Results 8,381-8,400 of 28,162 for speaker:Catherine Murphy

Written Answers — Department of Rural and Community Development: Official Travel (8 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: 852. To ask the Minister for Rural and Community Development if she will be travelling abroad for St. Patrick’s week 2022 on official visits; and if so, the location she is scheduled to visit. [6239/22]

Redundancy Payments (Amendment) Bill 2022: Second Stage (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: I apologise. I have come straight from the Committee on Public Accounts to the Chamber and I had to negotiate several flights of stairs in between. Like many aspects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the full impact on the workforce is probably yet to be seen. It will likely take years for us to fully comprehend the massive shifts that have and are taking place. The Department’s estimate is...

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: I wish to raise a number of issues. First, I have looked up the figure in respect of metro north that was provided by the NTA under a freedom of information request. The figure is €165.6 million in addition to the €83 million that TII has spent. I wanted to put these figures on the record. We are at nearly €250 million. There have been political changes and...

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: -----and some of it has political aspects, but the money involved is sizable. I imagine there are people around the country who are not familiar with that part of Dublin who believe that the project has been partly delivered already and the almost €250 million is just some sort of augmentation, but it is being spent without a single shovel having gone into the ground. At some point,...

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: Will Mr. Walsh try to keep his answer short? I understand the context and I think most people do.

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: Are we talking about under-construction projects?

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: What impact was there where there was a shortfall in tolls? Was any compensation paid for that, and if so, how much? Will residual compensation have to be paid on roads where compensation is built into the contract where the forecast is lower?

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: I am not wild about public private partnerships, PPPs, but I hope we never again sign a contract with that kind of compensation tied into it. Apart from anything else, it is completely at odds with our climate obligations. It is a very sizeable sum. The figure of €3.9 million is effectively the baseline, while the figure for 2020 is almost €10 million higher and for 2021,...

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: It has all the features of a national secondary road-----

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: Will the witnesses from the Department reply?

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: It will cost more.

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: Did the Department feel that was satisfactory? It cost more than the Department would have liked. Was the project badly managed?

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: I refer to the supervision of the project. The design was inadequate, given it had to be amended, so that was a fault that would have added to the costs. There was also a dispute between two contractors. How are we to learn lessons in respect of management if we cannot identify what the conflict was?

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: Mr. Mullaney is saying it could not have been delivered for the tender price.

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: A good deal of expertise has been built up in the construction of roads but I am concerned about what I heard earlier, and it goes to what the Department said about procurement. Procurement has been an issue with many projects, particularly very big projects, and the national children's hospital is a case in point. I am concerned about what I heard about taking the lowest tender and whether...

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: Is it the case that the TII does not have that expertise and is looking for it?

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: Is that submission available? If so, can we see it?

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: If the TII can do so, I ask that it would make it available.

Public Accounts Committee: Transport Infrastructure Ireland: Financial Statements 2020 (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: Where people overpay a toll, that is included in the revenue of the toll operator. Dublin Bus, for example, has a scheme, a community initiative to which overpayments go. This is not legitimate revenue, really. I have received replies indicating that this is happening and the toll operators are putting this money into their own revenue. Will the TII structure into future contracts that...

Public Accounts Committee: Business of Committee (3 Feb 2022)

Catherine Murphy: I have a fairly short observation. It seems that some of these are fairly regular items. How far in advance does the Prison Service look at cleaning services, for example? If it has a three-year contract, does it look at it in year two and work out when it needs to do a tender or that kind of thing? If it does not do so, that is where difficulty arises in the context of procurement. It...