Results 1,961-1,980 of 32,527 for speaker:Paschal Donohoe

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Departmental Contracts (7 Nov 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: I wish to advise the Deputy that my Department currently has two contracts in place with the company in question. Purpose of contract Value of the contract Contract 1: Consultancy Service to create end to end processes for key processes across the Office of Government Procurement (OGP) €57,810 (incl VAT) Contract 2: Economic...

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Departmental Contracts (7 Nov 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: I wish to advise the Deputy that my Department currently has no contracts in place with the company in question. The Deputy may wish to note that this company is on a number of procurement frameworks established by the Office of Government Procurement, which is a Division of my Department.

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Departmental Contracts (7 Nov 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: I wish to advise the Deputy that my Department currently has no contracts in place with the company in question. The Deputy may wish to note that this company is on a number of procurement frameworks established by the Office of Government Procurement, which is a Division of my Department.

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Office of Public Works (7 Nov 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: The gross 2023 capital allocation for Vote 13 - The Office of Public Works is €270m as set out in the Revised Estimates for Public Services 2023. To end-September, the OPW has reported capital spending of €140.5m, 4.3% below the profiled position for this period. The OPW is due to be allocated €288m in capital resources in 2024 in line with the National Development Plan....

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: EU Funding (7 Nov 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: The EU Solidarity Fund was established by the European Union to respond to major natural disasters within the Union and to express Union solidarity with disaster-stricken regions within Europe. For the purposes of the Fund, a major natural disaster is defined as one that results in damage in a Member State estimated either at over €3bn or more than 0.6% of GNI. For major natural...

Written Answers — Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: EU Funding (7 Nov 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: At an EU level, matters related to Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid are the responsibility of the Directorate-General for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (DG ECHO) whose mandate is to provide emergency assistance and relief (in the form of goods and services) to victims of conflict and natural or man-made disasters outside the EU. Assistance is delivered in...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Public Sector Pay (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: These are all excellent questions which I will be in a position to answer a little later in relation to the duration of the wage agreement, the issues that will be covered off within it and the policy matters that will be included within it. To touch on some of the answers I can give at this point, first, I hope to be in a position to engage through my officials with the public sector...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Public Sector Pay (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: That is the system that has been in place since 2016. There is pretty binary clarity indicated in whether someone is performing in their job or not. There is merit in that approach. In any case, we have committed to review the system that is in place. In the renewal action plan for the Civil Service which the Government has agreed, action step 3 commits us to a review of the Civil Service...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: Public Sector Pay (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: I take on board the point made by the Deputy. I can see the merits of a more graduated way of doing it. Before I entered public life myself and became a politician, I saw how these performance reviews worked and they were graded. It works very well in other employers. I will make sure this is looked at in the context of the review of the system next year. Return times, that is when...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: National Development Plan (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: The process for that tends to be that Ministers and their Departments identify any individual project, particularly high-profile projects, that may be affected by the impact of inflation and some of the other factors the Deputy has touched on. In the past year or so, we still managed to make progress on the majority of such individual projects, moving some of them to construction, a number...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: National Development Plan (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: I will do my best, and I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. I will deal with each of them in turn. On Deputy Durkan's point, I took care with the words I used earlier in my first answer to him. I said projects would be moved along, but of course it is the case that many projects are not hitting the original timings that were anticipated for them. So many capital projects have been...

Ceisteanna Eile - Other Questions: National Development Plan (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: I propose to take Questions Nos. 7 and 36 together. The Government has committed to €165 billion in capital investment through the national development plan published in 2021. As a percentage of national income, annual capital investment is now among the largest in the European Union. In 2023, almost €13 billion will fund vital infrastructure in areas such as housing,...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Capital Expenditure Programme (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: There has been an increase in capital investment but the increase in capital investment is in line with the indications we gave for the national development plan a few years ago. The reason we make decisions years in advance to increase investment is to give our economy the ability to organise itself so that it is able to build and transform this higher level of capital spend into output,...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Capital Expenditure Programme (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: Of course I am committed to how we can maintain and grow the capital investment in our economy, but I do not have a guiding anchor of what it should be as a share of GNI* that supersedes the fact that I had to make decisions regarding how we allocate money that is available to us. The first ordered decision is how much money is available to the country and whether we are going to reduce our...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Estimates Publication (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: I thank the Deputy for the question. Expenditure Report 2024, published on budget day included budget Estimates. These budget Estimates for public services set out the allocations for the following year for each Vote at programme level. This represents a high-level summary of the budget and allocations for the following year. The Revised Estimates Volume for Public Service, REV 2024,...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Estimates Publication (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: I thank the Deputy very much for his comments and, of course, I am well aware of my duties to the Dáil and the need to put forward factual answers to questions the Deputy raises, which at all points I endeavour to do. I will just deal with the different layers of the question the Deputy has put to me. First, on the obligation we have to those looking for hospital and medical care...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Estimates Publication (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: Again, I believe it is important to put this budget in the context of recent spending decisions. Over the past eight years, we have seen an effective doubling of our spending within our health services. Over recent years, we have seen an increase in investment in our health services of between €6 billion and €7 billion. We have seen very significant and needed increases in...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Departmental Funding (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: The question the Deputy put in written format is a little different from the questions she is putting to me now. I want to answer them all in the interests of transparency for the Dáil. I will first deal with the questions the Deputy has just put to me. Do I accept that it is very difficult for our hospitals and the HSE to influence the level of demand for health services in the short...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Departmental Funding (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: Absolutely.

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Departmental Funding (26 Oct 2023)

Paschal Donohoe: We will continue to find ways to make progress on Sláintecare.