Results 541-560 of 1,110,317 for in 'Dáil debates' OR (speaker:Peter Burke OR speaker:Damien English OR speaker:Simon Coveney OR speaker:Darren O'Rourke OR speaker:Michael Fitzmaurice OR speaker:Cathal Berry OR speaker:Alan Dillon OR speaker:Niamh Smyth OR speaker:Róisín Shortall OR speaker:David Stanton OR speaker:James Lawless OR speaker:Simon Harris OR speaker:Mary Butler OR speaker:Kieran O'Donnell OR speaker:James Browne OR speaker:Jennifer Whitmore OR speaker:Michael Lowry OR speaker:Imelda Munster OR speaker:Bríd Smith OR speaker:Helen McEntee OR speaker:Holly Cairns OR speaker:Robert Troy OR speaker:Ossian Smyth OR speaker:Paul McAuliffe) in 'Committee meetings'

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Defence Forces (17 Oct 2024)

Gary Gannon: It is about your pursuance of it.

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Defence Forces (17 Oct 2024)

Defence Forces

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Defence Forces (17 Oct 2024)

Matt Carthy: 5. To ask the Taoiseach and Minister for Defence the recruitment target for the Defence Forces; and the number who were inducted and the number who left the Defence Forces in each year from 2020 to 2024. [42033/24]

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Defence Forces (17 Oct 2024)

Matt Carthy: This question is to adjudicate the performance of the Government in respect of the Defence Forces. Sometimes the Tánaiste says there is unfair criticism. It would be important to set out for the Dáil, in each year of this Government from 2020, the target recruitment for the Defence Forces and, in each year, how many were actually inducted and how many left, in other words, the net...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Defence Forces (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: The military authorities have advised me that as of 31 August 2024, the latest date for which such information is available, the strength of the Permanent Defence Force stood at 7,426. A table containing the requested induction and discharges figures for each year from 2020 to 2024 will be provided to the Deputy. I have acknowledged in the past the recruitment and retention challenges in...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Defence Forces (17 Oct 2024)

Matt Carthy: It is hard to ask a supplementary question when I do not have the substantive response to the question I asked. I take the Tánaiste's commitment to provide the precise figures. Here is what we do know from the Tánaiste's response. There are currently fewer than 7,500 members of our Defence Forces, 2,000 below the establishment figure and a whopping 4,000 below the two-figure...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I thank the witnesses for being here this morning and the Comptroller and Auditor General for putting in the work on the report. I agree with Deputy Cannon that it is a very complex landscape and that we are dealing with charities of different capacities and sizes. I think roughly 11,000 charities are registered. Has their turnover been categorised in any way? How many fall into the very...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: Does Ms Delaney have a breakdown for the number of charities that have incomes of less than €10,000 or €5,000 per year?

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: If a charity has less than €10,000, it is an incredibly small operation. It more than likely does not have any paid staff and is mostly volunteer run. Equally, the auditing requirements are very onerous. Regarding audit fees in some cases, I know of one group with a total income of €2,500 and the cost of auditing is just north of €1,000. Has any consideration been...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I find it very frustrating, as does the group itself, which I will not name, that to carry out charitable work, and it inherited a legacy structure, 50% of its fundraising is to satisfy the Charities Regulator. While that is necessary, and I cannot see any other way around it, there is scope to have a more agile approach for smaller charities, as Ms Delaney mentioned. I will leave that with...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: They are identified as chief executive No. 2 in the report.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: That is the first concern. Had the cash flow or the financial operational management not become an issue, it is likely that we might not have discovered the many other areas such as the co-mingling of donations, restricted and unrestricted funds, and issues of poor governance decisions by the board and so on. For the Charities Regulator, that must be a lesson in the sense that had the...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: Does Ms Delaney accept that the relationship between CEO and chair is key? The governance issues or the protection of the public interest really rely on the board. When there is an entirely voluntary board and chairperson, however, without the independent resources of the staffing of the organisation, the board can be in a very weak position to monitor what is happening in the organisation.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: I agree, but does Ms Delaney accept the resourcing of the board is the issue there? I am not speaking about a particular case here, but if there was any attempt by a senior staff member, the CEO or staff in general to mislead the board, it could be incredibly difficult for a board that may meet once a month, whose members perhaps do not know each other very well as board members and who do...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: Ms Delaney is outlining the obligations of the directors and the board and I do not take from those. My point is that many directors find it very difficult to fulfil that because they are entirely dependent for resourcing and expertise and information on the people who work within the organisation. Where it goes wrong, that is often the challenge.

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: In some cases in community structures, for example, the people involved are very well meaning but perhaps do not have the experience and so on. That is the weakness of corporate governance in Ireland. It is the reason we will have other instances. We are not resourcing the boards. That brings me to my second point, which is the recruitment and retention of board members. Why in God's...

Public Accounts Committee: Financial Statements 2023 - Charities Regulatory Authority (17 Oct 2024)

Paul McAuliffe: We can look at youth centres and community structures across the country. This is the spending of public money and it is governed by volunteers we are not providing sufficient resources to. These are the charities Ms Delaney and her colleagues regulate.

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Departmental Funding (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: The Defence Vote group comprises of two Votes: Vote 35 - Army pensions and Vote 36 - defence. The 2023 Vote 36 – defence net surplus surrendered to the Exchequer was €18.1 million. This figure includes surplus appropriations-in-aid of €9.1 million, which, as the Deputy will be aware, cannot be used to fund additional expenditure and must be surrendered to the...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Departmental Funding (17 Oct 2024)

Matt Carthy: People will be astounded to see the Department of Defence surrendering any money back to the Exchequer, considering the challenges that the Defence Forces are currently facing in the retention and recruitment crisis and the ambitions that have been set out, particularly in the report of the Commission on the Defence Forces. I have raised with the Tánaiste on a number of occasions the...

Ceisteanna ar Sonraíodh Uain Dóibh - Priority Questions: Departmental Funding (17 Oct 2024)

Micheál Martin: We have actually expanded expenditure. The bottom line is, in terms of capital expenditure, procurement is an issue in terms of the time it can take to procure, particularly C295s. The bottom line is we are committing to a lot of expenditure, which will come on stream. It does not necessarily fall in any given 12 months. I do not accept the Deputy's characterisation of the budgetary...