Results 16,201-16,220 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 the second hypothetical question the Deputy has put to me now.

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

Paschal Donohoe: Hypothetical situations are sometimes the most difficult to manage. As I said, we will not be part of putting in place hard infrastructure on our island on the Border between North and South, nor is that our objective. The Commission, to which the Deputy referred, has been at the forefront of trying to avoid that happening. The challenge it would face would be in dealing with the...

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

Paschal Donohoe: I imagine there are citizens working in many different parts of the economy who now understand the effects Brexit will have on all of our prospects. If members of the nursing unions and nurses - I always say I have the height of respect for the work nurses do - feel that Brexit will affect their prospects, that is also the case with many others. Brexit will decisively shape decisions that...

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

Paschal Donohoe: I acknowledge and understand the support nurses have and we are all aware of the reasons for that support. I understand how popular their cause is at the moment because of the care they give and the professionalism they show at all times. While the Deputy is able to talk about the nurses in isolation, I am not. If a move is made in one part of our Civil Service and public service, every...

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

Paschal Donohoe: As the Taoiseach said, at a certain point a way will be found to solve this issue. I have much experience of how these issues have developed in the past. I have always seen a way for them to be resolved. I expect the same will happen here. I know this is not a concern for the Deputy because he wants to see all public servants have their wages increased; he and I have debated this...

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

Paschal Donohoe: Let us consider each of the claims the Deputy has made. The Apple money is not our money.

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

Paschal Donohoe: Given the charges and what we think we have learned from the past about not spending money we ultimately might not have, and if we were to lose the case, many other countries across the European Union and the world would come looking for that €14 billion. The Deputy knows it is not open to me to spend it because he understands what would happen in the event of our losing the case. ...

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

Paschal Donohoe: -----are easy to make. Of course, across the same period no depositor lost any money either. I am sure the Deputy would have been concerned if during the crisis period, people who had money in banks, ordinary depositors, had lost money as well. In every one of these cases what the Deputy is referring to is once-off amounts of money that, ultimately, he is saying should be used to fund...

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

Paschal Donohoe: Arguments about sovereignty are articulated much of the time in respect of different issues in which I am involved. I hear them being raised as live issues in respect of climate change, for example. I would not for a moment make the case that they are just confined to issues of big business. I think the reason one hears sovereignty talked about the most regarding taxation is that it is...

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

Paschal Donohoe: That went to a referendum, however-----

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

Paschal Donohoe: -----which the people passed, and the benefits we receive in sharing that sovereignty are, I think, now well understood and have made a really big difference to the development of our economy and our society.

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

Paschal Donohoe: The fiscal rules allow us to spend taxes we raise in ways we see fit. This is why we are funding, for example, a massive increase in capital investment in public homes for this year.

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

Paschal Donohoe: I do not have that information with me today.

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

Paschal Donohoe: Yes. I am sure we would be able to calculate that for the Senator and I commit to doing so.

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

Paschal Donohoe: It is the provision of that clause that has allowed us to make the recommendations we have made on the additional allowances, which were in turn recommended by the Public Service Pay Commission and which I have already said I will act on. The challenge we have with pay is, first, that there is an issue as to what the legal basis for changing wage rates would be, but the bigger issue we would...

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

Paschal Donohoe: I refer to the expectation that everyone else will see the same wage increases. I am just repeating a key answer to the Senator's question.

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

Paschal Donohoe: The Senator is correct that the number of hours people work or do not work of course feeds into the effect that pay policy can have on anyone. As for the assertion she made about recruitment and retention and her description of it as a crisis, I go back to the learnings and conclusions of the Public Service Pay Commission's report, which I accept and which stated we do not have a generalised...

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

Paschal Donohoe: I disagree with the Senator's claim that our general procurement policies are not working. Where we may differ is I do not think she envisages any role for the private sector in delivering projects, but I do. The tendering process we have used, which has worked a lot of the time for schools, primary care centres and road projects, involves the State tendering for the best value and then...

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

Paschal Donohoe: No. We make projects and tenders available to companies that are able to deliver them at the best value. Value has two different elements, namely, price and the quality of the work done. If it turned out, when procurement processes are reviewed, that an organisation made a project available to a company that was not the cheapest bidder, questions would be raised about whether we could have...

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

Paschal Donohoe: The controls on the vast majority of other projects that we do work. Of course we spend little time debating projects that communities need and which are delivered on time and on budget. I understand why those projects do not get the kind of scrutiny a project with this kind of difficulty deservedly does. I do not believe we have a situation of mass waste on our different projects. Those...