Minister. I would never say that she is a person who does not have concern for those going back to school. I welcome the expenditure she has secured in terms of advance steps. I will refer to those who are not eligible for back-to-school payments. Recent surveys have shown that the average cost of sending a child back to school is now nearly €1,200 for a primary school...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: School Costs (14 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: As the Minister will know, many people who are in receipt of social welfare payments are not eligible to receive this allowance. These include those receiving rent supplement, the guardian's payment and benefits for the blind. There are people who need this support who are not eligible. I have specific concerns for the squeezed middle, for example, families where there are two working...

Summer Economic Statement: Statements (Resumed) (14 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: Everett McKinley Dirksen, a US politician and civil rights activist, coined the famous phrase, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money". Never in the history of the State have we had as large a sum of public money to disburse. It is €85.8 billion next year, up 6.5% on last year. With that also, never has our national debt been higher. It is...

Written Answers — Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection: Dental Services (14 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: 506. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the present status of the public dental treatment programme; and the steps that she is taking to ensure that persons are getting access to the scheme. [38908/22]

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Representative Actions for the Protection of the Collective Interests of Consumers Bill 2022: Discussion (29 Jun 2022)

Matt Shanahan: This is about the harmonisation of European law. Has the Department looked at actual cases from the past that could have been taken once this legislation is transposed? Ms McNamara mentioned consumer class action against Volkswagen. I only remember that being done through the American courts. I ask the witnesses to give us an indication of where they see this legislation coming into play...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Representative Actions for the Protection of the Collective Interests of Consumers Bill 2022: Discussion (29 Jun 2022)

Matt Shanahan: Does Ms McNamara see this being used mainly in the financial services sector? I am just thinking of the issue of tracker mortgages. For instance, if a large group of people who have been questioning tracker mortgages for a long time wanted to get together, who would the qualified entity be in that case? Would the financial ombudsman or somebody like that take a case using this mechanism for...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Representative Actions for the Protection of the Collective Interests of Consumers Bill 2022: Discussion (29 Jun 2022)

Matt Shanahan: The Department does not know who will be a qualified entity because it is waiting to see who will apply. What is the Department's position on people who are, in effect, making applications to be entities but do not know what resourcing they will have, apropos what Deputies Bruton and Staunton alluded to? Could somebody potentially take a case who has not got the wherewithal to meet this...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Representative Actions for the Protection of the Collective Interests of Consumers Bill 2022: Discussion (29 Jun 2022)

Matt Shanahan: To get back to the point we are all circling, if a State body decides to become a qualified entity, takes a case that is ultimately unsuccessful and has to meet the cost of that case, it looks like the State will be the backstop. Depending on what bodies they are, if they do not have finance themselves, it is quite likely they will not have the finance to meet redress in a case they are not...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Representative Actions for the Protection of the Collective Interests of Consumers Bill 2022: Discussion (29 Jun 2022)

Matt Shanahan: I thank Ms McNamara for that clarification.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Pre-legislative Scrutiny of the Companies (Protection of Employees' Rights in Liquidations) Bill 2021: Discussion (6 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: I thank the witnesses for attending. This is an important committee meeting. As somebody from Waterford, I have great sympathy for the position that Debenhams workers found themselves on. Deputy Bruton asked earlier whether assets were put beyond reach. I do not know whether they were but what was done to Debenhams workers was unacceptable. We cannot have a repeat of that in the State....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Pre-legislative Scrutiny of the Companies (Protection of Employees' Rights in Liquidations) Bill 2021: Discussion (6 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: I thank Ms McElwee. Whether it is on a statutory footing or otherwise, is the collective agreement considered a hard debt within a business which is looking at an examinership process? That is what I am trying to figure out. If you are looking at examinership for a business and its total debt profile, where does the statutory agreement figure, not in the debt ranking but as an actual hard...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Pre-legislative Scrutiny of the Companies (Protection of Employees' Rights in Liquidations) Bill 2021: Discussion (6 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: I am particularly interested in examinership but we will not go there. It is probably a little complicated and the ground may be uncertain at the moment. I refer to the idea of a stand-alone fund and a collective agreement for enhanced statutory redundancy. Would IBEC be looking at a situation where both employees and employers would look to pay into such a fund? Could that be established...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Pre-legislative Scrutiny of the Companies (Protection of Employees' Rights in Liquidations) Bill 2021: Discussion (6 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: Going back to my point, could this be done on an individual basis for a company? It could essentially set up its own insurance fund to cover its own statutory requirements, which would not necessarily fall back onto the State.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Pre-legislative Scrutiny of the Companies (Protection of Employees' Rights in Liquidations) Bill 2021: Discussion (6 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: We all want to be sure that workers will not find themselves in such situations again. I also have concerns about competitiveness. I heard Deputy Barry talk about raising the ceiling for employers' PRSI payments. He might like to look across the Continent and say that we are paying a very low rate. This is about competitiveness. If those rates rise, it will reduce our international...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Unified Patent Court: Discussion (13 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: I thank our guests for attending the meeting. I join Deputy Stanton in saying that this needs to happen very quickly. I have experience of working in two companies in Ireland, in SMEs in the medical device area, where patenting was a particular problem. Cost was the main issue in trying to do patents in different countries and trying to figure out where one could and could not protect...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Unified Patent Court: Discussion (13 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: I will make one other point. In the higher education sector in this country we hold an awful lot of intellectual property rights. In some cases the property is patent-protected; in some cases it is not. Commercial companies may be sought to come in to assist. They might look at the IP in the context of commercialisation and see how that might be rolled out. The first question becomes...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: Unified Patent Court: Discussion (13 Jul 2022)

Matt Shanahan: Are we adjourning now or going into private session?

Measures to Assist with Household Bills: Motion [Private Members] (14 Sep 2022)

Matt Shanahan: Over the space of 12 months, there has been a €1,000 increase in annual household gas and electricity bills, with some commentators suggesting this could end up reaching up to €6,000 per annum. This is unsustainable for households and domestic businesses. I know of business owners who are paying up to €100,000 per year in gas and energy bills and who are now facing...