Results 21,421-21,440 of 40,550 for speaker:Joan Burton
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: Last night, the Senator indicated to me-----
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: I was asked to give my closing comments.
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: Extra places have been provided in the budget to get people back to work, whether through internships, CE schemes or other community-based schemes. So far, more than 50% of people who participated in the scheme have proceeded to further employment. If we want to right the country's finances-----
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: If we want to right the finances of the country so that we can have the social welfare system to which we all aspire, we can only do that by getting businesses back into business and people back to work so that these people and businesses can begin to contribute through taxation. That is how-----
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: That is how we will protect carers. In a time of enormous economic difficulty, the fact that the carer's provision has increased this year is important.
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: With due respect to the various charming people of the troika, this commitment is not negotiable.
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: I lived in Tanzania, a very poor east African country. Like many other countries in Africa in the 1980s, it had to accept the ministrations of the IMF and the position was no different then. If countries borrowed money from the IMF, they had to repay it. We do not have an option other than getting the country back on its feet because that is the best way to protect social policies across a...
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: The Senator can check his own documents because they are what we were left with as our legacy of the agreement. We have negotiated it downwards.
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: We reduced the figure of ¤540 million to ¤390 million.
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: The troika came here to meet the political parties exactly two years ago. I am not going back very far.
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: I am trying to answer.
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: I was taken by the fundamental question raised by Senator Darragh O'Brien on what the troika required from Ireland. Some argue that the troika allows us to do whatever we want, but that is not true in terms of structural adjustment programmes around the world.
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: Just let me say -----
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: The Government has exercised great flexibility by reducing the figure of ¤800 million in cuts proposed by Fianna Fáil - Senators can check the documents - down to ¤540 million.
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: In my case -----
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: -----I went to the gentlemen from the Departments of Public Expenditure and Reform and Finance to negotiate the figure down to ¤390 million. Of course, I would have liked to have reduced it still further. Senator Mary White spoke about the 5,000 people who received no payment besides the respite care grant. Such individuals are above the income limit for carer's allowance and half rate...
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: I thank all Senators from both sides of the House who contributed because I know how genuinely people feel about this issue. Great credit is due to Irish society for one thing we have done. I listened to Senator Mulcahy talking about his daughter and his family situation. It is true with this House as it is for most of Irish society that at some stage all of us have cared for people or we...
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: Even by the standards of the Oireachtas, notification going back to 1997 is fairly lengthy. Sinn Féin may have had other things on its mind in 1997 besides debates in the Oireachtas-----
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: In fairness to all parties here there was an agreement then. A cornerstone of our social welfare system is a very important and significant contributory old age pension which can be funded only if the people who wish to benefit from it contribute enough to meet the promises that the Government has made. There are an increasing number of people who survive not only to claim their pensions...
- Seanad: Social Welfare Bill 2012: Committee Stage (19 Dec 2012)
Joan Burton: One cannot have a contributory pension system unless the people who expect to be beneficiaries of the system contribute sufficiently to it. Way back in 1997 all of the parties then in the Dáil agreed to increase the number of pension contributions required on a staggered basis over a long period. The Oireachtas agreed to one of the changes in the early 2000s. The second set of changes...