Results 161-180 of 10,459 for speaker:Bertie Ahern

Chief State Solicitor's Office. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: On the first question, we all await the deliberations of the Director of Public Prosecutions. It is good that he is taking this initiative. The submissions are now in and we just have to await the process and what will be decided. Obviously there are large legal issues around these questions, the issue of privilege and others, but at least we are into a process, the outcome of which we...

Chief State Solicitor's Office. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: On the first question, last year the Minister for Finance approved 28 new permanent posts and one contract post for the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions to take account of the increase in the volume and complexity of work undertaken by the office, as referred to during Question Time that day, and the fact that new areas of work have emerged, which must be addressed. The staff...

Chief State Solicitor's Office. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: The staff levels continue to increase in most of these areas. In recent years, the HSE has received thousands of additional staff. We are not talking here about a small number. There were 28 new permanent posts approved. On the fisheries issue, I understand that there is no alteration of or change in the present legislation, but there is an internal examination by the Minister of the...

Chief State Solicitor's Office. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: I would be loath to say to Deputy Gilmore that we will ever reach a position where there are no more demands for staff in this area. It seems to be almost endless every year. With the exception of the range of initiatives in the criminal justice sector that are being considered, all of the other demands have been met, but there is a request for a number of additional staff — it is not yet...

Chief State Solicitor's Office. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: While there are always some problems, as I understand it, this issue has not been highlighted to me in the recent past. This was a constant issue before completion of the reforms four or five years ago. However, the issue has not been brought to my attention in recent times.

Chief State Solicitor's Office. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: I take Deputy Barrett's point. Approximately three or four years ago, the then Attorney General started a mandatory process entailing the notification on a regular basis of any significant case within any Department or being processed by any Department of the Office of the Attorney General so that office can track it. I do not know what is the benchmark figure. This pertains not to every...

Chief State Solicitor's Office. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: I have no difficulty with that and I will bring to the attention of the Attorney General the issue of where this links in with the Chief State Solicitor's office. Deputy Barrett is correct, as litigation into this, that and the other is the order of the day and due to the volume of cases, tracking is a more difficult issue. I am unsure where that kicks in with the Chief State Solicitor's...

Strategic Management Initiative. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: The development, promotion and implementation of the quality customer service, QCS, initiative has been driven in recent years mainly by two groups, the QCS officers' network and the QCS research group, both of which meet four or five times each year. The QCS officers' network continues to work intensively on the development and implementation of a range of customer service issues, including...

Strategic Management Initiative. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: In regard to accessibility, both in terms of hours and physical accessibility, the Office of Public Works has been working on that issue for the past 15 years. The OPW is responsible for physical access to 2,000 properties and it has campaigned actively on making them more accessible. This took up a lot of its efforts and resources over many years. That programme is fairly complete except...

Strategic Management Initiative. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: I must confess I use 11811. It gets me everywhere very quickly.

Strategic Management Initiative. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: They are amazingly fast at finding everywhere. The issue is hugely complex, which is probably why people use other services. On the Deputy's first point, whatever about a date for everybody, all of the groups, which are mainly being driven by the senior civil servants and public servants in Revenue, have done much work on this in terms of pressing the reforms and their customer service...

Strategic Management Initiative. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: On the first question, the customer charters are all about providing friendly, efficient and courteous service to customers. Departmental officials continually inform me at meetings that this is the function of charters. Annual surveys are carried out to monitor performance against these and other commitments. My Department has been conducting these surveys for a long time based on...

Strategic Management Initiative. (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: Ministers never do that. They resolve everything instantly. It is a challenge for the system. In fairness, public servants come out strongly in examinations of what the public, both businesses and individuals, think of them. The big effort with the customer quality initiative has been and will be to find out where the flaws are, particularly when dealing with the public, and deal with...

Leaders' Questions (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: I do not know what error led to the first issue raised by the Deputy but I apologise to the family involved as such things should not happen. No decision has been made by the Government or the HSE on the location of the new regional hospital in the north east. No proposal has come before the health committee or the Government in this regard. The HSE stated about 18 months ago that it would...

Leaders' Questions (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: There are two separate questions here. Deputy Kenny asked the position of the five hospitals in the region, Cavan, Monaghan, Drogheda, Dundalk and Navan. The immediate money in this year's capital programme and the next few years capital programme, as Professor Drumm pledged at recent meetings, is to provide better standards of service in those hospitals and to ensure they have sufficient...

Leaders' Questions (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: Obviously, some of the other hospitals in the region, rather than being acute hospitals, will develop services probably more orientated towards day cases and particular services but not sophisticated surgery. He has made that clear. To do that will require significant resources to develop the hospitals that are considered to be the acute hospitals — having coronary care units, intensive...

Leaders' Questions (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: We are not going to do that, which is why we are putting huge resources into our acute hospital and community services.

Leaders' Questions (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: We will continue with the plan, which is Government policy. That will remain Government policy.

Leaders' Questions (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: As it does every year, the Government will spend something in the order of €15 billion to €16 billion in the health services plus an enormous capital programme. I will not go back over the issues in health. Regarding Deputy Gilmore's economic question, and on unemployment particularly, in responding to issues of an economic and fiscal nature we have been upfront about the risks for the...

Leaders' Questions (8 Apr 2008)

Bertie Ahern: I do not want to get into a debate on last week's figures, but if the Deputy looks at the figures, which his question was about, concerning the performance of taxes he will see that income tax is up 5% compared to the same period last year and is directly related to employment, showing the real health of the Irish economy and reflecting how the most important part of economic activity, which...