Results 981-1,000 of 1,319 for speaker:Paudge Connolly

Requests to move Adjournment of Dáil under Standing Order 31. (19 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I seek the adjournment of the Dáil under Standing Order 31 to discuss the following matter of urgent public and national concern: in view of the annual catalogue of widespread waste of taxpayers' money outlined in the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, the necessity to establish a national fiscal monitoring agency to monitor key expenditure of public money on public contracts,...

Rural Transport Initiative. (18 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter regarding the extension of the rural transport initiative to north Monaghan. This successful national pilot programme is aimed at those who are excluded and do not have available, accessible or affordable local transport. The rural transport initiative should be extended to north Monaghan. I do not need to extol the virtues of this excellent...

Rural Transport Initiative. (18 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I never mentioned the victory against Meath.

Public Expenditure: Motion (Resumed). (18 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: Irrespective of the Government in power, we would be having this debate about overruns in public contracts. There is very little that can be done about it other than talking. There is a culture that leads people to believe these things are coming off a broad back. We must put a system in place that establishes where such contracted expenditure went wrong and that polices public servants. It...

Investment Funds, Companies and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2005 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed). (18 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: The difficulty is they have no way of proving they were not in the tax net. A small group of vulnerable people is affected by Revenue's plans in regard to insurance investments. Some of them cannot eat or sleep because of what is happening. As we have not yet reached the deadline, I propose that action be taken to address the issue because it will send people to an early grave. A recent case...

Investment Funds, Companies and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2005 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed). (18 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill which represents a major development in the international investment funds business in this country. Ireland's exceptional success over the past 18 years in attracting international financial services companies has received worldwide acclaim. The list of international companies with operations here is a veritable who's who of the international...

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2005: Second Stage (Resumed). (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill, which will form the basis for the conduct of the upcoming general election, which may occur in one or two years. The Bill proposes a total of 43 constituencies, one more than the previous constituency revision, but without any increase in the number of Deputies to be elected to the Dáil, which remains at 166. Given that the population has...

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2005: Second Stage (Resumed). (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I have decided my office in Clones will be open every Tuesday evening from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2005: Second Stage (Resumed). (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: People will know I will be available in a particular town at a particular time. My office in Ballybay is open from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on a Tuesday evening. The people of the town know that Paudge Connolly's clinic is open and accessible to them at this time.

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2005: Second Stage (Resumed). (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I hold a clinic in Castleblayney every Monday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. The people in Castleblayney know they can meet an Independent Deputy in their town each Monday night. This is what Members of the Oireachtas are paid for. I also hold a clinic in Carrickmacross at 4 p.m. on the first Thursday of every month. My idea was so good that a major political party decided the very next week to run...

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2005: Second Stage (Resumed). (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: We are well-paid for it and this is how it should be. Consider the issue of people who do not bother to vote. They have different reasons. Some feel they are too much above voting to bother sullying themselves with the process.

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2005: Second Stage (Resumed). (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: Others feel they are making a stand against the system and getting their own back by not voting. Perhaps the political parties are guilty to the extent that they do not recruit new members. Recruitment is almost a forgotten art. I cannot accuse every party of not recruiting new members but many of the major parties ignore the public. If one asks why someone joined a party he or she will say...

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2005: Second Stage (Resumed). (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: In states that did not have the franchise people walked for days and queued in the sun to win votes. A referendum in 1972 reduced the voting age here from 21 to 18 years. We should consider introducing Sunday voting. It has proved successful elsewhere so why not adopt it here? If we persist in holding elections on a Friday one central electoral station should be designated in each major...

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2005: Second Stage (Resumed). (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: It was not a tangent. Electronic voting is relevant to this Bill, as is the fact that it costs a large sum of money to store the machines week by week. We should reconsider this matter because electronic voting is the way forward. The notion of closing schools——

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2005: Second Stage (Resumed). (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I believe it is. We should examine the system to create a paper trail as we requested initially.

Requests to move Adjournment of Dáil under Standing Order 31. (12 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I seek the adjournment of the Dáil under Standing Order 31 to raise a matter of national importance, namely, in view of the spiralling suicide rates, the urgent necessity for every person employed in the health service to be provided with a suicide information pack and appropriate specialist prevention training in the recognition of the signs and symptoms related to suicide and that these...

Dormant Accounts (Amendment) Bill 2004 [Seanad]: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage. (11 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: I too am quite unhappy with this Bill which fails to address several issues. There are dormant accounts throughout the country and I am quite sure that a proportion of them are in County Monaghan and County Cavan. When I look at the press releases every so often and hope that Monaghan or Cavan will figure highly, I note that the former has not received a single entire grant. Recently a grant...

Dormant Accounts (Amendment) Bill 2004 [Seanad]: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage. (11 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: That is why I object to this Bill. I do not feel good about it.

Dormant Accounts (Amendment) Bill 2004 [Seanad]: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage. (11 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: People will be sitting on committees accountable to no one. Who will ask the questions?

Dormant Accounts (Amendment) Bill 2004 [Seanad]: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage. (11 May 2005)

Paudge Connolly: It is an independent board, so who will oversee the money that it disburses? Is the Minister telling me that Ministers have no influence?