Results 581-600 of 1,135,937 for in 'Dáil debates' OR (speaker:Tom Kitt OR speaker:Josepha Madigan OR speaker:Ruairi Ó Murchú OR speaker:Seán Canney OR speaker:John Lahart OR speaker:Marc Ó Cathasaigh OR speaker:Marc MacSharry OR speaker:Michael McGrath OR speaker:Ivana Bacik OR speaker:Cathal Crowe OR speaker:Michael Ring OR speaker:Seán Ó Fearghaíl OR speaker:Patricia Ryan OR speaker:Colm Brophy OR speaker:James Browne OR speaker:Martin Browne OR speaker:Matt Shanahan OR speaker:Micheál Martin OR speaker:Michael Moynihan OR speaker:Claire Kerrane OR speaker:Paschal Donohoe OR speaker:Martin Kenny OR speaker:Jackie Cahill OR speaker:Cathal Berry OR speaker:Seán Crowe OR speaker:Cian O'Callaghan OR speaker:Catherine Martin OR speaker:Jim O'Callaghan OR speaker:Pádraig O'Sullivan OR speaker:Anne Rabbitte OR speaker:Steven Matthews OR speaker:Alan Dillon OR speaker:Neale Richmond OR speaker:Brendan Griffin OR speaker:Stephen Donnelly OR speaker:Richard O'Donoghue OR speaker:Maurice Quinlivan OR speaker:Richard Boyd Barrett OR speaker:Peter Fitzpatrick OR speaker:James Lawless OR speaker:Marian Harkin OR speaker:Pat Buckley) in 'Committee meetings'

Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Helen McEntee: I will speak to my amendments and Deputy Howlin's and we can respond to each other. I am pleased to bring the amended Bill back before the Dáil. The Bill completed all Stages in the Seanad last week and I wish to report back to the Dáil the amendments agreed in the Seanad. As Deputies are aware, the Bill originally had two objectives: to update and modernise our existing...

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: I appreciate the Minister of State is reading the briefing notes in front of him but I want to repeat the point. The Land Development Agency does not have €6.25 billion.

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Alan Dillon: I clarified that. It has access.

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Eoin Ó Broin: It does not have €6.25 billion. It currently has €3.75 billion between funds that have been spent, allocated and what is proposed today. To say it has access to the remainder of the funds is the most liberal use of the word “access” I have heard in some time. It is important we understand why. In theory, the LDA can go and borrow on the markets, but the LDA is...

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Alan Dillon: I thank the Deputy for his response. I do not have the information to hand but I will provide it to him after this session. The purpose of today’s discussion on the amendment is to increase, from €1.25 to €2.25 billion, the amount the Minister for Finance may direct the National Treasury Management Agency to pay to the Land Development Agency for the proceeds of the...

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Richard Boyd Barrett: We are putting all these extra billions into the LDA and it is just to deliver the existing plan. Is that what the Minister of State is telling us? It is for the existing plan. This is not linked to what everybody knows has to happen and which the Government itself knows has to happen, which is a dramatic upscaling of the targets necessary, which inevitably means a dramatic upscaling of...

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Ivana Bacik: This Bill and the amendments from the Seanad give us an opportunity to address that bigger issue of the Land Development Agency. We in the Labour Party certainly supported the Land Development Agency in principle. We think it is a vital vehicle to deliver homes at scale, affordable homes that we badly need. However, as Deputies Ó Broin and Boyd Barrett have pointed out, there are real...

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Cian O'Callaghan: The Social Democrats certainly will not be opposing these amendments. On the Land Development Agency, there is a massive gap between the initial promise put forward by Fine Gael's then Minister for housing, Eoghan Murphy, for what the Land Development Agency would deliver in terms of housing and what has transpired in the six years since then. I invite the Minister of State to speak about...

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Alan Dillon: I thank the Deputies for their contributions. I am glad there is no dissent or opposition to the amendments being brought forward. The additional funds will secure the delivery of the LDA's 2024-28 business plan, under which there is projected delivery of up to 12,900 homes by 2028. A large pipeline of further direct delivery homes is being developed for completion in the period from...

Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: From the Seanad (23 Oct 2024)

Richard Boyd Barrett: I am happy enough to support this extra capital going towards the LDA, but I would rather that the LDA were something other than what it is. We have argued for some time it should be a fully fledged State construction company. That is the only way we will reach the level of output of social and affordable housing necessary to address the absolutely dire housing crisis we are facing. The...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Ireland's Medium-Term Fiscal and Structural Plan: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (23 Oct 2024)

Seán Canney: I thank our guests for coming in today. From a lay person's point of view, we are talking about economies, budgets and five-year plans but a five-year plan is not worth the paper it is written on in the context of what happened in Ukraine or of Covid, for example. Basically, such plans are for an ideal world, if everything was right. When we have a spike in inflation, all kinds of...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Ireland's Medium-Term Fiscal and Structural Plan: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (23 Oct 2024)

Seán Canney: If one considers the surplus taxes that we have coming in now and the fact that some of that is being stored away in the so-called rainy day fund, is that the type of action that a good government should be taking so that we have reserves when we need them? An example of an area about which people are very frustrated is that of house building. Private housing is not being built. That...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Ireland's Medium-Term Fiscal and Structural Plan: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (23 Oct 2024)

Seán Canney: What is Mr. Coffey's take on people promising that we are going to build 60,000 houses? How does he see that being done when we cannot even build 30,000 at the moment? That is not a political question. I am asking how the council sees this being done. Will something else have to be sacrificed, for example, retrofitting or something like that? Does Mr. Coffey have any comments on that?

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Ireland's Medium-Term Fiscal and Structural Plan: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (23 Oct 2024)

Seán Canney: The way Mr. Coffey describes some of the difficulties in getting foreign workers or getting our own people who have gone abroad to come back is like a chicken-and-egg situation. We have to provide the houses for them to live in to give them the permanency they need. They would want a guarantee that they would get a house here if they came back.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Ireland's Medium-Term Fiscal and Structural Plan: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (23 Oct 2024)

Seán Canney: This is not a loaded question but it relates to the role of IFAC. Do the witnesses find that nobody listens to what they say when they have concerns about fiscal rules or projections and forecasts that are being made? Are they being listened to by governments? Do they feel that their role is effective? People say the Government is composed of the elected representatives of the people and...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Ireland's Medium-Term Fiscal and Structural Plan: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (23 Oct 2024)

Seán Canney: I have one last question. I did my leaving certificate in the mid-1970s and for whatever reason, there were no jobs at the time. When I was in the construction industry there was very little work in the early 1980s, then we had the boom and it was followed by the situation in 2008. Should we be doing specific analysis to generate lessons for the future? I include how we performed during...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Ireland's Medium-Term Fiscal and Structural Plan: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (23 Oct 2024)

Seán Canney: I thank the guests.

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Ireland's Medium-Term Fiscal and Structural Plan: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (23 Oct 2024)

Patricia Ryan: I thank our guests. I apologise about the voting; it just makes everything very awkward. Anyway, we will move on swiftly. Would our guests recommend that the Government disregard or disapply the net spending rule when allocating funding for the likes of State old age pensions, especially considering that the recent increase of €12 granted in budget 2025 has caused a real decrease...

Committee on Budgetary Oversight: Ireland's Medium-Term Fiscal and Structural Plan: Irish Fiscal Advisory Council (23 Oct 2024)

Patricia Ryan: What are Mr. Coffey's thoughts on benchmarking?