Results 1-20 of 29 for feel "party:" . (isset($parties[ucfirst("$a[1]")]) ? $parties[ucfirst("$a[1]")] : "$a[1]") speaker:Michael D Higgins

Finance Bill 2011: Report and Final Stages (27 Jan 2011)

Michael D Higgins: ...in social terms. Perhaps it is because I am leaving the Dáil, and I hope its officials will forgive me, but after my long analysis over the years of the officials in the Department of Finance, I feel they need to move on. They must accept the theoretical thinking that cost-benefit analysis must be considered in view of the social dimension rather than just the narrow economic one. I...

EU-IMF Programme of Financial Support: Motion (15 Dec 2010)

Michael D Higgins: ...a real republic. Such a republic would have, for example, a deliberative discourse where citizens and what they say would count. Put more simply, after this mess, will it be easier for people to feel that their concerns and worries and their aspirations and hopes for the future will be taken into account? That is part of the deliberative discourse of a republic. Equally, citizens will...

Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) (No. 2) Bill 2010: Second Stage (Resumed) (1 Dec 2010)

Michael D Higgins: ...a social Europe. If it does not go down the road of giving the preference to valorising a social Europe, it will drive hundreds of millions on to the streets in European countries who will feel that there is no response to the reality of their lives but that there is an inordinate response to the demands of speculative capital. It is an Irish Minister saying in the current economic and...

Biological Weapons Bill 2010: Second Stage (7 Oct 2010)

Michael D Higgins: .... That is a significant point for the public to understand, that international law is weakened when in fact the most powerful and also the most permanent members of the Security Council do not feel bound by the full text of the convention in terms of getting rid of those kind of weapons, but that the convention is for lesser and newer players. I make this fundamental point because when I...

Criminal Justice (Public Order) Bill 2010: Second Stage (Resumed) (26 May 2010)

Michael D Higgins: ...they could walk into some kind of centre to talk to someone, their needs might be identified at an early stage. If squad cars brought children home, if they have homes, or to some place where they feel safe, it would be better than introducing them to the criminal process, as this legislation proposes. According to section 2(b) of the Bill before the House, a person who, while begging in...

Educational Access (10 Feb 2010)

Michael D Higgins: ...Minister for Education and Science or the Minister with responsibility did not find it worthwhile to remain in the House to reply in so far as both voted a few minutes ago on the Finance Bill. I feel I should speak very straight about this. The matter I raise calls into question whether words mean anything. In the debates on the budget and the Finance Bill I heard the suggestion that...

Order of Business (21 Jan 2010)

Michael D Higgins: -----and damage the National University of Ireland degree brand internationally is outrageous. My last point is that some university presidents feel they should be CEOs. One of them might have the ear of the Minister more than the graduates of the National University of Ireland. It is one thing for us to be producing tens of thousands of unemployed graduates; it is another for the Minister...

Social Welfare and Pensions (No. 2) Bill 2009: Committee and Remaining Stages (11 Dec 2009)

Michael D Higgins: I realise there are many sections about which people feel strongly and I hope we will be able to get to at least some of them.

Social Welfare and Pensions (No. 2) Bill 2009: Committee and Remaining Stages (11 Dec 2009)

Michael D Higgins: ...a couple of hundred thousand? I agree with one thing the Minister said. She said it was obscene for people to be paid €400,000, and I agree with her. Therefore, I find it obscene that people feel it is acceptable to earn a similar amount as a part-time non-executive director of a bank. We are agreed on that. However, it is simply not true to say there are no riches out there that...

National Asset Management Agency Bill 2009: Report Stage (Resumed) and Final Stage (5 Nov 2009)

Michael D Higgins: ...- (a) regarding lending practices and procedures to facilitate the availability of credit to classes of borrowers or potential borrowers including small and medium sized enterprises, The banks, feeling bound by that, will come to the Minister with the usual plethora of advertisements for new business and issue statements in different parts of the media to the effect that they are open for...

