Results 9,741-9,760 of 40,330 for speaker:Leo Varadkar

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I am pretty confident that many controls are in place in respect of money laundering. You can barely open a bank account in Ireland without ID.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I do not fully agree with the Deputy's statement that circumstances have changed.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: One set of circumstances has changed. The public finances are in much better shape than they were, but the fundamental circumstance that caused Deputy Burton, when Minister, to introduce this reform, namely, rising life expectancy, has not changed. That was the fundamental reason for the reform.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: When the then Minister, Deputy Burton, introduced the reform, she did not introduce it right away as an emergency response to the financial crisis; she set a future date of 2021 for its implementation. It was not an emergency response to the crisis we faced at the time; it was the then Minister thinking and planning ahead and introducing a necessary reform a little before it was needed. The...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: That is exactly how we get things so wrong in this country so often; we wait until there is a crisis before we deal with it. The then Minister was correct. This is an emerging problem and we can see that in the medium term pensions could become unsustainable. She was right to bring forward that reform to increase the pension age and to give people plenty of notice by passing the law in...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I can understand why, for electoral reasons or reasons of popularity, we could go out and say we were not doing this. People aged between 62 and 65 years would say that was great and that they would vote for the parties that were stating this because they would not have to retire at 67 years but at 66. However, the ones who would lose out are the people who are in their 40s and 50s or who...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: Let us for once in the country's history fix a problem before there is a crisis.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: I acknowledge that the Deputy has acknowledged that there is now a budget surplus and that the Social Insurance Fund is back in surplus. In fact, it has been in surplus for several years. It recorded a small technical surplus last year and it looks like that it is going to record a bigger surplus this year than was even projected on budget day, notwithstanding the views of some, including...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: Sinn Féin is a party that only a few weeks ago, tried to vote down a proposal for 800 new homes less than four miles from here, close to Dublin city centre.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: Nine hundred homes, new homes for people to buy, social housing and places for people to rent but the Deputy's party voted against it.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: In here, they bemoan the housing crisis and shortage. In the places where they turn up to vote, they vote against housing.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: The Deputy in his opening question spoke about Cork, which is the city he represents. He may be interested to know that the latest figures tell us that in the year to June 2019, there were 2,095 commencement notices in County Cork, which is up 20% on the previous year.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: There were 593 of these in the city, which is a 150% increase on the previous year. We are seeing new housing being delivered. It took a long time for us to get to the position where we could get the construction sector and social housing going again. That is now happening. Due to the financial crisis and the crash, we had a seven-year period during which almost no new homes were built....

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: As the Deputy will be aware, we have introduced rent controls-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: -----and as a consequence of those rent controls, the maximum rent increase is 4% in any given year. For hundreds of thousands of people who would have seen rent increases much greater than that, the rent increase has been somewhere between 0% and 4% a year. Consideration was given-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: -----to a rent freeze. Notwithstanding the constitutional issues that may make that impossible, even if it was possible, there is a real concern about the unintended consequences of a rent freeze. What we may see happening in the event of a rent freeze is less supply. Ultimately, those who need to rent need to find somewhere to rent. While a rent freeze might work for people who are...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: -----because they do not see an increase but people who have to rent for the first time can run into real difficulties and that is why we think that is a policy that could indeed be counterproductive. Let us talk about what the solutions actually are. The main solution has to be supply. Ultimately there has to be enough places for people to rent. To do that, we must increase the supply...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: That is the report.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: There is something a little bit odd about the Deputy referring back to 1987 or 1997. I am not sure which year he mentioned, but whichever year he chose was an interesting year to reference because he did not mention the 20 years of Fianna Fáil government that occurred after that period. During that period of government, Fianna Fáil was responsible for many of the policies that...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (12 Nov 2019)

Leo Varadkar: The Deputy likes to pretend that he was only elected to the Dáil in 2011 or 2017 but he was part of the Government that was in power for almost all of that period or a large part of it.