Results 2,541-2,560 of 3,356 for speaker:Feargal Quinn

Seanad: Order of Business. (23 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: Every day we receive the Order Papers in a large brown envelope addressed individually to each of the 226 Members of both Houses. It seems that the quantity of envelopes and paper used is very wasteful and I wonder whether we can address this issue. Last year, we were unable to get Oireachtas envelopes during the ferry dispute because it turned out that they are imported, which is...

Seanad: Third Level Education: Statements (Resumed). (22 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I wish to share time with Senator Norris.

Seanad: Third Level Education: Statements (Resumed). (22 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, to the House. One of the reasons I wish to speak today is to apologise to the Minister for Education and Science, Deputy Hanafin, for a mistake I made in a debate on primary education last week. I misread the amendment to a motion and did not realise the amount of funding that the Department was giving to the particular tasks I was...

Seanad: Order of Business. (22 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I regard myself as a friend of the United States and therefore when Senator Norris and others proposed the establishment of a select committee, I was very careful before deciding to add my name to the motion. Great care was taken with the wording of the proposal, which I support, as I believe it is up to us in this House and nowhere else to make our own decisions.

Seanad: Order of Business. (22 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: On that basis we should have a select committee to hear various views that might be expressed. It has been proposed to hold a debate on competitiveness. The loss of 350 jobs at the NEC plant in Ballivor is a sign of what is happening and is likely to continue to happen. Our future is unlikely to be in manufacturing, which is much more likely to take place in Asia and elsewhere. Our future...

Seanad: Energy Resources: Statements. (16 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I add my voice to the congratulations to the Minister of State. It is great to see him back in the House in this role which, I think, he enjoys. I was impressed by his contribution. One of the reasons I, along with Senator Finucane, asked for this debate is that we have become complacent. We have got to a point where we assume something which has always happened will always happen. Recently...

Seanad: Order of Business. (16 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I add my voice to that of Senators Norris and Bradford. It is seldom we arrange to set up a selection committee in this House. It would be disappointing if that proposal simply disappeared and failed to appear on the Order Paper. The proposal is that the selection committee should appear on the Order Paper. It has not done so, therefore I support the amendment proposed by Senators Norris and...

Seanad: Educational Services: Motion. (15 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: If it is included, I apologise. I read the amendment but may not have read the later part of it on the next page. Perhaps that is where I made my mistake. If that is so, I look forward to hearing the Minister's contribution on it. Until fairly recently it was a novelty for a primary school to have a pupil from abroad. The challenge facing us is to adapt our system to suit that circumstance....

Seanad: Educational Services: Motion. (15 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I thank Senator Norris for allowing me to contribute. I welcome the Minister to the House and I know her heart is in the right place. In the short time available I want to focus on one clause in the important motion. It states: "Demands that the Government give special weighting and provision to those schools and classes with significant numbers of 'newcomer' pupils, from other countries and...

Seanad: Order of Business. (15 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I was very close to the Stardust disaster inasmuch as I knew many of those who died or were injured and have suffered ever since. They were employees. These families have lived with this matter for 25 years. Senator Feeney has spoken about the horror some of them went through. We, the State, must do something. I do not know what and I am unsure whether this House is the place to do it. The...

Seanad: Road Network: Motion. (8 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I thank Senator Norris for giving me time to speak in this debate. We must make a clear distinction. It is one matter to build a motorway and announce well ahead of time that it will be tolled. It is understandable and I have no objection to it. However, it is a problem to build a motorway, have people build houses and come to live in the area and then to spring on them that the system will...

Seanad: Social Partnership: Statements. (7 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Killeen, and am grateful for the opportunity to debate the issue of social partnership. This debate is perfectly timed although in previous years, the issue was not debated in this House until it was too late. As has been said many times in this House, decisions have been made in the past without...

Seanad: Northern Ireland Issues: Statements. (2 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I congratulate the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Dermot Ahern, on his birthday today. I gather that means I will not see him at my speech at a function in Dundalk tonight but he will be in our thoughts. Rather than concentrate on the Minister's speech, I will mention two or three examples of how we can do something in this part of our island that will help in the years to come. Some...

Seanad: Order of Business. (2 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: As an employer over the years, I was always greatly satisfied when immigrants integrated well into our society. However, a number of immigrants do not integrate very well. Yesterday, the question of who has responsibility to help immigrants to integrate into our society cropped up at a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Affairs. It emerged that nobody has such...

Seanad: Road Safety: Statements. (1 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Education and Science, Deputy de Valera, to the House. This is a matter that caught my attention some years ago. I was asked to go on the National Safety Council which had decided to draw attention to those in the media who were highlighting the problem of deaths on the roads. I did not realise how much the problem was capable of being...

Seanad: Order of Business. (1 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: Before Christmas, I asked the Leader to find time for a debate on energy issues. At that time I was talking about power and electricity and the fact that there were major power cuts in the north of the United States of America and Italy. Since then, I have been particularly reminded of a term used by President George W. Bush in his address last night, namely, "addiction" and how Americans are...

Seanad: Order of Business. (1 Feb 2006)

Feargal Quinn: We are also addicted to oil but it creates another problem, namely, the Russian attitude to its supply of oil to Europe that has developed over the past number of months. It has placed us in a very difficult position due to our addiction to oil and shortage of our own energy sources. We must do something about energy as a whole, not just electricity, and the fact that we have not taken the...

Seanad: Order of Business. (25 Jan 2006)

Feargal Quinn: Senator Mansergh talked about leadership in regard to one area but there is little doubt that what we need is leadership in regard to the challenge of road deaths. A number of Senators spoke about the scandal of what has happened. This is one example of where we know we can identify the challenge. We know the answers but we have done very little about the problem. Northern Ireland was...

Seanad: Order of Business. (25 Jan 2006)

Feargal Quinn: I wish to raise another issue which does not sound as exciting as the one to which I have just referred. We are losing ground in the area of information technology. Some figures were published in recent weeks which show that the commitment we need is not being adhered to. The European information technology scale, which identifies the gap between the skills we need and those we have,...

Seanad: Order of Business. (8 Dec 2005)

Feargal Quinn: We are inclined to take things for granted and it was only when Senator Ryan and Senator Finucane called for a debate on the energy and electricity problems — I support that call — that I remembered it is not that long ago since the entire New York area experienced a blackout for a few days. Around the same time the lights in northern Italy went out for almost a week. We have come to...