Results 6,921-6,940 of 8,276 for speaker:Jennifer Carroll MacNeill

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Does Dr. Quinn have figures for the proportion of applications approved by SBCI that were facilitated or not facilitated by the pillar banks, and within a reasonable timeframe, versus the proportion ultimately facilitated by credit unions? The point I am making concerns the difference in treatment between the pillar banks and the credit unions.

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I appreciate that it is ongoing work. I will refer to one of the challenges highlighted by business initially. The scheme was well flagged throughout that first summer of Covid. I think it was introduced in September 2020 and business was waiting for it, notwithstanding the EWSS, CRSS and other supports. One of the criticisms was that it was there to finance Covid-related debt as opposed...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: It is the reality of business. That is the difficulty when you are trying to design a scheme within EU parameters and those relating to the Department. The reality for business is if, for example, a hotel has been redeveloped over the previous three years and the business has that debt and is capable of refinancing it based on normal returns, revenue and trading, that changes because of...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Yes, but they were coming to an end

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: There was an extraordinary level of support provided to the banks in the context of the 80% guarantee. The risk they would have taken on with those loans was very small. Feedback from businesses in my area, largely export businesses to the Far East and so on, was that the banks were not interested in taking on any additional risk and, irrespective of the 80% backing, the 20% was not worth...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I have a couple of questions. I appreciate the point the Comptroller and Auditor General just made, but I will ask Dr. Quinn about the Department's general oversight of the Microfinance Ireland, MFI, loans. Dr. Quinn said in her opening statement that in the relevant period, especially through the Covid pandemic, Microfinance Ireland supported 1,300 businesses supporting close to 3,000...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Yes. My colleague, Deputy Murphy, covered some of this previously. I appreciate the Comptroller and Auditor General's point about coming back to it later. I will go back to the point we discussed at the outset, which was the review of the restart grant. I know that body of work - the major review and not the more ongoing work - is yet to be done in the Department. What does Dr. Quinn...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: It is certainly true to say that the businesses that needed the grant got it. However the review goes, I know the businesses in my constituency that needed the grant got it. Even where they were not aware they were eligible for it and then became aware and went back, they still got it. It was the difference between surviving and not at many stages.

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: No. I know.

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: It is interesting Dr. Quinn should say that, because most people in Ireland are employed by much smaller enterprises, in many respects. On some of what Dr. Quinn said, for example, on hairdressers, I was in touch with them through Irish Small and Medium Employers, ISME, and they were hugely concerned about the emergence of an even stronger black market in their sector and what that meant....

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Dr. Quinn said earlier that the design of the restart scheme was done very quickly, from the beginning of May to being operational on 22 May or thereabouts, which is important and well done on that. She said that, in other circumstances, it might have taken a year to put a scheme of that kind together. We saw the same quick delivery of schemes in the Department of Social Protection with the...

Public Accounts Committee: 2020 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 32 - Enterprise, Trade and Employment
Chapter 6 - Covid-19 Restart Grant Schemes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: Earlier, I spoke about the death knell for small businesses and that slow “No” which is sometimes the case in the response. In Dr. Quinn's Department, it is very important to be responsive immediately to all of the different parts of the economy and its different sectors, and perhaps this will be considered in the evaluation. Of course, our good friend, Mr. McCarthy, has a...

Written Answers — Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: Overseas Development Aid (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: 63. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the actions his Department is taking to support the provision of education in developing countries in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [56486/21]

Written Answers — Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: Departmental Programmes (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: 66. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the position regarding the continued success of the Irish Fellows Programme which provides educational opportunities in Ireland for persons from developing countries; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [56487/21]

Written Answers — Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: Defence Forces (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: 109. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence the work being done to increase the number of members of the Defence Forces; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [56187/21]

Written Answers — Department of Justice and Equality: Citizenship Applications (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: 289. To ask the Tánaiste and Minister for Justice and Equality the status of a citizenship application by a person (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [56736/21]

Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement: Engagement with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I thank all of our guests for coming in today. Is it in order for me to ask questions etc.?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement: Engagement with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I am a new Member of the Oireachtas and a new member of the committee. I want to ask the members of the commission about some of the details of their work, if they do not mind. I do not mind which of the commissioners chooses to respond based on how they organise their work. Taking it through, where we have been to date, over the course of the Troubles there were 16 people disappeared....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement: Engagement with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I appreciate that. What is the mechanism? I am seeking some understanding of how it works.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on the Implementation of the Good Friday Agreement: Engagement with the Independent Commission for the Location of Victims’ Remains (18 Nov 2021)

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill: I am trying to get a sense of the pace with which information may have come. Over the course of the commission's work, has it received a large volume of information about a number of cases or has it been consistently spread out? Has it come in dribs and drabs or something more organised? I am not sure whether our guests can talk about that.