Results 16,141-16,160 of 32,593 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: That is correct.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: The Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners gave an update of where we are with the preparation of the implementation of customs policy if we got into a disorderly Brexit scenario. Representatives and officials-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: I believe the Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners gave the committee an update regarding what we are planning for and what is part of scenarios we are willing to implement concerning how we would manage things on an east-west point of view that I am happy to go through again. There is engagement. The Commission is here at the moment and is discussing how we would implement and deal with...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: The Commission has said publicly, and this has been reiterated by the President of the Commission, President Juncker, that it does not want to see the development of a hard border on the island of Ireland. As the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade and I have said, were a disorderly event to take place, we would then have to engage in a period of negotiation and...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: It came to pass because we had a separate governance structure for the national children's hospital which was independently chaired. That led to a lot of engagement within the board and with the Department of Health and HSE on the issue. That engagement took place, as the Minister for Health has confirmed, from the end of August through September and October and in early November I became...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: In terms of managing this issue, if the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, had come to me earlier on the matter, I would have asked him to quantify the scale of the issue and to set out what could be done to reduce it further. This was what he was doing throughout that period. If I had been aware of it at an earlier point, I would have asked him to take the actions he was undertaking...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: The Minister for Health has acknowledged that the way in which this issue developed and its consequences for the national children's hospital were significant. I was then in the position of asking whether we should go ahead with the project or not. As I look back at how this developed, the fact that we had such an independent governance structure engaged in trying to resolve this issue...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: The moment we were alerted of the issue, the scale of it was fully understood. That enabled a lot of work to be done from early November into December in dealing with the matter.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: It would have been helpful to have been aware of this issue as it was developing. The Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, was doing what he should have been doing across the period, which is to understand the scale of the issue and be in a position to fully brief Government once he was confident of the matter, which he did. He came to me.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: I have a lot of engagement with the Minister, Deputy Harris, on a whole variety of different matters, including on this and other matters that the Deputy will raise with me. I have a lot of engagement with him on capital projects, but, more broadly, on the level of capital expenditure and capital resources that are available to his Department at any point in time. When he alerted me to this...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: I meet the capital team within my Department regularly and it updates me on various matters that develop. It was through engagement between the Department of Health and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform in early November that we became aware of this issue and then became active on it. On the Chairman's question on whether a member of my Department was on the board, the answer...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: I met my colleague, who is a member of this board, to have a discussion with him on his experience on the board because I am conscious of the fact that his role in this is, understandably, being debated and questioned in the way the Chairman has done, and which he is entitled to do. In my meeting with Mr. Quinn, my official who is on the board and who leads the Office of Government...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: What is different in the question the Chairman has put to me is that the engagement at that point was taking place between the National Paediatric Hospital Development Board, of which Mr. Quinn was a member, the HSE and the Department of Health. The board is an agency that was associated with the Government Departments in question and Mr. Quinn could see heavy engagement under way between...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: He was appointed in a personal capacity by a previous Minister for Health but I do not want to make any kind of distinction between him as a person and as somebody who would be aware of his responsibilities as a procurement professional or board member.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes, he would have been subjected to the provisions of that circular. Putting the answer to that question in context, Mr. Quinn was a member of the board at the point at which it interrogated the evolving issue of an overspend and projected increase in costs of the national children's hospital. He was engaged with the issue and he could see the engagement that was taking place between the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: Yes, they did.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: Both processes in relation to that began to develop across the summer. That resulted in a communication to the HSE or the Department of Health towards the end of August.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: I will have to come back to the Deputy with an answer on the finance committee. I cannot give an answer to the committee now but of course I can find out. From the discussion I had with Mr. Quinn it appears that engagement on this issue, at least at board level, happened throughout the summer, leading to communication at the end of August.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: No. As Minister I sanction recommendations that come from other Departments. I will spell out what that means in order to deal with my responsibility in this, which I want to deal with centrally. A Department outlines a project it wants to carry out and it makes a recommendation to me on the project if it is above a certain scale. I ultimately have to supply that sanction to that...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach (5 Feb 2019)

Paschal Donohoe: I will deal with each of those queries in turn. First I wish to address my responsibility in relation to individual projects, particularly those above a certain scale. They are tracked by the different teams in my Department that shadow each Vote. I fully accept my responsibility for the use of taxpayers' money for this or any other project. That is why the decision I ultimately made on...