Results 4,561-4,580 of 36,118 for speaker:Pearse Doherty
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Within the Department of Health, there are still secondments of more than five years. Is that what Mr. Mooney is telling me?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Are they often for an indefinite period, that is, secondments that have no end dates?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Is it the proposal that there will be a timeframe for all of these secondments?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Has the Minister reviewed the existing process for approval and sign-off? The Secretary General kept the Minister in the dark and felt that he did not need to tell him about committing €2 million of funding in breach of all the protocols that exist for research funding and aligned that €2 million funding with one individual, which should never happen.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: To be fair to me, and perhaps I articulated it wrongly, with which part in my question does the Minister disagree? Is it that the Secretary General breached all protocols, that he assigned it to one person and that should never have happened or that he allocated €2 million of taxpayers’ money? I am wondering which part of the question-----
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: This is significant. Now the Minister is disputing the findings of this report. When he disputes that it was committed to, the conclusions in section 5.4 are clear, stating: "The substantial proposed funding commitment of €2 million a year until the retirement of the Chief Medical Officer, by-passed all of the accepted protocols." Is the Minister challenging the report when he told...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Does the Minister accept that it was committed?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: A clear distinction has now opened up where the Minister is disputing a finding and conclusion from this report when he said earlier that this funding was not committed. He said that it was promised, not committed. I ask the Minister to clarify that. It is one of the five conclusions that have been reached. It was committed and was atypically linked to one named individual. I need...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Does the Minister accept that the funding was committed?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: That is not true. There is a significant issue, which the Minister knows. This report has five conclusions. I referred to the third one already. The fifth one refers to "The ‘commitment’ to Trinity College Dublin by the Department of Health of €2 million per year for research funding". A commitment was made. The Minister is disputing the fact that a commitment was...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Nobody has ever claimed that.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Nobody has claimed that but Dr. Holohan would personally benefit from the €2 million because a portion of that would have paid his wages.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Nobody is suggesting that either.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Nobody has suggested that either.
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Let us be very clear that the report makes it clear that the research funding was linked atypically to one named individual. That is the point it is making. If the Government is providing research funding, give it to the board and let it decide how to fund it. That is not what happened here. This is funding that was allocated on the basis that the wages, which were the same as what he was...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: I do not know but I know that if I cannot get my emails on this computer, I can get them in my phone, in the Minister's office or wherever if I log on. Can the Minister explain what happened?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: In those two weeks, including the time the Minister was in Texas, was he not able to access any communication by email, either from any Government Departments or his own Department?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Did the Secretary General think that by sending an email from an uncorrupted device, it would somehow corrupt the rest of the Department? Is that his understanding of how emails work?
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: Did the Minister make any other arrangements? I imagine if he was in America, he had staff with him. He did not want to be out of email communication. Surely to God people were able to send the Minister documents, briefing notes and such, and surely somebody else on the team had an uncorrupted device that emails could have been sent to? Were there no arrangements like that and was it a...
- Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Public Sector Secondment: Minister for Health (22 Jun 2023)
Pearse Doherty: That is very interesting. Can I ask the Minister about the national children's hospital? We have seen more stuff in the media over the last number of days. We learned that BAM informed the board of its updated programme of works and that it will now be the end of May before work is complete. Is that the case and when did the Minister and the Department become aware of it? Why did the...