Results 1,621-1,640 of 7,412 for speaker:Neasa Hourigan

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (8 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: I have a few questions of my own. If members have follow-up questions, I ask them to raise a hand. Deputy Mairéad Farrell raised the issue of climate and covered most of it. I take the point that it is very difficult to forecast this. As a follow-up on that issue, notwithstanding any difficulty and snarkiness that might occur, who is best placed to undertake that kind of costing?...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (8 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: I hope, more than just international organisations, that at EU level there would be some kind of encouragement of member states to undertake this. I realise it is a significant project, but it is absolutely vital. On the issue of the EU, the fiscal rules have been discussed. The timing of it is an issue. Like Deputy Mairéad Farrell, we are all working away on that public...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (8 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: Staying with the spending rule, I welcome the changes, as does IFAC. I certainly welcome the sustainable growth of a 5% annual increase. However, I am sometimes frustrated by the focus on the metric of spending rather than that of outcomes and value for money. I have recently been looking into unit costing of services. I am thinking in particular of the opacity in respect of the health...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (8 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: That is very good to hear. I consistently worry about the level of data produced by Departments generally. On a selfish note, much of our work on well-being indicators, which is something the committee is trying to move ahead with, is predicated on the availability of disaggregated data. It seems that in the Irish model those data are simply not produced, collected or published. It will...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (8 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: That is fantastic. I hear from NGOs all the time that they struggle with the lack of data, so the proposed report is very welcome. The committee will certainly be paying close attention to it. It is a piece of work that is desperately needed. This is the final public meeting of the committee this year. The committee will meet next week in private session to discuss several matters. I...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Fiscal Assessment Report: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (8 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: It would be a large-scale collaborative project and would probably be an ongoing one.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: I was going to begin with another question but I wish to stay on that issue. Can I take it from that then that the HSE’s plan for east Cork is to have zero residential facilities and to move people to St. Stephen’s facility? That seems to be what the HSE is saying, namely, that it sees no qualitative difference between that and long-stay hostels and that it has no intention of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: My apologies, Mr. Fitzgerald, but the policy gives guidelines around the numbers of residential facilities for 24-hour care. Are we now saying that there are no waiting lists in east Cork for these kinds of placements?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: And Mr. Fitzgerald replied “No”.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: Yes, I thank Mr. Fitzgerald. He denied the request of families to appoint an independent engineer to review the veracity of the HSE’s building reports. Why was that?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: My apologies. I do not wish to cut across Mr. Kane but I have read all of the reports. As he may know, I worked in this area in the past. I appreciate the amount of information that he has provided. In fairness to Mr. Kane, this is more a question for Mr. Fitzgerald because I believe it was he who was in contact with those families. I am asking him why this request to review the building...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: Sorry, I will have to disagree with Mr. Kane there. We have talked a great deal today about the size of the building and about room sizes. In some of the building reports we were furnished with, the room sizes are listed differently and various numbers are given. The request from the families was to carry out a review of the veracity of the claims made in the report, That review was...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: Is that on a single storey?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: Why would we review it as a single-storey unit?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: I thank Mr. Kane but there is not a statutory requirement. Is that correct?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: No. The HSE has reviewed it in terms of a single storey-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: I just want to be clear on this. Mr. Kane has given us those numbers on the basis of a non-statutory best practice and a single-storey building.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: Why is Mr. Kane giving us those numbers on the basis of a single-storey building? That is extraordinary.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: Is St. Stephen's Hospital a multistorey building?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Closure of Owenacurra Centre: Engagement with HSE (14 Dec 2021)

Neasa Hourigan: Is St. Stephen's not a five-level building?