Results 6,261-6,280 of 19,032 for speaker:Ruairi Quinn

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I am listening to what the committee has to say. This is a major change in culture and there will be other changes. I am glad there is broad consensus among all parties that the old practices are no longer acceptable. We should do it rather than have it done to us. There will be a transition period. I cannot think of any other way of doing it and I said this in Piper's Hill at a meeting...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: Are we discussing the grouping of amendments beginning with amendment No. 48?

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: Regarding ETBs, while parents' representatives are to be nominated by national associations of parents, those nominated must themselves be parents of children registered as students in an ETB facility. This is a considerable improvement on the current position whereby parents of registered students do the electing but the representatives themselves do not need to be parents of students in...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: Yes. We are establishing in law the primacy of the community in respect of the school itself. We are not prescribing the rules and regulations as to how that is to be implemented. We will probably need to provide policy guidelines, directions or statutory instruments to address the issue of ETB members who do not live within their ETBs' areas, but we will certainly not use primary...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 24: In page 24, subsection (1), line 26, to delete "or" and substitute "and".These are all drafting amendments. Amendment No. 24 simply changes the requirement of an education and training board to consider observations or recommendations of the chief executive officer in regard to a proposed gift or trust to a requirement to consider observations and recommendations....

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 25: In page 24, subsection (1)(a)(i), line 30, to delete "be" and substitute "act as".

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 26: In page 24, subsection (1)(b), line 36, to delete "be" where it firstly occurs and substitute "act as".

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 27: In page 24, subsection (2), line 37, to delete "be" and substitute "act as".

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 28: In page 25, subsection (1), line 9, to delete "Each" and substitute "Subject to section 9(5), each".This amendment makes the composition of the new boards subject to section 9(5) of the Bill, which provides that members of VECs holding office immediately before the establishment of education and training boards will automatically become members of those boards and...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: The Bill provides that parents and community representatives will have an equal number of men and women on the education and training boards. In regard to staff, the Minister of the day is conferred with a regulation-making power to establish women-only and men-only panels from which people will be elected. That is the position under the current regulations. In the case of local authority...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I share the Deputy's view. However, we cannot write recommendations into statutory legislation. Recommendations are not part of making law. This is not to say that directives, suggestions and guidelines cannot be issued by the Minister of the day, after 2014, in respect of the composition of the boards. If the Deputy wishes to re-table the amendment on Report Stage for further...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: There are legal issues to be taken into account. I will have to take advice on the matter but it might be possible to include a provision along the lines that, where possible, gender balance should inform the composition of appointments from the local authority to the board. However, I am not a lawyer, nor a legislator in the technical sense. We will have to be sure we are not compounding...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I agree with the Chairman's analysis. All that we can do, even in general elections, is stipulate that there be a gender balance in the selection of candidates. We cannot second guess the outcome as decided by the electorate. There is nothing to prevent the Minister of the day, either the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government or the Minister for Education and Skills,...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I am aware of some of the concerns that have informed this debate and the amendment being discussed and we can return to this on Report Stage if necessary. There will be no change in the constituency of Donegal, where there is already a very large Gaeltacht area. There will be Gaeltacht areas within the enlarged Mayo, Sligo and Leitrim ETB and Kerry can be included here also. It seems...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: The fact is that currently VECs are public bodies and in future, the ETBs will be public bodies. As a consequence, they fall within the terms of the Official Languages Act 2003, which is statutory legislation as distinct from a policy strategy, which is what the 20-year strategy for the Irish language is. I take on board the Deputy's point that a policy strategy is different to legislation....

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: That is my understanding and that is the advice I have. The 20-year strategy is a policy position rather than statutory legislation. However, the Official Languages Act 2003, which I was in the course of describing when Deputy O'Brien arrived, is law and that Act, among other things, obliges public bodies, which the VECs are and the ETBs will be, to meet the relevant Irish language...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 21: In page 22, subsection (8), line 19, to delete “in” and substitute “of”. The purpose of this amendment is to correct a typographical error. Section 24 deals with the accountability of the CEO to certain Oireachtas committees. At the moment, subsection (8) excludes certain committees from this provision. It refers to the "Committee on...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 22: In page 23, subsection (4)(f), line 16, to delete “and” and substitute the following: “(g) bodies representative of business, industry and employers, and”.

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: I move amendment No. 23: In page 24, to delete line 25 and substitute the following: “27.--(1) Where a person-- (a) makes an offer of a gift of money, land or other property to an education and training board, or (b) requests the board to act as a trustee of any trust or charity, the chief executive of that board shall, within one month of the offer or request being made, prepare and...

Committee on Education and Social Protection: Select Sub-Committee on Education and Skills: Education and Training Boards Bill 2012: Committee Stage (17 Jan 2013)

Ruairi Quinn: Not at this point.