Results 4,161-4,180 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of AIB: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: It is a Government policy anyway. For my last question, I will return to the matter of mortgages for owner-occupiers, not buy-to-let investors or speculators or all the rest of it. Mr. Duffy has set his face quite categorically against what he calls debt forgiveness. What will be his approach to the provisions of the Personal Insolvency Bill when it is enacted? Second, in his earlier...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of AIB: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: What is the annual wage for the top three executives in Allied Irish Banks?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: In a dissenting judgment, a Supreme Court judge more or less stated, if I have it right, in respect of the litigation between IBRC and the Quinn Group, that there were two of them in it. Will the witnesses comment in this regard? Second, I read a suggestion that the court action may move onto mediation. Will the witnesses comment on that?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: No comment or no move?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: Can the witnesses provide the number of single homeowners this groups comprises?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: Are these included in the figure of 14,000?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: Are these landlords with portfolios?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: I am mainly concerned with owner occupiers, people who purchased a home in good faith when they were being blackmailed by rampant speculation in the property market but needed a home for a family. The submission states that the bank repossessed 23 properties in the six months to June 2012. What is the story in those cases? Did the owner occupiers fight the bank and did they want to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: I refer to individual mortgages, not portfolios. People were caught in an impossible situation at the height of the boom, with what are now unsustainable monthly payments because jobs have been lost. Why could IBRC, as a State-owned bank, not come up with a revolutionary approach? The solution is simple and involves reducing the value of the home to the current market value and reducing...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: Is it not fictional capital? The value is presumably the value at which the properties were bought, which they have not retained.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: What solutions is the bank moving towards?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: I apologise for stepping outside briefly. If I am repeating someone else's question, please tell me that it was answered and I will move on. I do not want to waste anyone's time. I will ask a general question first. We are four or five years down the road from the crash, but I have put a question to everyone, including the troika, to which I have not received an answer. Perhaps Mr....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Operations and Functioning of IBRC: Discussion (31 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: I heard what Mr. Dukes stated, but I wanted to lodge a protest on behalf of taxpayers. I am sure that when Mr. Dukes lays awake at night trying to prepare for statutory requirements, etc., he sometimes muses over the morality of this situation. I will move onto residential properties. From scanning the submission, the witnesses provide the amounts. Do they have a figure for the absolute...

Prospects for Irish Economy: Statements (Resumed) (25 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: All the Government contributors to this debate on the Irish economy over the past two days predicated their contributions on the claim that current policies are working, that the Irish economy is turning the corner, and that we will overcome this economic crisis within a few years. That is manifestly false on even the most cursory examination of the key indicators for the Irish economy. If...

Order of Business (24 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: Yesterday the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Phil Hogan, stated in the Dáil that no details of the property tax would be forthcoming until the budget. However, the first or second item on RTE's "Six One News" was another Government leak indicating that the tax would be deducted at source from workers' wages.

Order of Business (24 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: That at least explodes the myth that it is a broadening of the tax base. I have asked the Taoiseach many times, in regard to the Thornhill report, if working people and pensioners are to be troubled every week with new leaks about this new economic attack on them. Will the Government publish the Thornhill report and in the coming two weeks will the Taoiseach make time available in the...

Order of Business (24 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: Is the Taoiseach going to publish the report?

Leaders' Questions (24 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: What happened to the Labour Party's commitment to equality? That was one of its policy positions.

Leaders' Questions (24 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: Education cuts, actually.

Written Answers — Department of Health: Medicinal Products (24 Oct 2012)

Joe Higgins: To ask the Minister for Health if he will reverse the decision to take gluten free foods off the medical card list in view of the financial pressure this is having on some coeliacs [46686/12]