Results 4,381-4,400 of 34,585 for speaker:Seán Fleming

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: Why would we set up two tracking systems for dogs? As a member of the Committee of Public Accounts, this sounds like a great deal of duplication. Can somebody explain why the Irish taxpayer would want to pay for a tracking system, through the grant given to the Irish Greyhound Board, when the Irish Coursing Club is doing the same thing privately at no cost to the taxpayer?

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: Why is the Department not taking on this role? Does it consider this issue so unimportant that it does not even want to take it on? It runs the AIM system for cattle, but it is setting up a system for dogs about which it does not want to know. The ICC could disappear into the ground next year. We have no hold on it.

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: The witnesses can see the weak link in all of this. We are relying on a voluntary organisation which receives no funding from the Department and which is not answerable to it or to the Oireachtas. It gets no public money. We will have the system and will just have to hope this club does its business. We are building our whole system on that foundation. Does Dr. Smyth understand my concern?

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: Can somebody send me a note as to why-----

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: One registration, like cattle.

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: Why can the system not be under the control of the Department? It should be. There is no point coming back in three years and saying that the Irish Coursing Club disbanded in a row and that nobody can do anything because the whereabouts of the records are not known. The club is not under the remit of the Department, is it?

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: The Department is handing this whole process over to an entity over which nobody in this Parliament has any control. This issue is important. Did we learn anything from that programme? I am being hard on the witnesses. I am approaching this based on how I see it and I may be getting it all wrong but, listening to the logic, I cannot understand why an organisation under the remit of the...

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: It is a voluntary club. That is daft. Am I missing something? Will somebody tell me I have got it all wrong?

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: What role does this club have in the system that allows it to get itself stitched into legislation? It is mentioned in section after section; I have the legislation in front of me. We are giving it power but we have no control over it.

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: Mr. Dollard has spent the last three hours telling us that it did not do the job properly and that the Preferred Results report could not rely on its figures.

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: Mr. Dollard has spent three hours telling us that the system in place is not fit for purpose-----

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: -----and that it could not be relied upon. He is now saying that the rationale for letting the club continue operating the system is that it has always done so. If it was not doing a good job, it should not be in the equation.

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: I said "if" it was not doing a good job. Mr. Dollard seems to believe that it cannot provide any remotely reliable evidence for the industry. He said they were assumptions made by the company, Preferred Results limited. There is nothing that could be relied upon.

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: I believe the Department should run such a system itself rather than rely on a voluntary club. There is no accountability.

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: Will Dr. Smyth send us a detailed note on why this system is proposed, who will operate it and how the Oireachtas can be satisfied that this new process is the right way to go? He has said the Department is at the final stages of drafting statutory instruments and that it will probably be moving on soon. He has to convince us and satisfy us that this is a verifiable, safe process for the...

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: Does Dr. Smyth understand my concern?

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: I am a layman in this area so I can understand if I am not getting it right. We will wait and see. I thank the witnesses from Bord na gCon and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine for their attendance and the information provided today. I thank also the Comptroller and Auditor General and his staff. Is it agreed that the clerk to the committee will seek any follow up...

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: I thank Mr. McCarthy for clarifying that matter.

Public Accounts Committee: Bord na gCon Financial Statement 2017 (19 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: That is even better again. It is on the record. The meeting is adjourned until Thursday, 26 September 2019 when we will meet the Data Protection Commissioner on the commission's financial statements for 2018.

Written Answers — Department of Finance: Tax Code (6 Sep 2019)

Seán Fleming: 83. To ask the Minister for Finance the amount of income a couple with joint assessment can earn without being subject to income tax in circumstances in which both parties are under 65 years of age; the position in circumstances in which one party is under 65 years of age and the other is over 65 years of age; the amounts by which there is a PAYE allowance available to one or other of the...