Results 781-800 of 4,700 for speaker:Noel Ahern

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: The amendment inserts a new subsection under which a company's annual report to the Minister shall include a statement regarding employee numbers. This is designed to reflect the changes introduced in section 11 in respect of the calculation of the number of employees in each port company for the purposes of determining the election of worker directors. That is a new requirement and the...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: They are probably listed as having been published.

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: The relevant Oireachtas committee can consider such reports. However, it is not the case that the companies send them to the Oireachtas Library out of the goodness of their hearts; it is a requirement that they must be laid before the Houses. I understand the committee is considering examining these reports and inviting representatives of the different boards to come before it to discuss...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: I apologise if I took Senator Michael McCarthy up wrongly but the debate did wander into section 11.

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: I did answer his question as to who recommended this. It was recommended in the 2001 performance audit of port companies and the 2003 high level review of State commercial ports.

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: There may not have been but the reports did feed into the 2005 ports policy document. There has been much consultation on these matters.

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: What I am trying to say is there has been a long process. I am only a couple of months in the Department but there has been a long process. This has been signalled for seven or eight years. It was recommended in various reports. It fed into the 2005 ports policy document.

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: This has come a long way and no one has cried halt. There has been consultation along the way and people have not stopped it. The Senators are raising an objection at the last minute. The issue of port users was raised. The high level review believed such people could have a conflict of interest and it was recommended that they should not be members of the boards. I accept that before...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: That was one of the items that emerged. Removing local authority members from the boards was another issue, as was the worker director. The ten ports are now focused commercial bodies and 12 people is too many to have on their boards. The recommendation of different professional people, which has been put into the ports policy document approved by Government in 2005, is that the size the...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: I have listened to the Members' comments. The 2005 ports policy statement which accepted these recommendations on reducing the size of port boards and removing users and local authority members from those boards was widely circulated at the time. It was certainly sent to the port companies and was discussed by their boards, on which there are local authority members. They had a direct...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: I do not have a specific answer about to whom exactly they talked. There were two reports previously and the last one I mentioned is the 2005 ports policy document issued by the Government. That was discussed at each port board and local authority members of those boards were present. The original reports were the 2001 performance audit report, which was produced by Jonathan Packer and...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: Was he Brendan? That name has connotations with the Senator's party but I do not know whether——

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: ——it was him or his cousin but Grant Farrell Sparks and Raymond Burke Consulting did the report.

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: Not the Senator, and not the other fellow either. There was widespread consultation and discussion with a broad spectrum of people in the port sector at that time. The Senator asked about the composition of the eight new directors. The chief executive officer of each company will be a member of the board, there will be a worker director and six ministerial appointees, one of whom will be a...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: The trend, therefore, has been to align them with what is deemed to be current best practice. We appear to be at the beginning of another wave of life now where we are questioning the value of agencies and considering amalgamating some of them. It may well be that in 20 years the public representative will again be king, all decisions will be made by Ministers and there will be public...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: In some respects the amendment might seem like common sense but it is not normal wording. The wording as drafted is the standard drafting style and if it were changed it would be at variance with other similar references throughout the original principal Act. Generally, that is the normal language used in legislation that goes through the Parliamentary Counsel's office and therefore to...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: To be fair, that seems to be common sense in one respect but this is the consistent way that wording is used. If "written" is inserted once, some court of law might rule that a line in a particular Bill refers to "written" while in another Bill it does not. There is a standard way for the Parliamentary Counsel to draft that. This is the normal language used. The word "written" is not...

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: Senator O'Donovan is blinding me with these Latinisms.

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: Faced with that sort of knowledge, perhaps I will refer back to the Senator on Report Stage.

Seanad: Harbours (Amendment) Bill 2008: Committee Stage (22 Oct 2008)

Noel Ahern: This proposal will amend section 23 of the original 1996 Act and it allows for greater flexibility in respect of the amount of money port companies may borrow. To answer the question, the consent of the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Transport will still be required for any borrowings undertaken by port companies but the Bill allows port companies to borrow up to the value of...