Results 8,181-8,200 of 34,616 for speaker:Seán Fleming

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: There is one concerning thing about the valuation as far as I am concerned. The price assumes that Dublin City Council, or the relevant local authority, would amend the zoning needed by material contravention of rezoning. Perhaps another public body was going to assist in the matter. Maybe that is not an unreasonable assumption. Anyone who has been a member of a local authority would...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: Let us cut to the chase and what I believe will be helpful in this case. It looks like a remarkable coincidence that €23 million was precisely what the Irish Greyhound Board required. That was what the parent Department, the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, wanted for that site. It is a remarkable coincidence. We have no evidence yet, but I want the committee to...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: That is agreed. We will move on. The Committee of Public Accounts established by the 32nd Dáil has reached item No. 1850 in correspondence and this is just letters received. The volume of letters sent out to follow up on various issues is a multiple of this. This far exceeds correspondence received by all other Oireachtas committees combined since the 32nd Dáil was established....

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: We will definitely discuss this matter because if the committee is to be thorough in its work - we are very thorough and exact in our interim reports as much as is humanly possible - we need a research facility specific to the committee. We will try to move through the correspondence as quickly as possible but we will come back to this. I call Deputy Cassells.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: We will leave it to the audit but I still want the committee's agreement that we seek the correspondence between the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and the Valuation Office on the negotiations and the price settled for or sought. That might be helpful and I do not think the volume information would be too high. There will have been some transactions. I now ask the...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: We will return to that.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: The next item of correspondence is No. 1839B from the HSE about Console staff. It corrects the wording of a previous letter and whether it referred to a person who was previously employed, an employed person or existing employees. It is only a technical question. We will note and publish it. No. 1846B is from the Secretary General of the Department of Education and Skills providing...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: It is called waste tourism.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: This committee rightly went into the function and role of the Department. We are definitely publishing that and I believe some other committee or individual Deputies should certainly take it up. We have done our job by publishing this. We are not delving into the landfills again.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: We will move on. However, I want to clarify an issue that I might have glossed over. I say to those interested in the recycling issue the news is not half as good as I read out a moment ago. The table covers the 2.7 million tonnes of waste in the country in the year. Recycling was 34% and recycling involved in compost and digestion was 7%. In fact the recycling was only 41%. It goes on...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: Grand. I will finish on this item. Members will indulge me on the issue of the RTÉ2 +1 channel. We have brilliant news. The letter states:In June 2018, RTÉ made a formal request to the Department for the extension of RTE One+ 1 service and the introduction of a new service, RTE2 +1. The Broadcasting Authority of Ireland (BAI) was asked to conduct a Sectoral Impact Assessment on...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: Most of this relates to communications and those type of issues aside from the waste which is part of our broadband discussions and that whole debate because they affect that area and they operate-----

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: That is fine.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: We will publish it and hold it over for discussion. We will keep it on the agenda for discussion but we will publish it in the meantime because people will be interested in that document. The next item of correspondence is No. 1852B from Mr. Ciarán Breen, providing information requested by the committee regarding the total of all payments for compensation and the percentage of...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: No, I will come to that in just a moment because many people have never been at a Committee of Public Accounts meeting and they want a little bit of guidance.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: We are. I want to deal with one item on the work programme and then I will come to it. The next item of correspondence is No. 1844C from Mr. Sean Bolger, CEO and chairman of Imagine Communications Group, accepting the invitation to attend the meeting of the committee on the national broadband plan. No. 1858C is from an individual, requesting the committee to make inquiries on the...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: There was.

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: No, they are coming back to us. We have asked for information and they have updated the panel. Then it should expire and this particular one was a very specific personal matter so we will not go into that but we will refer it to Deputy Cannon. We will tell the individual that we have done so because the Committee of Public Accounts does not have a role in his particular case. The next...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: We have invited the hospital board, the HSE's chief link in the chain and the Secretary General in the Department of Health. We need to get them out of the way. We agreed last week to write to the Office of Government Procurement, which may have a more direct role in it than the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. It will set policy but it is up to the Secretary General. He is...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (24 Jan 2019)

Seán Fleming: I will hold over the financial statements received since our last meeting before Christmas until the next meeting but there is one item on the work programme that I want members to think about. Several companies from the private sector are coming in to talk to us on the broadband issue. They are all asking what the process is, what they should say, what the issues are and what the topic is...