Results 15,161-15,180 of 29,533 for speaker:Brendan Howlin

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: It sets out the economic parameters within which the budgetary arithmetic is being drawn up so people can be informed about that. On 5 December next, we will present the budget, setting out all the taxation and spending adjustments that we propose. We will also outline other measures that we intend to implement across the economy. We will be able to project the impact that the contents of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: I ask Mr. Reid to answer the Deputy's questions.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: CIO stands for chief information officer.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: It does not express a view on that sort of thing. That is a political settlement at which we have arrived between the parties in government.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: I have classified it as an extension of Croke Park - someone asked if it was the Nally Stand. I do not want to end the Croke Park agreement; the architecture of which remains in place until the end of next year. I am not invoking clause 1.28 of the agreement that would collapse it; rather, I am saying we need to go further than the agreement allows to reach the targets we need to achieve....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: I will answer that question in two ways, first in terms of investment and then in terms of austerity. On the investment side, Ireland has done extraordinarily well in recent times. I have instanced the level of foreign direct investment, which is unprecedented. There is an extremely healthy flow of investment from foreign companies which want to build a stable platform here, with not just...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: I will give the exact figure for exclusive debt we must pay. If we talk about banking related debt, I will disaggregate it and send the Deputy the exact figure on a current basis. The figures are substantial.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: The Deputy is absolutely right, but the tax base collapsed also by a figure of 30%. Even if we could stop the clock and say all of the banking debt should be taken away, the State's income stream fell by 30% but our outgoings did not.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: We are running a current deficit to meet for day-to-day expenses.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: What the Deputy is saying is not wrong, but it is just not practical. It is like saying the value of my house was €500,000 and that it is only worth €200,000 now but I will pretend and carry on as it is still worth €500,000. The reality is that the previous Government made the disastrous decision to nationalise the banks' debts. My party and I voted against it. That...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: Deputy Mathews made a good point about accountants. I was talking to a young official in my Department who had come back from discussions with a line Department, which I will not mention, highly chuffed because he had been accused of being a bean counter and he regarded that as high praise. We need people who can do the sums and say this is what we can and cannot live with and that it is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: We need that. The Deputy is absolutely right. I will not go into the Army Reserve issue because that is a matter for the Minister for Defence but I take the Deputy's point on community activity and keeping people activated. Unemployment generally is the number one priority and youth unemployment is a sub-set of that and it is a major issue for us to deal with. I refer to the external...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: I agree with the Deputy. I keep editing things because I have to say - I hope I am not being critical of any official-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: In terms of language, the Deputy makes a point on it. In regard to the point made by Deputy Donnelly, the more people who come in from the private sphere - I hope this is not taken as a criticism of anybody here - the more private sphere jargon appears in scripts and language, which is interesting. If one goes to an IBEC meeting or any business meeting, an idiom is spoken at them which is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: We have only invited them in. Basically, I have done the analysis of what we need to do to fill the hole. Over a period of time, I certainly indicated that there was a gap to be filled and that I was looking at the public pay area as making a contribution to that, but I got formal Government approval on Tuesday to invite the public sector unions in to shape out an agenda of negotiations to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: There was public comment at the troika's last visit - its eighth visit - that somehow there was disquiet about the Croke Park agreement. I meet it for long sessions at every meeting and I met the head of the current troika team in Brussels the week before he came here and I met him the week before that in Dublin on a private visit. I am in constant contact with him. The troika has never...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: Ultimately, what we are working on is a framework of money. As long as the public pay bill is reduced to the volume we have agreed, it does not get into the minutia of that but it looks at public sector productivity and lack of disruption here in comparison to national strikes in Greece, Portugal, Spain and even in more recent times in Belgium and France. We have industrial peace which not...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: The balance between expenditure and taxation was something we negotiated in the programme for Government, as the Deputy knows. At the last election, Fine Gael campaigned on the basis of making the adjustment on the basis of 3:1. The Labour Party campaigned on the basis of 1:1. The balance is somewhere in the middle. What is to be done in the forthcoming budget? In current expenditure...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: With the permission of the Chairman, I ask Mr. Paul Reid, as someone who came from the private sector and has been on a contract for just over a year in the public sector, to make a comment.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform: Public Service Reform Plan: Discussion with Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (22 Nov 2012)

Brendan Howlin: Deputy Donnelly managed three questions. Well done.