Results 841-860 of 2,283 for speaker:Matt Shanahan

Construction Safety Licensing Bill 2023: Second Stage (3 May 2023)

Matt Shanahan: This is important legislation. It is to be welcomed that we will have a better standard of licensing of workers and tutors. We must be careful of overregulation of the construction sector as well, because it is a difficult enough one to try to recruit and get skilled labour into now. It takes a great deal of time. I am aware of companies in the past couple of years whose workers had to go...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (3 May 2023)

Matt Shanahan: The Taoiseach has reached back into a couple of previous programmes for Government. The North Quays, as he knows, was included back in 2014, to be fair, and it has taken until 2023 to get that approved.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (3 May 2023)

Matt Shanahan: Beyond that, the PPP for our engineering building in Waterford Institute of Technology was actually granted planning permission in 2008. In 2020, I had the pleasure of coming into the Government here to see that project sidestepped while other PPP projects in Cork and Dublin, to the tune of €330 million, were advanced. This is what I am talking about. The Taoiseach said we are...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (3 May 2023)

Matt Shanahan: I am rather sorry to see Deputy John Paul Phelan announce his departure from the House. I wish him and his domestic constituency the very best. I have a good deal of sympathy for his predicament. Like Paudie Coffey, Michael D'Arcy and John Deasy before him, genuine embarrassment was felt to have made electoral promises that simply evaporated at the Cabinet table. For all the blather about...

Written Answers — Department of Education and Skills: School Staff (3 May 2023)

Matt Shanahan: 177. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills in relation to the cycle to work scheme, which is a tax incentive to encourage employees to cycle to work, if her Department currently offers this scheme to its employees; if she will confirm the reason a substitute SNA employed by her Department might not be entitled to avail of the scheme; and if she will make a statement on the matter....

Written Answers — Department of Health: Mental Health Services (3 May 2023)

Matt Shanahan: 455. To ask the Minister for Health if he will confirm the number of patients currently under the care of psychology services within the Waterford primary care service; if he is aware that the current psychologist has gone on maternity leave in March 2023 and no alternative or temporary psychologist has been recruited to take- up the position for the duration of her maternity leave; if he...

Historic and Archaeological Heritage Bill 2023 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed) (27 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: My colleague, Deputy Tóibín may or may not be here. If he is not, I will not take the full allocation of time. This is an important Bill that is being discussed in regard to the preservation of our national monuments which are singularly involved with our ideas of culture and heritage. Apart from the idea of identity, of understanding who we were and who we are and maybe who...

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (27 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: Can the Tánaiste update the House on the final cost of the Dunkettle interchange? It was originally signalled at €77 million when first mooted, then the figure rose to €88 million. I gather it was signed off in the early days of the Tánaiste's premiership at €216 million. Even that sounds a lot for a fancy-pants roundabout. Some 23 years ago, the Jack Lynch...

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (27 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: They are not happening.

Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement: Statements (26 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: The Good Friday Agreement was signed on 10 April 1998. It was a seismic agreement that ended decades of violence that had pitched extreme elements within communities against one another based on ideas of religion, inequality, the retention of political power and the perception of ethnic identity through the prism of the past. The agreement paved the way for the development of a new...

Organised Crime: Statements (20 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: Organised crime is a fact in Ireland and it involves conspiracy generally to commit serious crime. Mostly, it operates on a level of intimidation and enforcement. It preys not only on the weak but also on the strong. We also have disorganised crime in this country. We see that more outside of the major urban centres, maybe, in the form of antisocial behaviour, theft, money laundering,...

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (20 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: A modular solution is all that is needed. It is being done everywhere else. That is all we need.

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (20 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: It is Groundhog Day as I bring up the issue of a second cardiac cath lab at University Hospital Waterford, where the HSE has spent 14 months attempting to provide a 12-bed day ward solution for this lab to operate. The latest parliamentary question response I received stated the hospital hoped to occupy the lab by quarter 2, not operate it. Operations cannot begin in this lab without...

Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate: Teacher Training (19 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: The Minister of State will know - the Government certainly knows - that Waterford Institute of Technology, WIT, which was the fulcrum of the new SETU, had been providing teacher training in the form of further education, which was recognised by the Teaching Council. The academics in WIT had long recognised the regional need for teacher education, particularly at secondary level, in the south...

Saincheisteanna Tráthúla - Topical Issue Debate: Teacher Training (19 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: The Department of Education produced an additional teacher education policy document which suggests that teacher provision will be led by a small number of university centres of teacher education. It appears to discount any opportunity for the new technological universities, only recently established, to engage formally with previous plans to develop a teacher training capability. I mean no...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Digital Services Bill 2023: Discussion (19 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: I support Deputy Bruton's view. I would like to hear the presentation first, and then perhaps we can chat about it to decide what we are going to do.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Digital Services Bill 2023: Discussion (19 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: I thank the Chair and I thank the departmental guests present here this morning. I echo some of the sentiments of colleagues here this morning regarding this Bill being technical and the scope of it seems very large. All of us here obviously want to see greater protection in respect of the communications and activities online. I wish to raise, if I may, a couple of issues. In Ms...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Digital Services Bill 2023: Discussion (19 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: If there is a complaint there, it will be referring to one post or one series of posts, or whatever, and it should not be that difficult for them to locate it.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Digital Services Bill 2023: Discussion (19 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: I thank Ms Greene. The other thing which is interesting and which Ms Greene touched upon there is this issue of algorithms and how they are used, exactly who is writing them and what, I suppose, they are seeking to do. This is a bugbear, particularly in social media with regard to its management. I am struggling to understand where, in all of this potential legislation, activity is going...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation: General Scheme of the Digital Services Bill 2023: Discussion (19 Apr 2023)

Matt Shanahan: It was said that a new commissioner has to be appointed in this area and that staff requirements are then going to be fleshed out. I would imagine the legal element of the grouping will be the largest. Is it envisaged that the work will be done in-house or will there be contracts with legal firms in Dublin to try to oversee the body’s work?