Results 7,101-7,120 of 21,404 for speaker:Mary Lou McDonald

Leaders' Questions (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: The Tánaiste was not asked that question.

Leaders' Questions (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Then the Government should reverse it.

Leaders' Questions (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I also want to raise the way in which budget 2018 perpetuates the discrimination faced by many, but particularly by women, when it comes to the State pension. As has been said, 35,000 people have been left with a lesser pension payment than they would have received had they retired before 2012. As the Tánaiste knows, this is the result of...

Leaders' Questions (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: In our alternative budget, which is a balanced budget, Sinn Féin provides for the funding to reverse the 2012 changes, which so viciously discriminate against women. The Government could have made that choice too but it refused. It chose not to do right by the women affected. Doling out tea and sympathy does not cut it. Fine Gael is in government to bring forward solutions and...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Thoroughly independent, I think we can agree.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Can I make a suggestion? Given that we have the report and given that this has been a long-running matter that has come up before successive Committees of Public Accounts, we should be starting from the position that we deal with this issue. The question should then be how we deal with it, what are the parameters and what are the cautions that we need to build in. It would be wrong-headed...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: I say this to be helpful. This matter has had a good airing and ventilation and I share the concerns of colleagues on this. Perhaps next week we could have a more deliberative session to set out the parameters and telling us not so much what we cannot do but what it is that we can.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: I would not do that.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Just so as to deal with this thematically.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Yes, that is my correspondence. A further document, No. 805(C), also came to the committee.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: I may have the reference number wrong but I think members will know that I am referring to a note forwarded to us in respect of-----

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: I did.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Yes, that is me.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Yes, but I am going to address the net issue, if I might. As members will know, I and others here have on a number of occasions raised issues around the fair deal scheme, ancillary charging regimes and so on. We had agreed as a committee to review and examine this area. Last week the executives from HIQA appeared before us, which I found to be a useful exchange. A number of issues were...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Let us just give them a mention. This story was alarming. It referred to a meeting, the minutes of which we as a committee now have in our possession, at which the serving chairman of HIQA, Mr. Brian McEnery, was in attendance along with members of Nursing Home Ireland and legal counsel. On the basis, not just of the newspaper report, but also of the minutes that members now have before...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: Yes. That is correct. We do not know the provenance of it, but I think we can accept its veracity. I noted in the news report at the weekend that there has been no refutation of this meeting. Let us take from that what we will. For the purposes of our work, this requires that HIQA - not just the executive Mr. Phelim Quinn and his colleagues but the HIQA board and Mr. McEnery, the...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: In respect of dealing with the fair deal scheme which involves €1.6 billion in spending, the correspondent raises an issue against the ratios, private to public, and we need to examine that. However, what I am raising here is something quite distinct, discreet and specific. We have here not so much wider questions around the fair deal scheme. These are direct questions around the...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: I have. The Chairman is quite correct.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: I do, because we need to examine the entirety of fair deal. I am saying, for now, the urgent piece in my view is not only the newspaper account but the account we have now by way of minutes of this particular meeting. We need to examine it next week.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (12 Oct 2017)

Mary Lou McDonald: For now we need to deal with this particular issue, and we need to do it next Thursday.