Results 14,361-14,380 of 29,533 for speaker:Brendan Howlin

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: There was public comment at the troika's last visit - its eighth visit - that somehow there was disquiet about the Croke Park agreement. I meet it for long sessions at every meeting and I met the head of the current troika team in Brussels the week before he came here and I met him the week before that in Dublin on a private visit. I am in constant contact with him. The troika has never...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: Ultimately, what we are working on is a framework of money. As long as the public pay bill is reduced to the volume we have agreed, it does not get into the minutia of that but it looks at public sector productivity and lack of disruption here in comparison to national strikes in Greece, Portugal, Spain and even in more recent times in Belgium and France. We have industrial peace which not...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: The balance between expenditure and taxation was something we negotiated in the programme for Government, as the Deputy knows. At the last election, Fine Gael campaigned on the basis of making the adjustment on the basis of 3:1. The Labour Party campaigned on the basis of 1:1. The balance is somewhere in the middle. What is to be done in the forthcoming budget? In current expenditure...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: It does not express a view on that sort of thing. That is a political settlement at which we have arrived between the parties in government.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: I have classified it as an extension of Croke Park - someone asked if it was the Nally Stand. I do not want to end the Croke Park agreement; the architecture of which remains in place until the end of next year. I am not invoking clause 1.28 of the agreement that would collapse it; rather, I am saying we need to go further than the agreement allows to reach the targets we need to achieve....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: I will answer that question in two ways, first in terms of investment and then in terms of austerity. On the investment side, Ireland has done extraordinarily well in recent times. I have instanced the level of foreign direct investment, which is unprecedented. There is an extremely healthy flow of investment from foreign companies which want to build a stable platform here, with not just...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: I will give the exact figure for exclusive debt we must pay. If we talk about banking related debt, I will disaggregate it and send the Deputy the exact figure on a current basis. The figures are substantial.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy is absolutely right, but the tax base collapsed also by a figure of 30%. Even if we could stop the clock and say all of the banking debt should be taken away, the State's income stream fell by 30% but our outgoings did not.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: We are running a current deficit to meet for day-to-day expenses.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: What the Deputy is saying is not wrong, but it is just not practical. It is like saying the value of my house was €500,000 and that it is only worth €200,000 now but I will pretend and carry on as it is still worth €500,000. The reality is that the previous Government made the disastrous decision to nationalise the banks' debts. My party and I voted against it. That...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: No. I have to say-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: The medium-term fiscal plan we have published provides for a flat projection if there is no policy change. The policy change will come in the budget. We will spell out the impact we expect that to have on the multi-annual financial framework, including the projection for jobs.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: The budget is the platform for certain instruments to be announced. We are very limited in the number of instruments we can adopt. I do not want to make more of it than it deserves. The publication that used to be known as the pre-budget statement is now known as the medium-term financial framework.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: It sets out the economic parameters within which the budgetary arithmetic is being drawn up so people can be informed about that. On 5 December next, we will present the budget, setting out all the taxation and spending adjustments that we propose. We will also outline other measures that we intend to implement across the economy. We will be able to project the impact that the contents of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: I ask Mr. Reid to answer the Deputy's questions.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: CIO stands for chief information officer.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy raised a question regarding the difference between the Civil Service and the public service. Civil servants - "servant" is a lovely word - are those who work in government, while the term "public servant" refers to everybody else who is employed in the public service, including gardaí, teachers, nurses and doctors. Our ambition in the programme is to build an integrated...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: The agreement is a fantastic enabler of change. The Deputy will remember the old days when moving people to a better office meant paying them a movement allowance and one would have a work-to-rule and God knows what else. All of that has been blown away. We are moving people up to 45 km from their base and thousands of public servants have been moved on that basis. We have also changed...

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Consultancy Contracts (27 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: The appointment of Mercer in June 2012 to examine pay levels across banking institutions is a matter for the Minister for Finance. Pay rates in the public service were reduced by up to 30% and a progressive pension related reduction (averaging approximately 7%) applied through the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Acts of 2009-2011. The rates of reduction applied to senior...

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Consultancy Contracts (27 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: As the Deputy is aware, as part of the Comprehensive Expenditure Report 2012-2014 , published by my Department on 5 December 2011, I set out expenditure ceilings for all Departments. These ceilings act as an upper limit on expenditure and ensure Departments seek to maximise efficiency gains in all areas. In order to facilitate Departments in driving these efficiency gains, and to ensure...