Results 12,761-12,780 of 19,032 for speaker:Ruairi Quinn

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 25: In page 24, subsection (1)(a)(i), line 30, to delete "be" and substitute "act as".

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 26: In page 24, subsection (1)(b), line 36, to delete "be" where it firstly occurs and substitute "act as".

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 27: In page 24, subsection (2), line 37, to delete "be" and substitute "act as".

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 28: In page 25, subsection (1), line 9, to delete "Each" and substitute "Subject to section 9(5), each".This amendment makes the composition of the new boards subject to section 9(5) of the Bill, which provides that members of VECs holding office immediately before the establishment of education and training boards will automatically become members of those boards and...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: The Bill provides that parents and community representatives will have an equal number of men and women on the education and training boards. In regard to staff, the Minister of the day is conferred with a regulation-making power to establish women-only and men-only panels from which people will be elected. That is the position under the current regulations. In the case of local authority...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I share the Deputy's view. However, we cannot write recommendations into statutory legislation. Recommendations are not part of making law. This is not to say that directives, suggestions and guidelines cannot be issued by the Minister of the day, after 2014, in respect of the composition of the boards. If the Deputy wishes to re-table the amendment on Report Stage for further...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: There are legal issues to be taken into account. I will have to take advice on the matter but it might be possible to include a provision along the lines that, where possible, gender balance should inform the composition of appointments from the local authority to the board. However, I am not a lawyer, nor a legislator in the technical sense. We will have to be sure we are not compounding...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I agree with the Chairman's analysis. All that we can do, even in general elections, is stipulate that there be a gender balance in the selection of candidates. We cannot second guess the outcome as decided by the electorate. There is nothing to prevent the Minister of the day, either the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government or the Minister for Education and Skills,...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: Are we discussing the grouping of amendments beginning with amendment No. 48?

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: Regarding ETBs, while parents' representatives are to be nominated by national associations of parents, those nominated must themselves be parents of children registered as students in an ETB facility. This is a considerable improvement on the current position whereby parents of registered students do the electing but the representatives themselves do not need to be parents of students in...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: Yes. We are establishing in law the primacy of the community in respect of the school itself. We are not prescribing the rules and regulations as to how that is to be implemented. We will probably need to provide policy guidelines, directions or statutory instruments to address the issue of ETB members who do not live within their ETBs' areas, but we will certainly not use primary...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I am listening to what the committee has to say. This is a major change in culture and there will be other changes. I am glad there is broad consensus among all parties that the old practices are no longer acceptable. We should do it rather than have it done to us. There will be a transition period. I cannot think of any other way of doing it and I said this in Piper's Hill at a meeting...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I have no hard opinion as to the precise methodology of doing this. I have sympathy for what members are trying to do, whether that relates to a business representative or an adult learner. In the past, a former councillor who ran a shop and lost his or her seat in an election could end up representing the business community because he or she is a mate, etc., and unless we specify clearly...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: We are all agreed, for example, that someone should represent the business sector but our concern is the quality of the people and that they have a knowledge of the area rather than ticking a few boxes such as they run a shop, are former councillors and are friendly with the majority of members of the new ETB. There is one possibility that would still give power to the elected members and...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I have just consulted the official. There will be the elected councillors - ten accountable people with a clear democratic mandate. There will be two parents' representatives and two staff representatives with a clear focus and mandate. Those 14 people will co-opt the remaining people to bring it up to 18. There is a fair degree of balance and counterbalance in that composition. The...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I have a suggestion that might be slightly unorthodox. None of us will be around when the next ETB legislation is being dealt with. I certainly will not. We will draft a Report Stage amendment that incorporates some of the thinking I have just articulated and will circulate it informally to the Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil spokespersons as well as our Fine Gael and Labour Party...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 57:In page 26, lines 43 and 44, to delete subsection (9) and substitute the following:"(9) In this section--"population" means the population ascertained by the Central Statistics Office in the most recent census report published by that office setting out the final result of a census of population of the State (whether or not that is the most recent such census of...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 59:In page 36, lines 37 to 43, to delete subsections (6) and (7) and substitute the following: "(6) An order under subsection (3) shall specify a date, being not more than 12 months from the date of the order, for the purposes of section 29 as modified by subsection (7). (7) Where an order is made under subsection (3), section 29 shall apply to the election and...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: The rules are the rules. They do reflect a one-party state when the Government of the day can propose anything it likes and Members of the Oireachtas who are not Government supporters cannot do so. I see the illogicality of it. Returning to the spirit of what Deputy McConalogue proposes, and an earlier question that arose. If the expenses regime changes as all kinds of other matters have...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: The issues have become conflated. At one stage we were discussing the composition of the ETB itself, but now we are discussing boards of management at VEC schools. We have 723 post-primary schools and approximately 250 are in the community and VEC, or free voluntary, sector. Leaving aside isolated schools in isolated communities and to take Dublin city as an example, it has a school...