Results 6,201-6,220 of 32,433 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: I will indeed. Deputy Barry and other Deputies very frequently put parliamentary questions regarding legal and professional fees that are paid for the provision of services to the Department of Finance. Once we move beyond the period of any commercial sensitivity reasons for not sharing that information we share it. If there are no commercial reasons stopping me from sharing the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: The Deputy's description of what the Government is doing, in some ways, is correct. It is not my intention that the State would remain the largest shareholder of AIB in the long term. My view is that we should be in a position where the bank is privately owned. Before we get to that point, we need to be in a position where the State is no longer the majority shareholder. We will have...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: At the moment, we are a fair bit off both. We still own in excess of 70% of AIB. There are quite a few bridges to cross before we get anywhere near the State no longer being the largest shareholder in the bank. There will be many more decisions required after that before the bank is in private ownership. It is very difficult for me to put a timeframe on that. It depends on so many...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: Were I to indicate in that regard, it would give a public indication of the future decisions I am going to make in regard to the State's share in that bank. It is possible that further decisions could be made that would lead to a reduction in the shareholding of the bank. As to whether we would get to below 50%, I prefer not to speculate on that for now given that we are currently involved...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: If the Deputy will bear with me for a moment, I will ask my officials to get the information on how much has been repaid. As to whether any companies have indicated an intention to do that again in the future, I am not currently aware of it. I should emphasise - I know the Deputy will be aware of this - that would be something they would indicate to the Revenue Commissioners rather than to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: No, it would be a bit broader than that. It would be some employers who repaid the subsidy due to ineligibility, that is, they either reached a view that they were ineligible or, in conjunction with the Revenue Commissioners, that view was reached, and some employers who voluntarily repaid the subsidy. For example, there are employers that continue to meet the Revenue threshold of being 30%...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: I do not have that information available to me. It may not be available because when employers made a decision to return a payment, they were not required to indicate to the Revenue why they did so. I will inquire as to whether I can shed any further light on the question, but my expectation is that I will not be able to do so. When money was returned to Revenue, employers were not...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: Given that the operation of the Revenue Commissioners is statutorily independent of the Minister for Finance, I do not believe it would be appropriate for me to be directing Revenue as to what type of reports or audits it should do. If information becomes available via the Revenue Commissioners through its normal reporting procedures that is of help in seeking to understand this matter, that...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: I differ strongly from Deputy Nash in one respect. He referred to the transfer of public money into private hands but that was done with the purpose of keeping people in work. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have a job today who would not have one without the EWSS. In fairness to Deputy Nash and the Labour Party, they have recognised that by their support for the legislation....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: The level of pay or recognition that AIB staff receive is a matter for the board of AIB rather than for the shareholder. Whether it is a bank or any other organisation, how the staff are paid is a matter for the board of the company. That said, I want to acknowledge that those who have worked in the front lines of our banks have played a really valuable role during this pandemic. Lots of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: I understand and accept the point Deputy Richmond makes. When we pick any performance threshold for being able to move on to what is a very valuable subsidy programme, there will always be some businesses that are just outside that threshold. I know that at the end of last year there were companies that traded very well from September into December. Things changed at the end of December...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: I will briefly go back to the practical example the Deputy gave me earlier on. It was also in recognition of the kind of issues the Deputy is referring to that we changed the CRSS. I would expect that some or all of the businesses the Deputy is referring to that were not in a position to trade after 8 p.m. or that had their business significantly impacted by public health regulations could...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: The answer is up to six months. The second question was on the trading plan for Bank of Ireland.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: The date of May still stands for that but we keep it under review to see if the targets we have are achieved before that point.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: That is a matter for the ECB to answer rather than me. The answer that I imagine it would give is that it did so in recognition of the liquidity support it was making available to those banks.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: In the engagement I had with officials on this, at no point did I receive guidance that it should be in place. A big feature of why our schemes have worked in the way they have is the only two features for accessing them have been where a company is with turnover and where it is with compliance. Behind that the company will have been impacted by public health regulations. The low level of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: The Deputy has named a taxpayer so how many people does it employ?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: I am aware of those companies that are in the public domain but it has not been reported back to me because it was not a reporting requirement for accessing this scheme. However, this scheme is the most significant and successful one for the retention of jobs and that is the measure against which it should be judged. The Deputy is raising the case of an individual taxpayer. He stated the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: How many times did he raise it?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Covid-19 Payments and the Sale of AIB shares: Minister for Finance (19 Jan 2022)

Paschal Donohoe: The Deputy used the phrase "so be it". That is not a luxury that was open to me when I was dealing with the threat of a mass unemployment crisis. At no point in the exchange we had did I seek to attribute to him responsibility for failures I may or may not have. The case I am robustly making is that by any independent evaluation of the employment wage subsidy scheme, it has played a...