Results 8,801-8,820 of 27,073 for speaker:Richard Boyd Barrett
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-budget Engagement: Minister for Finance (1 Oct 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: It could be the beginning of a great relationship.
- Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-budget Engagement: Minister for Finance (1 Oct 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Yes, indeed. Everything we do at the moment, we do in the context of Covid-19 and the need to maintain social solidarity in the face of the existential threat we face now and which we have been facing for some time. The guiding principle that has underpinned this is that we are all in it together. People bought into that and have suffered great hardship on the understanding that we would...
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: I understand Deputy Cairns's frustration, but these circumstances were set up the moment the Government tried to ram the Bill through. It was always going to happen that we would be in this situation, which is why I kicked up about it on the Order of Business yesterday. The normal process of pre-legislative scrutiny would have meant we would have dealt with much of this earlier. We would...
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: I will. I am dealing with the amendments.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: It is a group of amendments.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: It is a group of amendments.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: All the amendments in the group centre on the same subject.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Every amendment in the group centres on the same question, namely, whether we should rush things through and short-circuit the process or instead protect the process by which citizens can appeal. That is what the debate is about and it is what all the amendments in the group are about. Our amendment in the group is amendment No. 59, so that is what I am speaking to, but I am also speaking...
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: That is the Deputy's opinion and I disagree.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: No, the Deputy is trying to spin it.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: He was having a pop. That is what he was doing. For the information of Deputy Mattie McGrath, the decline in output in the processing of applications by the Government dwarfs the figure he mentioned. It is a decrease of 2,000.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: The Deputy wants to know why there is currently a backlog in the industry. It is not the few hundred appeals he referred to, although I do not deny that is an issue; it is the decrease of 2,000 in the processing of applications, most of which would not have been appealed. They would have gone through but they are not being processed, and that is the problem.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: What percentage of felling licences were appealed? It was 2.77%. In 2020, just over 1% of afforestation licences were appealed and 75% of felling licences were not appealed. There was a jump in the number of appeals in 2020 but it is still considerably less than one would be led to believe from the argument that there is a massive load of blackguards out there, clogging up the system. ...
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: We have been hearing a lot of rhetoric about blackguards, presumably environmental blackguards.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: I must be getting somewhere-----
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: I must be touching a nerve now; that is all I can say. I must be touching a nerve.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: The decisions being made by the Department, not the appeals, are way down.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: Decisions issued by the Department on felling up to the end of August were way down, from nearly 3,500 at the end of August last year to just 1,040 this year. The issue of the supply of timber to sawmills lies at the door of the Department, not the environmental blackguards or the appeals committee.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: If the Deputies can provide me with alternative statistics, I invite them to do so. I listened very carefully to everything they have said. If they have statistics that challenge those I provided on the appeals percentages, I would be happy to hear them. I am an open minded person and I listen.
- Forestry (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2020: Committee and Remaining Stages (30 Sep 2020)
Richard Boyd Barrett: What is wrong with hugging trees? Deputy Mattie McGrath might do it to calm himself down occasionally. This suggests that the problem lies with the Department, not with blackguards or the appeals process in particular. If these facts-----