Results 22,941-22,960 of 34,778 for speaker:Seán Fleming

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: Yes.

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: Yes, because it affects their entitlement to the State contributory pension.

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: We mentioned rent supplement and there is a decrease in the payments for that because it probably transferred to housing assistance payment.

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: My other question is on mortgage interest supplement. We are due to pass a Finance Bill, although that is not your Department, to give tax breaks to people to buy houses at prices up to €600,000 while at the same time the mortgage interest supplement paid by the Department of Social Protection in 2013 was €21 million and €12 million in 2015. What are this year's and...

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: What do you think the figure is for this year? One of the officials can find it while we are discussing this. We are going in different directions whereby under the Finance Bill, if one is on a high income one will get a tax relief to buy a house, while somebody struggling to pay a mortgage is on the scheme under the Department. It is a policy issue, so you cannot talk about that. The...

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: No, it is because the scheme is closed.

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: I wish to move on to debt recovery. There was an interesting conversation on that here today. I wish to discuss two debts - one is amounts owed to the Department by various claimants under the Vote and the other is amounts due to the social insurance fund from employers in respect of redundancy and insolvency payments. I never hear the same level of animation about chasing the debts under...

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: Ms O'Donoghue understands the contrast.

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: That leads me to my second question on the Social Insurance Fund account. According to a note on page 12, the Department wrote off €36.7 million on 1 January 2015 because the opening balance was not correct. I have a problem with this. The previous year's figures, as presented to the Oireachtas, were overstated. According to page 13, a further adjustment to the redundancy debt...

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: If Ms O'Donoghue is going to tell me-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: Ms O'Donoghue's Department got it from the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation. I understand.

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: I will ask the Comptroller and Auditor General in a moment about the approximately €500 million that may vanish from the State's balance sheet. It is an extraordinary situation. This amount is probably counted in our EUROSTAT figures as something that we are owed, yet Ms O'Donoghue is saying that we might not get 90% of it. I will revert to my first question, as I want details on...

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: There must be some mechanism through the Companies Registration Office. Limited liability is a factor, but some of these people will re-emerge having gone through the redundancy process, closed their companies and opened other companies under other people's names.

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: Does the 17 figure relate to the Social Inclusion Fund?

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: We will have to delve into that. The situation grows more unsatisfactory the more we discuss it. Ms O'Donoghue is telling me that some of the poor people who, for example, have been in receipt of disability allowance have been subjected to attachment orders whereas no attachment order has been issued in respect of anyone under the redundancy and insolvency scheme. There is a disparity in...

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: We will stick with companies. When a company is in receivership-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: Why not make an attachment order at that point? Why does the Department wait until everything has gone wrong and there is no money left? Why is it not more aggressive?

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: Receivership legislation trumps the legislation on recouping money under the Social Insurance Fund.

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: Ms O'Donoghue can understand our line of questioning on this issue.

Public Accounts Committee: 2015 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 37 - Department of Social Protection
Chapter 9 - Regularity of Social Welfare Payments
Chapter 10 - Roll-out of the Public Services Card
Social Insurance Fund 2015 (20 Oct 2016)

Seán Fleming: There seems to be a large imbalance.