Results 31,381-31,400 of 32,983 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I wish to return to a theme touched on briefly by Deputy Harris, namely, the difference between an allowance and an expense. Perhaps that is something we should be refining and have in mind with the report. Deputy O'Donnell picked up on the point regarding the equitation school. I apologise as I left briefly. Approximately six months ago I had the privilege of visiting the equitation...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Another example is the entertainment allowance, which is listed. I have a selection of the business cases printed in this regard. There were seven claims in 2011. If this money is being used, I assume it is covering money spent on a particular purpose as opposed to providing a pecuniary benefit to the individual unit. The principal military appointments entertainment allowance is a good...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: The broad point is the difference between an allowance and an expense.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: The best example is the military service allowance, which is paid to people for their work over time based on the number of years for which they have done the work. Having considered the detail of it, this is not an allowance because somebody does a particular type of work well over a period of time and gets paid a little more for doing it.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: The X factor?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I strongly suggest we do not rename it the X factor. It could land us in a whole lot of other difficulties.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: To end on a different point, if we were to draw a graph with the value of the allowance and the number of people earning it, it would have a very long tail as it would slope off to a very low value of allowance earned by very few people. It is the length of the tail which is getting us into difficulties. I will pick out as an example the isolated outpost allowance claimed by 78 people,...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: It was to cover the cost of people providing meals for themselves.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Is this one of the 88?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Okay.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I thank Mr. Howard.

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I welcome the delegation. I have a series of questions I will go through one by one. The format we decided upon whereby the representatives of the employees sit alongside the employers shows that this will be a fruitful way of looking at the issue. If we only heard one voice or each voice at separate times, we would have missed the point. I very much hope we can replicate this when we go...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Do we have that one?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: It is the on the next page. Could we go down to the middle, which relates to enlisted personnel? Could participants comment on the fact that for people from the lower to the middle end of the wage scale, allowances occupy a far larger percentage of their total income than they do in respect of the income of people higher up the scale. For example, between private and sergeant, the figure...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I am asking this because the detail is where all of this lies. It is very easy to make observations at top line level, as I have done, but it is when one gets into the real detail of this that one begins to understand the picture. Mr. Rooney said it is because many of the allowances are related to operational work and because those operations are concentrated at the mid- to lower end of the...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Does Mr. Howard have any observations in respect of a table like this?

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I compliment the Department for providing a table like this with such detail and very much hope that when all the corresponding Departments come before the committee, they can do the same. There are other parts of the public service where I want to understand this very point because the question of what allowances are for and who gets them goes to the core of the debate about them. A...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: Can I drill into this with the example of the allowance relating to the Army Medical Corps? A senior surgeon in the Army Medical Corps is paid an allowance. This appears to make eminent sense given the environment within which some of the surgeons could be operating but why is that an allowance? I know Colonel O'Keeffe does not like the comparison with private and public sectors in this...

Public Accounts Committee: 2011 Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Vote 36: Defence - Review of Allowances (18 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: I would make the same point about air traffic controllers, of which there are 19. For example, a watch supervisor, of which there are a few, get paid extra because that is an extra job.

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: Teacher Training Provision (17 Oct 2012)

Paschal Donohoe: To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if it will be compulsory for teachers and or principals of the current junior certificate curriculum to take part in up-skilling and teacher training for the new curriculum commencing in 2014; if he is considering creating a tender for teacher training colleges to provide up-skilling for teachers for the new junior certificate curriculum; and if he...