Results 1,701-1,720 of 32,547 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Topical Issue Debate: Negative Equity Mortgages (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: What are we to do? We have young people, married and unmarried, with young children who want to have more children but are living in one or two bedroom apartments they purchased at the height of the property boom. The tax code makes it difficult for them to rent accommodation appropriate to the size of their family. While I understand the pressure on the public finances, this is none the...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Will the Chairman confirm that we are sitting next Thursday also?

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: There are only the two of us here but would members prefer to have the meeting on a Thursday morning rather than an afternoon?

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: The witnesses are all very welcome and I thank them for attending the committee. I thank them also for the amount of work they have prepared and the information that is available for this session. I will begin with two points. All of the business cases for the allowances were shared with us. The business cases I have received so far from the Department of Justice and Equality are of the...

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: One allowance provides that officers are paid, even if the hours are not worked. Will Mr. Purcell explain that one?

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: There are 64 allowances available in the Irish Prison Service. In the Defence Forces there are 63. One view the Department of Defence put to us was that the Defence Forces was in its own mini-world in that it had its own surgeons, engineers and so forth, meaning it had a high number of allowances to cover this. There are more people in the Irish Prison Service in receipt of more allowances...

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Most of the additional hours are non-pensionable. This goes back to the reform to deal with the cost of overtime we discussed. Would Mr. Purcell be able to produce a table that stripped out the additional hours in order that we could see the lay-down of additional pensionable allowances?

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: This goes back to something we have been examining, which is when is an allowance not an allowance? The way Mr. Purcell has helped us to understand this allowance is that it was brought in to deal with the overtime issue. It saved €30 million and it is not pensionable. It is a payment that ties into additional work that is being done. It would be helpful to understand when...

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I refer to the points of difference between this and other graphs. We have covered off the first issue, which is more people are in receipt of more allowances and Mr. Purcell has given an explanation for that. The further one goes up the income ladder, the lower the percentage of allowances is as a percentage of the total compensation. As I go further up the income tier, staff are claiming...

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Mr. Purcell, therefore, attributes this difference to the rostering nature of these roles.

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: That will be an interesting issue to examine when we deal with other Votes to establish whether there is a similar trend with rostering. We deal with the Garda Vote next week and rostering plays a prominent role in its activities. It will be interesting if I see a similar trend emerging.

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: These are three payments, which are all different, but they are called allowances. This has been at the heart of the difficulty in understanding this issue.

Public Accounts Committee: Department of Justice and Equality - Review of Allowances (25 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Mr. Purcell has and I thank him again for all the material supplied to us.

Public Accounts Committee: Irish Congress of Trade Unions - Review of Allowances (31 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I welcome the delegates and thank them for coming. I have a question for each of them on the basis of the answers they have given to my colleagues. Mr. Geraghty stated during an exchange with Deputy McCarthy that his views had not been sought initially on how the matter of allowances should be handled. If his views had been sought, what would they have been?

Public Accounts Committee: Irish Congress of Trade Unions - Review of Allowances (31 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I accept that.

Public Accounts Committee: Irish Congress of Trade Unions - Review of Allowances (31 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: If they had been sought, they are the bones of the views with which Mr. Geraghty would responded?

Public Accounts Committee: Irish Congress of Trade Unions - Review of Allowances (31 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I accept that. On the origins of the system, I am struck most by its extraordinary complexity having heard details of the origins of the allowances and how they are paid in different sectors. Mr. Cody spoke about where they came from and said many of them had been in place for some time. Considering the origin and development of allowances, does he believe an alternative way could have...

Public Accounts Committee: Irish Congress of Trade Unions - Review of Allowances (31 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: A consequence of that has been the proliferation of allowances. For example, in the Irish Prison Service alone there are 64 allowances. Within our Defence Forces, there are 63 allowances which are separate and bespoke to those two units of our public service. While I understand and accept Mr. Cody's point that in many cases an allowance was the most cost-effective and straightforward way...

Public Accounts Committee: Irish Congress of Trade Unions - Review of Allowances (31 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: One of the examples that was given to us was that of the prison service. This is the most recent allowance to be introduced. There was a difficulty regarding overtime payments within the prison service. A dispute took place and a system of 13 different allowances was introduced. On paper that looked extremely complicated, as was acknowledged by the people who were operating it. None the...