Results 581-600 of 1,135,592 for in 'Dáil debates' OR in 'Committee meetings' (speaker:Tom Kitt OR speaker:Holly Cairns OR speaker:Mary Lou McDonald OR speaker:Michael McNamara OR speaker:Peter Fitzpatrick OR speaker:Ciarán Cannon OR speaker:John Brady OR speaker:Niall Collins OR speaker:Eoin Ó Broin OR speaker:Frank Feighan OR speaker:Mairead Farrell OR speaker:Leo Varadkar OR speaker:Louise O'Reilly OR speaker:Emer Higgins OR speaker:Maurice Quinlivan OR speaker:Paschal Donohoe OR speaker:James Lawless OR speaker:Jackie Cahill OR speaker:Norma Foley OR speaker:Darragh O'Brien OR speaker:Paul Donnelly OR speaker:Pippa Hackett OR speaker:James O'Connor OR speaker:Rose Conway-Walsh OR speaker:Johnny Mythen OR speaker:Roderic O'Gorman OR speaker:Michael Lowry OR speaker:Richard O'Donoghue OR speaker:Eamon Ryan OR speaker:Dara Calleary OR speaker:Pádraig O'Sullivan OR speaker:Alan Dillon OR speaker:Danny Healy-Rae OR speaker:Claire Kerrane OR speaker:Martin Browne OR speaker:Denis Naughten OR speaker:Helen McEntee OR speaker:Catherine Martin OR speaker:Ossian Smyth OR speaker:Neasa Hourigan OR speaker:Simon Harris OR speaker:Heather Humphreys OR speaker:Éamon Ó Cuív OR speaker:Carol Nolan OR speaker:Imelda Munster)

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)

Rose Conway-Walsh: Apologies for the vote. My first question refers to an endorsement IFAC provided for the economic projections which were released alongside budget 2025. In the letter of endorsement on the macroeconomic projections, IFAC stated that one of the three elements of the basis for its approach is a review of the Department's past forecasts to look for errors and systematic bias. Is it fair to...

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: Maybe IFAC could let us have that. How many times has it overestimated? It should be fairly easy to see in GNI*. It is important for us to see the patterns that are there. IFAC endorsed the macroeconomic projection we received on budget day. Apart from the element I outlined, it also looked at the comparisons on the benchmark projections and forecasts from other bodies. IFAC said that...

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: Okay. Do the witnesses think the inclusion of BEPS pillar 1 kicking in in 2026 is a credible expectation?

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: Why?

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: Does IFAC have any oversight of the multiplier that is used by the Department for current and capital expenditure?

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: I refer to the multiplier that is used which means that if we put X in, we get Y out.

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: Does IFAC have any impact on the multiplier that is used by the Department? It is difficult to tell. There are lots of moving parts.

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: It might be something worth looking into in terms of the transparency of future estimates. Does IFAC assess the level of public expenditure based on the share of the real economy, which is obviously GNI*? From my own estimates, when I compare either net expenditure or general Government expenditure, it shows we are spending less today than we were in 2019, the year before the current...

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: It is also necessary, though, to look at inflation. We never signed up to the restrictive Fine Gael 5% spending rule. I believe we have been proven right in relation to inflation. Of the three examples that IFAC gave us in its submission, namely, the Netherlands, Finland and Sweden, the first two specifically take inflation into account and look at the increases in spending in real terms....

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: It is less today than it was in 2019 in terms of spending. It is a kind of contradiction in one sense. The concern is that all this highlights some of the risks associated with legislating for the spending rules.

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

Rose Conway-Walsh: No, exactly. What we are trying to get at here, however, is to be fiscally responsible but still have enough flexibility to be able to adapt to and respond to external changes that occur. It is about the balance rather than about tying ourselves into something if we were to legislate for the rule.