Results 9,981-10,000 of 29,533 for speaker:Brendan Howlin

Other Questions: Sale of State Assets (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The Exchequer has to date received special dividends of €150 million from Ervia and €197 million from ESB arising from sales of State assets. The Ervia special dividend represents the first instalment of approximately €1 billion expected to be received from Ervia arising from the successful completion in June of the sale of Bord Gáis Energy. The balance will be...

Other Questions: Haddington Road Agreement Implementation (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: That is not so. In the period 2008-13, the Exchequer pay bill fell by 19% through a comprehensive set of measures, including pay and pension cuts, reductions in numbers, restrictions on recruitment, redundancy programmes and so on. The 19% reduction in the pay bill delivered an annual saving of €3.3 billion for the Exchequer for the year. It is a concrete figure for up to last year....

Other Questions: Haddington Road Agreement Implementation (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy knows they have been included in each Vote and I have explained this repeatedly. In the 18 months of the Haddington Road agreement to date, we have made over €800 million in underlying savings. That has enabled me to invest €250 million more in meeting the costs of employing more front-line workers, as I have indicated. There are more gardaí, nurses, special...

Other Questions: Equality Proofing of Budgets (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The key priority of recent budgets, as everybody in the House and the country knows, was to return a stability that had been fractured to the public finances, while seeking to spread the required adjustment in as fair and equitable a manner as possible and protecting the most vulnerable. While implementing the required budgetary adjustments to ensure that Ireland successfully exited the...

Other Questions: Equality Proofing of Budgets (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy's party is doing very well in today's opinion polls and it is peddling the notion that we can make substantial reductions magically, without impacting on expenditure. I note the party is in favour of the quantum of reduction. I have explained to the House that more than 80% of our current expenditure goes on the three pivotal social areas of health, education and social...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Public Sector Pensions Levy (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy raises a number of questions. I am acutely aware of the pressure on hard-working families and this will be a very significant focus of the budget next week. The point I made about water is that it is not part of the Government take. It is a commercial semi-State company. If we took it all on balance sheet, as the Deputy advocates, and just had a company that was funded by the...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Public Sector Pensions Levy (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: I answered that question already but, obviously, the Deputy was not listening. We will open negotiations next year on all these matters. The Deputy is wrong again on low pay. We restored the minimum wage cut by Fianna Fáil. We would like to do more which is why the Tánaiste has insisted on the establishment of a low pay commission because having a liveable wage is an absolute...

Other Questions (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The Opposition admonishes the Government for Deputies not turning up.

Other Questions: Haddington Road Agreement Implementation (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: Over the first 15 months of its lifetime, the agreement has been a key enabler in reducing the cost of the public service pay and pensions bill. The cost reductions and productivity increases - the reform dividend, which I explained in some detail the last time we discussed this, which the agreement has facilitated - has allowed the Government the scope in 2014 to recruit additional staff to...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Public Sector Pay (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: That is a small portion, however.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Public Sector Pay (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: I am glad the Deputy has accepted the vast bulk of the interest rate repayments are to sustain public services. Whoever caused the crash is a matter for debate and, it is hoped, will be elucidated upon by the inquiries undertaken by this House. I do not believe the Deputy would want it any other way, that we did not borrow the money to maintain health, social welfare and education services...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Budget Consultation Process (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The primary purpose of this year's comprehensive review of expenditure, which involved every Department, was to provide an evidence base for Government decisions on ministerial expenditure ceilings for current expenditure for the next three years. These ceilings will be finalised in the coming days and announced as part of the budget next Tuesday. They...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Budget Consultation Process (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: By public acknowledgment, the volume of information published on budget day is unprecedented. The comprehensive review of expenditure process is an innovation introduced by the Government. We publish the horizons for expenditure up to the end of this year. Accordingly, it is up to committees to invigilate these but they have not for the past three years. We will be publishing another...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Budget Consultation Process (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy is correct that the new European semester requires the early publication of this information. Obviously, we have to dovetail taxation and expenditure. It is challenging to do this because one needs the data which only come in during September. It is tight enough to have a proper snapshot of resources that might be available in the subsequent year. There is an opportunity...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Public Sector Pensions Levy (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The public service pension related deduction, PRD, referred to as the pension levy in the Deputy's question, was introduced in March 2009 under the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act 2009. the PRD is a progressively structured multi-band reduction imposed on the pay of pensionable public servants. Based on the current PRD rates structure across all...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Appointments to State Boards (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: Board members are appointed under law, in the way that we have determined, by the relevant Ministers. We have now put in a fundamentally new, transparent, open, innovative and ground-breaking system. I wonder whether the Deputy will now ensure that her party applies the same sort of criteria to Sinn Féin's nominees to the North-South bodies - I will not list the names because that...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Appointments to State Boards (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: I will go back to my other point concerning some of the eminent people named in this House by the Deputies opposite. Association with politics or standing for public office is not a debarment to service. It is demeaning public life and democracy for anybody who has the courage to put their name on a ballot paper or who works in the political sphere to be designated as a crony. It might get...

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Appointments to State Boards (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The North-South body simply validates nominations from the political system.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Appointments to State Boards (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: All those on the Sinn Féin list of appointments - all of whom I am sure are excellently suitable people, many of whom served in office for Sinn Féin or worked for that party - are simply validated by the process, as the Deputy knows.

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions: Appointments to State Boards (9 Oct 2014)

Brendan Howlin: The issue now is that we have changed that system. For the first time in our history, we have put in a new transparent system to get away from the Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil nominations that have scattered the landscape for years. We have a new system at the heart of which we have set out objective suitability criteria. Individuals apply and are individually vetted and assessed by...