Ryan Report on the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse: Motion (Resumed) (11 Jun 2009)

Michael D Higgins: ...and had tea with Fr. McGonigle, who was in charge of the reformatory. Dr. Ó Raifeartaigh said, "Such is the spirit of dedication on the part of the staff, religious and lay, that one's principal feeling on leaving is that it is good to know that such people exist". He went on to say how enthused he was by the particular reform of regular visits of the Irish Countrywomen's Association to...

Written Answers — Child Care Services: Child Care Services (26 May 2009)

Michael D Higgins: Question 150: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if, with regard to the proposed ECCE scheme, she agrees with persons working in the area who feel that fixing the fee at €64.50 per child per week is equivalent to price fixing in the industry and in that regard may be open to legal challenge; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [21379/09]

Middle East Peace Process. (23 Apr 2009)

Michael D Higgins: Will the Minister indicate before we finish how the Government is advancing what I feel is a consensus on the investigation of war crimes in the recent conflict on both sides? In a recent visit by Mr. John Ging, the leading UNRWA specialist, to the foreign affairs committee, he mentioned that in the pledging conference that took place, the issue was not money but rather that less than 10% of...

Electoral (Amendment) Bill 2009: Second Stage (Resumed) (11 Mar 2009)

Michael D Higgins: ...'s circus or Fossett's circus? The posters will only be there for a temporary period in any event. Another issue relates to music. Why should we not have bands with trombones and bugles if we feel like it? There is something very strange about the notion that everything has to be quietened down. Everything has to be moved to a point far beyond discretion, that things must be whispered....

Finance (No. 2) Bill 2008: Second Stage (Resumed) (26 Nov 2008)

Michael D Higgins: ...of any scheme? That is the kind of unimaginative, deadly stuff in the Bill. Returning to education is one example where people will be faced with problems but there is a string of others. I feel sorry for those in public service whose lives are ruined by little meaningless rules so that they must turn themselves into ritualists. We in the political end of the spectrum have not given any...

Cluster Munitions and Anti-Personnel Mines Bill 2008: Second Stage. (4 Nov 2008)

Michael D Higgins: ...reducing avoidable diseases such as malaria to enable people to move to a state of food sufficiency and the concept of sustainable development. This has been entirely reversed. There is a growing feeling, driven by the neo-con authors of the project for a new American century, that argued, in a distortion of an old classical theory of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian war, that not to...

Broadcasting Bill 2008 [Seanad]: Second Stage (Resumed) (8 Oct 2008)

Michael D Higgins: ...would later describe TnaG as Teilifís DeLorean and so forth. Against the grain I was establishing and extending public service broadcasting consciously because I believed in it. That is why I feel it necessary to speak now when I see public service broadcasting dragged down into a pit of commercialism and broadcasting practice at its lowest ebb. On the other side there is the very...

Prison Building Programme: Motion (Resumed) (17 Jun 2008)

Michael D Higgins: .... It was easier at that time to speak about the welfare of prisoners and about conditions than it is now. It is incredible that the atmosphere has changed so much among the public, where people feel intimidated from speaking about prisoners' rights. However, we spoke about those rights and our report was followed by the Whitaker report, to which reference has been made, as well as a...

Student Support Bill 2008: Second Stage (Resumed) (27 Feb 2008)

Michael D Higgins: I, with others, welcome this Bill, for which we have waited five years since the original study on supporting equality of access to higher education was published in 2003. In welcoming the Bill, I feel there are ways in which it can be improved and fine-tuned on Committee Stage. These include, for example, responding to the representations of students on the phasing of payments, that is,...

Establishment of Committees (11 Oct 2007)

Michael D Higgins: ...affairs and foreign affairs committees. The European affairs committee can occasionally be briefed, but not on intelligence matters. The foreign affairs committee is not briefed. Does any Member feel that when we eventually formed that foreign affairs committee in 1993 it had any autonomy? I would pose the following questions regarding these committees. What is their role and...