Results 5,481-5,500 of 7,975 for speaker:Joe Higgins

Written Answers — Cancer Screening Programme: Cancer Screening Programme (22 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: Question 240: To ask the Minister for Health if persons over 69 years are being excluded from the rectal screening programme; if so, the medical grounds for this exclusion; and if this is related to budget constraints. [25400/11]

European Financial Stability Facility and Euro Area Loan Facility (Amendment) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (21 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: What we are participating in is a charade. This is not a Committee or Report Stage debate on a Bill. It is a process that would be fitting in the old Stalinist Parliament in Russia, in which the Politburo came forward with a fixed agenda, whereby it proposed and the Members of the Parliament loyally disposed. This is not a democratic process. The elected Members of this Parliament are...

European Financial Stability Facility and Euro Area Loan Facility (Amendment) Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (21 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: I am not going to participate any further. Deputies have the right to ask questions for as long as they want, but let us get to the vote and bring to an end this painful charade in order that we can at least mark our resistance to this further consolidation in trying to solve the problems of the financial system of Europe on the backs of the Irish, Greek and German peoples, with everybody else.

European Financial Stability Facility and Euro Area Loan Facility (Amendment) Bill 2011: Second Stage (Resumed) (21 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: The European Financial Stability Facility was a measure designed, not in the public interest as is claimed in the Title to the Bill, but really fundamentally to salvage the European banks and major European speculators from the consequences of their reckless lending over the previous ten years. Members are aware they gambled wildly on property bubbles in Spain and Ireland. Moreover, many...

Departmental Appointments (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: This looks suspiciously like a Fine Gael coup with regard to the management of EU affairs by the Government. Is this the case? Has the Taoiseach elbowed the Tánaiste out to deal with far flung areas such as North Korea and so on while in essence corralling the critical policy and EU matters among himself as a Fine Gael Taoiseach and a Fine Gael Minister for Finance aided and abetted by a...

Departmental Appointments (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: It is still five times the average industrial wage.

Programme for Government (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: Question 18: To ask the Taoiseach if he will provide a progress report on the Programme for Government as a new Dáil Éireann session commences [24420/11]

Programme for Government (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: The Taoiseach says he has no plans to publish a revised programme for Government as the new Dáil session begins. Why does he have no such plans when it is clear that the programme he borrowed from Fianna Fáil based on austerity is spectacularly failing the people? There are record numbers on the live register and record numbers of long-term unemployed. A policy of austerity has been...

Programme for Government (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: Rather than continuing with these discredited and failed policies, should the Government not introduce a new programme for Government to reverse entirely these disastrous neoliberal policies of slash and burn to pay bondholders? The Government should take a different course.

Programme for Government (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: It is all about reputation in the markets and satisfying them, the sharks.

Order of Business (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: I support that view. This is an issue that should be given as much time as the Members want to deliberate. Deputy Catherine Murphy has a far-reaching and serious amendment tabled which needs to be discussed and the implications of this also need to be discussed. Therefore, it is wrong that the Government is starting the second term in the way it carried on in the first with guillotines...

Order of Business (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: He was making a big man of himself in Washington, promising to do the devil and all and cut the bondholders off at the ankles. That is what we want an explanation for. What changed?

Order of Business (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: Does the Taoiseach agree that there will be no legislation with regard to what the Minister for Finance promised in Washington, that he would cut the speculators off at the legs on behalf of the people?

Order of Business (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: The Minister for Finance was like a schoolboy smoking behind the shed and talking big against the teacher in Washington. When he got to Frankfurt, it was a different tune.

Order of Business (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: Will the Taoiseach indicate precisely when the Local Government Charges Bill will be published?

Order of Business (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: I know it will be published this session. I am asking for the date on which it will be published.

Leaders' Questions (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: I want to raise a decision of the Government for which the Taoiseach cannot blame Fianna Fáil, despite that party's responsibility for the origins of this crisis. Last Saturday, the Government abjectly capitulated to the European Central Bank when the Minister for Finance indicated in Poland that the full €3.5 billion that was gambled in Anglo Irish Bank by the holders of unsecured bonds...

Leaders' Questions (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: It is as if, rather than kicking his county into history after a brave run forward, he suddenly turned and booted the ball into the faces of his team mates and into his own goal. Rather than going to speculators, this €3.5 billion of the funds of our people should be going into investment and services. I ask the Taoiseach to explain why that is not happening.

Leaders' Questions (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: The Taoiseach did not answer the question. The Minister for Finance was very vocal in Washington. He said he would burn the Anglo gamblers. According to the schedule I have, some €3.5 billion is to be paid to them over the next seven or eight months. A total of €21.5 billion is to be paid to all the other holders of unsecured and unguaranteed bonds, for which the Irish people have no...

Leaders' Questions (20 Sep 2011)

Joe Higgins: This disastrous policy of austerity should be ended.