Results 681-700 of 11,114 for speaker:Damien English

Seanad: Nithe i dtosach suíonna - Commencement Matters: Pharmacy Services (19 May 2022)

Damien English: I thank Senator Byrne for raising this issue and giving me the chance to address the Seanad on the matter. It is timely with regard to the process. Ireland operates a managed employment permits system, maximising the benefits of economic migration and minimising the risk of disrupting Ireland's labour market. The regime is designed to facilitate the entry of appropriately skilled non-EEA...

Seanad: Nithe i dtosach suíonna - Commencement Matters: Pharmacy Services (19 May 2022)

Damien English: Again, I thank Senator Byrne for raising this issue. It is a very important area because we know the service our pharmacists provide to all of us. Certainly, they have been extremely busy in helping with the response to Covid-19 over the past couple of years. They do great work and it is important they can access the level of staff they need. Again, to clarify for the record, the IPU does...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Covid-19 Pandemic (19 May 2022)

Damien English: The Deputies have raised a few issues there. The debate has not changed much. They are very much focused on IP and the IP regime. The position of the EU has always been that that is not where the sole focus should be. The Deputies and I have differed on that for many months. I am not going to change their minds here. I am happy to consider the letter that was sent to us by the committee...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Covid-19 Pandemic (19 May 2022)

Damien English: I was not at that committee but will be happy to read back over the submissions on that. I have not had a chance to get a sense of what is being put forward. Much of the debate on this, including the debates we had in these Houses, focused on supply. The EU always took the position that that would not necessarily be the issue and there were many other parts of it, including the capacity of...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Covid-19 Pandemic (19 May 2022)

Damien English: I propose to take Questions Nos. 6, 33, 37, 52, 58 and 59 together. I thank Deputy Connolly and her colleagues for tabling them. As we have outlined previously to both Houses, universal and equitable access to safe, effective and affordable vaccines, diagnostics and treatments is crucial in the global fight against Covid-19. This is at the heart of the Irish Government's international...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Industrial Relations (19 May 2022)

Damien English: We have been very clear here. We should respect the advice and guidance of the WRC. We encourage that. Naturally we ask all parties to do that and we do that on a regular basis be it public or private organisations. I am not familiar with the situations the Deputy is raising. If it is a funding issue it has to be directly raised with the Minister or Department with responsibility for the...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Industrial Relations (19 May 2022)

Damien English: The Deputy keeps saying that but he keeps referring to a situation I do not know about.

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Work Permits (19 May 2022)

Damien English: I thank Deputy Naughten for raising the question in respect of work permits. I agree with him on the issue of access to skills. Every company we talk to across the country raises the issue with us. The regional enterprise plans will be of major assistance in helping us focus our minds on this. I also refer to the regional skills fora and various national skills strategies working across...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Work Permits (19 May 2022)

Damien English: I do not think any of us would stand over the processing time for permits over the last year. However, we have to recognise that the number of applications went up by 70% and those numbers are continuing to increase this year. It looks like there will be over 35,000 permits applied for this year. We have put an action plan together since last November under the guidance of the...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Work Permits (19 May 2022)

Damien English: For non-trusted partners it is about 21 weeks. With the team of people involved now, we are quite happy that we will make great inroads into that time over the next couple of weeks. The 3,000 permits that were applied for since October in the horticulture and meat industry sectors are nearly all processed now which is a big bang. That will help us focus on bringing the timeline well down...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Work Permits (19 May 2022)

Damien English: A couple of issues there are not under our Department. I understand the report on social housing limits is with the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, at the moment and he hopes to bring forward those changes very soon. He took questions on the matter here last week. That would be a positive step. We all recognise that they have not changed since 2011. The social housing barrier and the...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Industrial Relations (19 May 2022)

Damien English: It is important to emphasise that Ireland's system of industrial relations is essentially voluntary in nature and that responsibility for the resolution of industrial disputes between employers and workers rests in the first instance with the employer, the workers and their representatives. The State provides the industrial relations dispute settlement mechanisms to support parties in their...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Industrial Relations (19 May 2022)

Damien English: I thank the Deputy. I am sorry I could not hear at the start. There was an issue with the sound. I know the Deputy has not named the case. I am not familiar with it because the details relating to it were not provided with the question.

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Industrial Relations (19 May 2022)

Damien English: It is a number of cases. The system is not legally binding. We urge all parties to these cases to honour the recommendations if they can and to follow the advice. That is how it works best. The arrangement has served us well over the last years. In these disputes, the recommendation comes from the WRC and Labour Court and should be followed as well as possible in most cases. We would...

Written Answers — Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment: Enterprise Support Services (19 May 2022)

Damien English: I propose to take Questions Nos. 8, 11, 187 and 188 together. On February 9th, the Irish Innovation Seed Fund Programme was launched by the Tánaiste and the Minister for Finance. This Programme has a strategic emphasis on attracting new fund managers to the Irish equity ecosystem and opening new pipelines for finance. It is a fund of funds, which is an indirect form of equity...

Written Answers — Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment: Industrial Development (19 May 2022)

Damien English: Clare has witnessed an 11% increase in employment in overseas companies since 2012. Over 680 net new jobs were added to the FDI portfolio during this period. There are now over 6,924 people employed across 71 multinational companies in Clare. Recent investments of scale have been in the Technology, Med Tech, Pharma and Financial Services sectors, with announcements from companies like...

Written Answers — Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment: Employment Rights (19 May 2022)

Damien English: Following extensive engagement with the social partners, the 'Plan for Action on Collective Redundancies following Insolvency' was published in June 2021. This sets out several commitments to safeguard further the rights of workers in these circumstances including: 1. amendments to company law and employment law, 2. establishing a new Employment Law Review Group, and 3. the provision of an...

Written Answers — Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment: Industrial Development (19 May 2022)

Damien English: Regional development is at the centre of IDA Ireland's current strategy “Driving Recovery & Sustainable Growth 2021-2024”. Of the target 800 investments in the Strategy, half are targeted at regional locations. As the Deputy may be aware, IDA Ireland announces mid and end year results. The latest results, released last December, show a very strong first year of this...

Written Answers — Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment: Work Permits (19 May 2022)

Damien English: My Department experienced a significant increase in applications for employment permits in the past year, impacting on processing times. From the start of January to the end of December 2021, some 27,666 applications were received, representing a 69% increase over the same period in 2020 (16,293) and a 47% increase on 2019 (18,811), which itself represented an 11 year high in applications....

Written Answers — Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment: Industrial Development (19 May 2022)

Damien English: The Deputy will be aware that the Shannon Estuary Economic Taskforce was recently established following a commitment in the Programme for Government to ensure that local development plans are put in place to stimulate sustainable economic activity for those areas that had been expecting economic development arising from new fossil-fuel infrastructure. The Terms of Reference for the...