Results 3,901-3,920 of 4,414 for speaker:Sean Barrett

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Garda Vetting (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I move amendment No. 8: In page 13, line 21, after "matter" to insert "and referred the matter to the Ceann Comhairle".

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Garda Vetting (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I move amendment No. 7: In page 13, line 15, after "reasons" to insert ", including risk assessment thereof,".This amendment relates to the discussion we had the last day on the rather strange application of the sub judice rule, which we all accept. The section indicates the director general is not required to give an answer to any Oireachtas committee on any matter relating to the...

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: The Minister would gain in accepting the amendment by confining this to people who are in the executive and recruiting the people he needs to perform this urgent task.

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: The Minister would gain in accepting the amendment by not confining this to people who are in the executive and recruiting the people he needs to perform this urgent task.

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I move amendment No. 7: In page 13, line 15, after "reasons" to insert ", including risk assessment thereof,".This amendment relates to the discussion we had the last day on the rather strange application of the sub judice rule, which we all accept. The section indicates the director general is not required to give an answer to any Oireachtas committee on any matter relating to the...

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I am worried about the precedents. The Minister mentioned some of the earlier ones in tourism and quality assurance. That worries me because I think the precedents in both of those were bad, but that is probably not a topic for conversation now. Subsection (8) provides that one can go to the High Court or that the Chairman of the Oireachtas committee, acting on behalf of the committee, can...

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I move amendment No. 8: In page 13, line 21, after "matter" to insert "and referred the matter to the Ceann Comhairle".

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I move amendment No. 14: In page 22, line 35, to delete ?Directorate? and substitute the following: "Irish Auditing and Accounting Supervisory Authority".This relates to the important function of the Accounting Officer and the audit committee and it is recognised as having been a problem on many occasions in the past. It is why Ms Niamh Brennan, professor of accounting in UCD, was asked to...

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: We regularly get the wrong headlines, to the effect that the HSE is ¤450 million or ¤750 million over budget, yet the Minister turns down an amendment that would try to address the problem. There are serious budgetary problems. I have sided with the Minister when he has been unfairly criticised but every time we have made a suggestion to help him with these reforms, we have received a...

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I thank the Minister for that suggestion. I look forward to seeing how this develops in the other House. I will place the amendment in the capable hands of the Minister.

Seanad: National Dementia Strategy: Motion (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I commend the Labour Party, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Senators, the Independent Senators nominated by the Taoiseach, on the all-party agreement on the motion. Although I will support the motion, I have a small quibble with one sentence in it, as I wonder whether it despairs too much: "[T]hat strategy recognises the societal rather than the medical context of dementia and Alzheimer's"....

Seanad: Amendment to Terms of Reference of Tribunal of Inquiry: Motion (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I welcome the Minister, support the motion and agree fully with Senators Byrne and Bradford. Last Friday week, the North-South parliamentary body met in this Chamber for the first time, chaired jointly by the Ceann Comhairle and the Speaker from Stormont. I gather the meeting of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly yesterday was a great success, and I met people returning from it in the...

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: We sought to help the Minister but when we have been told in reply that we are not being very helpful, we should not persist with our attempt. I thank Senator Colm Burke and the Minister. This was a suggestion. The Minister has an enormous task and if this is not helpful, it should not obstruct him or consideration of it further delay the House. With the consent of the House, I will...

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: The amendment seeks to untie the Minister's hands. The wording of the provision need not be as stated in the section, namely: "A person may not be appointed as an appointed director unless he or she is a person who is an employee of the Executive holding the grade of national director in the Executive." Are there people in private hospitals or people in private insurance companies, to which...

Seanad: Health Service Executive (Governance) Bill 2012: Report and Final Stages (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I move amendment No. 1: In page 3, between lines 20 and 21, to insert the following:"2.?The Health Service Executive shall cease to exist no later than October 10, 2015.".This amendment, in my name and that of Senator Crown, puts a date on the sunset of the Health Service Executive. The date is three years from when the Minister first appeared in the House to address this legislation. We...

Seanad: Order of Business (24 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: Two former senior civil servants, John Lumsden and Pat Mangan, wrote strongly in the latest edition of The Sunday Business Post about the need for Civil Service reform saying, It is important to foster a culture in Departments that questions conventional wisdom. Officials should be encouraged to act as effective devil's advocates and this role should be positively reflected in their...

Seanad: Junior Certificate Reform and the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy: Statements (23 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: I welcome the Minister to the House. It is always interesting to hear his ideas on reform of education about which he has spoken for many years. I would like to start in a different place, and I know that is a phrase used in a Kerryman's directions.

Seanad: Junior Certificate Reform and the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy: Statements (23 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: No. I will start at primary level but I thank the Senator for that prompt. With the best wishes for the Irish language at heart, I wonder if the amount of time spent at primary level and the first part of secondary level on the language is part of what drives boys from a working class background from education? They spend ten years learning the language out of a book and never speak it. I...

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Sugar Beet Industry (18 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: Some time after the Houses rose in July, CIE was found to be ¤36 million short of meeting its expenditure targets for this year which has resulted in the loss of rural bus services in places in Mayo, Sligo, Leitrim and elsewhere. Will the Leader invite the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Varadkar, to come to the House to discuss other ways in which those bus services might...

Seanad: Adjournment Matters: Sugar Beet Industry (18 Oct 2012)

Sean Barrett: -----the fruit of a recession during the 1950s, which is going so strongly today.