Results 1-20 of 935 for at speaker:Paul McAuliffe

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: What the Department has identified is a gap. It is not a priority; it is a gap. I am saying the officials should reflect on it and come back to us with a solution. I want to focus on three areas if I can get through the next couple of minutes. I was delighted to see the school secretaries programme through which secretaries were taken on to the payroll system for the Department of...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: A school principal is the CEO of a very large organisation. Even on a school building project, for example, the amount of capacity hours a school principal puts into managing emergency works for the summer is huge. Sometimes it is very lonely at the top. The more schemes we throw at schools, while it is support of a kind, they need to be administered and managed. On costs, for example, we...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I thank Mr. Loftus for last week's announcement regarding the Scoil Chiarain special school, one of two schools. It is welcome. I argue it took a little too long to announce it, but I appreciate it. It will make a massive difference. It will also help to address the issue. We have opened 19 ASD classes in Dublin 9 and Dublin 11 over the past four years at primary school level but have...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: It is an opt-in system at present.

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 26 - Office of Minister for Education (16 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I have 18 seconds left. At one of my first meetings as a member of this committee, we dealt with the Department of Education. This was the issue that day. I have been here for five years and the Department has not solved the problem. Please deal with this matter before the Department of Education comes before the 34th Dáil. It is a major failure in the context of an issue that could...

Written Answers — Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: British-Irish Co-operation (9 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: 95. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade for a report on his attendance at the recent British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [20770/24]

Ceisteanna ar Pholasaí nó ar Reachtaíocht - Questions on Policy or Legislation (2 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I also raise the issue of ASD classes. In our area, thanks to principals and a really good SENO, we have managed to open 19 ASD classes at primary school level over the last number of years. We need to do more to predict what will happen at second level as well. There is one school that has been waiting for nearly two years to open two ASD classes. It wants to do that. It is Sacred Heart...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2022: National Transport Authority (2 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I think this is the NTA's first appearance here since our report last year which identified €150 million of lost spending as a result of the metro project. I want to come back to that, but just in case the witnesses need to reach for some figures on that, I am giving them some advance warning on it. I will come to a more parochial matter. I was at my local Tidy Towns clean-up day...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2022: National Transport Authority (2 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: In the meantime, however, on Saturday morning, I will be back at that taxi rank and I still have no answer as to why we are taking a 15-D hybrid off the road and allowing an 08-D to stay on the road. That hybrid is a car the taxi driver bought during the Covid period, before the first extension of the ten-year rule. He feels he is being led up the garden path. First, he fears that it might...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2022: National Transport Authority (2 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: We identified that loss of money. What were the oversight, governance and value for money steps taken at that time to make that decision?

Ceisteanna - Questions: Cabinet Committees (1 May 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: The 100,000 homes delivered in the lifetime of the Government have been welcome. In areas where viability is an issue, it is important that we have public housing on public land, in particular in cities. It is welcome that there are almost 2,500 houses in design and construction on many sites in my constituency alone. I am worried about one site in particular, which is the old Ballymun...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2022: Inland Fisheries Ireland (25 Apr 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I have no doubt that it is hard enough to get people to serve on boards as it is without bringing them before the Committee of Public Accounts. The organisation does great work. It is very valuable and it is very needed. Those are matters the organisation can discuss at the joint Oireachtas committee that covers that work. I suppose our job is to be in the nitty-gritty of the governance...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2022: Inland Fisheries Ireland (25 Apr 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: At the moment, it is intended to sell the cottagers privately on the open market.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2022: Inland Fisheries Ireland (25 Apr 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: The IFI is a State body with two homes in its possession. Given the number of people who are in need of home, at the very least, either through the local authority, an approved housing body or the LDA, I ask Ms Campion to ensure that everything that needs-----

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (18 Apr 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: Mr. Ó Conaill got my hopes up at the beginning when he said it would be separate, but then he dashed them. The HSE capital plan process is so slow and one of the benefits of taking disability out of the Department of Health was the reason he just said, that it was not getting the priority it should and often capital projects were the poor relation of other capital projects. It would be...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (18 Apr 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I will give an example. A service in my area, Teach an Saol, provides resources and supports for those with acquired brain injuries. Its representatives met with the Minister several times and met with HSE estates. There is a real question around who is the decision-maker and the champion of the project. It is a national service so the benefit locally in the CHO is quite limited but...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (18 Apr 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I could understand the reluctance of a chief operating officer in a local CHO, with all the demands they have in their area, on being offered a project with a national remit. They are saying it will not be a priority for them because they have many other areas in their CHO. It requires a project like that to be carried at national level. Does Mr. Ó Conaill agree?

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (18 Apr 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: ...have both streams coming in. There are different models across the country, In Dublin, we have the old City of Dublin Youth Service Board, CDYSB, model, which was a subcommittee of the ETB that ran direct services. There was an active process of divesting those and making them community-led. They have been left now as separate companies and the CDYSB no longer sits on any of those...

Public Accounts Committee: 2022 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 40 - Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (18 Apr 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: The difficulty is that the biggest expansions in youth services in my area have been led by the Department of Justice, rather than the Department of children. The difficulty in that regard is that the Department of Justice and the Garda diversion programme is very much aimed at those children who need direct intervention but one always has to be aware that there are kids who are not engaged...

Anniversary of the Introduction of the Smoking Ban: Statements (11 Apr 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I acknowledge the Minister of State, Deputy Colm Burke, who was a colleague on the Committee of Public Accounts. He added greatly to the body and, in fact, we missed him this morning. I wish him well in his role, in particularly with regard to public health and considering the recommendations of the citizens' assembly on drugs, which I will come back to. It is interesting that Deputy...