Results 981-1,000 of 32,429 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: Let me finish. That is what we are aiming to do by decisions that we may make in relation to infrastructure. Leaving aside the money that comes from the Apple judgment, the Government is already running surpluses and we have the ability to invest, but the Central Bank warns us in the same voice about not overheating the economy and we have to listen to that as well.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: I do not follow the Deputy’s line of questioning. On the one hand, he asked me if I am listening to the Central Bank and then, when I say that I have to listen to all of what the Central Bank says-----

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: When I say that I have to listen to all of what the Central Bank has to say, the Deputy finds that a worrying admission. Any construction company that I meet, or any engineering company I go to, tells me that it cannot find the people it needs to do the work that is needed. That is just the reality we are facing as an economy at full employment. What the Government will do, and what we...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: It appears that whatever answer I gave, the Deputy would have predicted a decade of failure. What I believe we can do-----

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: The people will have to make a call on that because a decade is a long time. I believe there is the prospect that if future governments can maintain the momentum that this Government has started, we will make progress on the delivery of more homes in a way that will make a big impact on the needs of our country and society. I am confident that we can do that.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: First, I acknowledge that working in our hospitals, particularly hospitals that are very busy, is demanding work and our public servants who do this do great work on our behalf in demanding circumstances. I acknowledge and thank them for the contribution they make in looking after those who are sick in our country. The agreement the Deputy is talking about is the agreement whereby we made...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: It is like any other part of our public service. The pay and numbers strategy is the same approach that we have for any other part of our public service, which is simply that given the availability of the money that you have, how many people do you expect you will be able to hire during the year and how many do you currently have recruited.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: We then require and depend on our public service to stay within those figures. With the amount of additional money that has been made available here, I challenge the Deputy with regard to how he can make the case that this is a negative development.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: I will, but just before I do that I want to join the Minister for Finance, Deputy Chambers, in what he said about the Deputy's point about children with intellectual disabilities. We are all aware of how difficult this is for families and the challenges they have in accessing services despite our best efforts. We certainly acknowledge the importance of the point the Deputy made. On the...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: I am not familiar with what measure of material deprivation NERI are using so I cannot comment on the point the Deputy made, but I definitely am aware of the challenges of inequality within our society. That is the main reason we have ensured each of the budgets we have done has been progressive. As we have laid out each year in the budget, if we combine the core welfare rate changes that...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: No. Deputy Conway-Walsh is correct that if the one-off payments were removed, the progressive impact would be less because a fixed payment of a large amount has a bigger impact for somebody on a low income, but they have been made available. These were happening at a point at which core welfare rate increases were below the rate of inflation. If we get to a point that core welfare rates...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: Because inflation rates have decreased, there is definitely a strong argument, which I make, that the scale of the cost-of-living measures should reflect the fact that inflation has fallen so much. Just because inflation has decreased does not mean prices have done so. Prices have increased. We are all aware in all of our budget deliberations that even though on a macro level our economy...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Pre-Budget Engagement (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: I expect it will probably happen in the second half of November.

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Local Authorities (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: The Office of the Ombudsman has provided me with a breakdown of complaints by Local Authority for the period 2019 to 2024. Council 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 (to-date) Carlow County Council 7 5 10 15 24 12 Cavan County Council 10 9...

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Artificial Intelligence (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: I propose to take Questions Nos. 213 and 214 together. The Government published interim guidance on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Public Service in February 2024 and instructed that all AI tools used by the Irish Public Service comply with the seven requirements for ethical AI that have been developed by the European Commission’s High Level Expert Group on AI. These...

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Appointments to State Boards (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: I am informed by the Public Appointments Service that the process for the position of Chairperson of Rásíocht Con Éireann took place earlier this year. Eight applications were received with Five candidates deemed suitable to meet with the Assessment Panel.

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Equality Issues (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: Equality budgeting has been a core component of performance budgeting policy since 2018. It focuses on ten themes - Gender; Marital Status; Family Status; Age; Disability; Sexual Orientation; Race; Religion; Membership of the Traveller and Roma Communities; and Socio-economic Status. The two key annual outputs of the equality budgeting calendar are the Revised Estimates Volume for the...

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Sector Pensions (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: I can confirm that I have received the correspondence from the Deputy and that the issues raised are currently under consideration by my Department.

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: EU Funding (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: Brexit Adjustment Reserve (BAR) As a consequence of the UK’s decision to leave the EU, the EU put in place funding support for Member States to mitigate the resulting impacts, in the form of a Brexit Adjustment Reserve (BAR). Ireland’s BAR allocation is €802 million, the largest allocation for any Member State. Ireland has received its share in the form of...

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Sector Pensions (18 Sep 2024)

Paschal Donohoe: The Single Public Service Pension Scheme is a statutory Public Service Career-Average Defined Benefit Pension Scheme, established on 1 January 2013 under the Public Service Pensions (Single Scheme and Other Provisions) Act 2012. The Single Scheme was established to place publicly-funded retirement benefits on a more sustainable footing in the context of longer life expectancies and is a...