Results 801-820 of 26,398 for speaker:John McGuinness

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: Is there an audit committee in the CSO?

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: How many members does the internal audit committee have?

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: In regard to the audit committee, are accountancy and all the other appropriate skills that would be expected represented on the committee?

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: Who appoints that audit committee?

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: Are the members usually from outside or from within the CSO?

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: What is the balance? Is it 50:50 or are there more insiders than outsiders?

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: The Minister of State mentioned the births, deaths and population estimates. We had considerable discussion after the Covid pandemic about the need for a Covid investigation similar to the ongoing inquiry in the UK. There was discussion about early deaths and people dying at a much younger age and from various cancers and so on. The question arose as to whether these deaths were linked to...

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: What I am getting at is how deaths are reported. Is there a way of ascertaining the number of people who died of, for example, cancer, and the increased incidence of various cancers? We are told there is an increase in cancer rates throughout the country. I would like to get the figures to substantiate that, if it can be substantiated.

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: The Minister of State mentioned that she had statistics on movements from Ukraine. I presume she means the numbers of Ukrainians who have come here, where they are and so forth. What about international protection applicants? That is a very interesting movement of population. Where are they from? What are the numbers and how are they made up? How did they enter the State? Was it...

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: The Minister of State takes an interest in the number of Ukrainian individuals and families who are here. The same level of information on international protection applicants should be available to the Government, including on how they arrived, whether they arrived with or without passports or paperwork and the number of men, women and children, and families. That is a huge piece of...

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: The Minister of State will revert to the committee. The simplification of CSO forms is an issue I am interested in, both in terms of the census and the questions that are being asked. An example I will give relates to imports and exports. It is as though some of the forms are sent to a sector, for example, the transport industry, but the operators find it difficult to relate to them....

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: When I was a transport operator, I used to fill out those forms. I found a few ingenious ways of ticking boxes but they were not really accurate and I was never happy with the fact that those boxes were ticked. It may not have been just my form that might skew the position because others might have been doing the same thing. If they were, they were trying to comply and work with the CSO....

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: We should be conscious of the need to do that. People in business are usually busy. Ticking these boxes is important for the CSO and therefore the simplicity of the questions is also important.

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: Good. I am not sure if Deputy Conway Walsh put this question to the Minister of State. She asked about the statistics on men and women in the country. This may not have been carried out every year, but certainly on a rolling three- or four-year basis and it seems to have stopped. I am talking about Senator Higgins.

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: Is the Minister of State saying it is every two years?

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: Is the basket of goods an itemised basket of groceries?

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: Therefore, we can make a comparison of a particular grocery item this year and over the last number of years as the price changed and so on.

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: It gets to that level.

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: Good. My final question is on the Civil Service renewal action plan. The Minister of State said the CSO's work also supports the Civil Service renewal action plan. What are those plans?

Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach: Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 4 - Central Statistics Office (Revised) (28 Feb 2024)

John McGuinness: I make the point that not everyone is connected digitally. It is a huge issue for everybody, but particularly older people. We have already had issues with bank closures and access to cash through ATMs. I would not say it is deliberate but it is isolating people in terms of forms from Departments and older people trying to get on with their lives. There needs to be a recognition that...