Results 661-680 of 1,253 for speaker:John Crown

Seanad: Issues Facing Small and Medium Enterprises in Rural Towns: Motion (8 Oct 2013)

John Crown: Am I to share time?

Seanad: Issues Facing Small and Medium Enterprises in Rural Towns: Motion (8 Oct 2013)

John Crown: If I speak, will Senator Byrne lose his opportunity? I will share if he wishes.

Seanad: Issues Facing Small and Medium Enterprises in Rural Towns: Motion (8 Oct 2013)

John Crown: I made the point once that I was the first person in my family to go to university but if I had gone into the retail trade I would not have been the first, second or third to do so, perhaps the fourth or fifth, and what is more I might have done so in a small town. My father owned a shop in Brooklyn, New York. Both my grandparents, my father for a while, my aunt and my cousins all ran small...

Seanad: Issues Facing Small and Medium Enterprises in Rural Towns: Motion (8 Oct 2013)

John Crown: This is more ambitious than JobBridge. It is to redeploy the money already paid out as unemployment assistance directly to businesses to encourage them to bring people up.

Seanad: Issues Facing Small and Medium Enterprises in Rural Towns: Motion (8 Oct 2013)

John Crown: I throw the following idea out first in this Chamber. As part of a broader initiative aimed not only at rejuvenating the retail sector but also looking to health issues, could we consider having a novel approach to smoking and the selling of cigarettes by offering preferential rates of VAT and tax advantages to shops, pubs, off-licences and businesses to declare themselves to be ethical...

Seanad: Order of Business (8 Oct 2013)

John Crown: The press and the media had their own little referendum about us several years ago and they abolished us. I have one last point to make; could we please consider amending the way we do business to increase the frequency with which we can introduce backbench and Independent legislation? There are so many things I want to do in the next two years and I get to do only one every eight months.

Seanad: Order of Business (8 Oct 2013)

John Crown: I, too, was distressed to hear of the conditions and, in particular, the indefinite nature of the detention experienced by people in the refugee-asylum system. I am glad that colleagues have raised the subject. Clearly, there is a critical need both to improve the week-to-week living conditions of the people concerned and, much more important, to sort out what is the plan to process them...

Seanad: Protected Disclosures Bill 2013: Committee Stage (1 Oct 2013)

John Crown: I do not for one second wish to imply that the Minister had anything to do with it, but in my early days in the country when the Minister, Deputy Howlin, was the Minister for Health, I started blowing whistles about deficiencies in cancer services at a time when they were clearly, palpably, measurably, by any objective standard and by a distance the worst in Europe. This was not the fault of...

Seanad: Order of Business (24 Sep 2013)

John Crown: We had a recent discussion and the Seanad sponsored a consultation on lifestyle changes and cancer. If, however, the Seanad is not to leave itself open to an extraordinary charge of hypocrisy in making aphoristic statements, it needs to come to grips with a few things that we in this House and the other House can jointly do. It is important that one of those things is that the important...

Seanad: Report of Seanad Public Consultation Committee: Statements (18 Sep 2013)

John Crown: The accusation is made that sometimes we sit here talking among ourselves and nobody is listening and no one is reporting. I may be feeling a little cynical today but I want this process to be something other than people sitting around and basking in the glow of a feel-good factor of making platitudinous statements about the way the world should be. We are not like a boy scout club but...

Seanad: Report of Seanad Public Consultation Committee: Statements (18 Sep 2013)

John Crown: I must admit I knew very little about the fact that this process was taking place or the consultations it involved. Consequently, I am approaching it as something of an ingenue. That said, I will make one or two points. On the occasion of his famous "Lickgate" speech in this Chamber, the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, stated the Seanad had the habit of sometimes falling into the...

Seanad: Order of Business (18 Sep 2013)

John Crown: The public pays the party for expelled Deputies and Senators.

Seanad: Order of Business (18 Sep 2013)

John Crown: Some will comment on the appropriateness or otherwise of Fine Gael - perhaps we should call them Shinne Gael, now that they are working together on the abolition campaign - to comment on anyone's elitism.

Seanad: Order of Business (18 Sep 2013)

John Crown: For a group of people who would not acknowledge the legitimacy of Dáil elections from the 3rd to the 27th Dáil, who believed that the Government of Ireland was Mr. Tom Maguire, the last survivor of the 2nd Dáil who was sitting in a retirement home in Mayo, or seven guys in a shebeen in Belfast called the army council, and who thought that everyone else in the country who had...

Seanad: Order of Business (18 Sep 2013)

John Crown: I still feel a little like a tourist when I am in the corridors of Government and Parliament and I still take an outsider's perspective and have a sense of wonder at some of the opportunities it gives somebody who has a different day job. I had an interesting experience last week. I got to address a meeting held by the London Irish Lawyers Association and the National University of Ireland...

Seanad: Order of Business (18 Sep 2013)

John Crown: I do not know if he will be sacked but he admitted that it was an absurd figure. The vote for those who might be interested in such things went 75 to nil against abolition. I am sorry that we cannot have the referendum among the Irish diaspora. They were very taken by the point that this was the only forum in which members of the Irish diaspora, who had been forced through circumstances...

Seanad: SI 325 of 2012 - European Union (Quality and Safety of Human Organs Intended for Transplantation) Regulations 2012: Motion (20 Aug 2013)

John Crown: I welcome the Minister of State. I also welcome the members of the press to the Seanad. I have been reading their work for many years and I often wondered what they look like. I generally compliment the tone of the debate. I note, however, that it has been commented by one of my colleagues that Senator Daly, who deserves huge credit for his initiative and dedication in making this debate...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Quarterly Meeting with Department of Health and HSE: Discussion on Health Issues (25 Jul 2013)

John Crown: I welcome an tAire. I preface my question by stating it is regrettable that Deputy Naughten, who had scientific and technical expertise, was removed from this committee.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Quarterly Meeting with Department of Health and HSE: Discussion on Health Issues (25 Jul 2013)

John Crown: I merely state that for the record. I welcome Mr. O'Brien to the ranks of those who have been appointed to an organisation, like Seanad Éireann, whose extinction is planned by its owners. With respect to the question I raised about the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Quarterly Meeting with Department of Health and HSE: Discussion on Health Issues (25 Jul 2013)

John Crown: Indeed.