Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 31 January 2024
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services 2024
Vote 11 – Office of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (Revised)
Vote 12 – Superannuation and Retired Allowances (Revised)
Vote 14 – State Laboratory (Revised)
Vote 15 - the Secret Service (Revised)
Vote 17 – Public Appointments Service (Revised)
Vote 18 – National Shared Services Office (Revised)
Vote 19 -the Office of the Ombudsman (Revised)
Vote 39 - Office of Government Procurement (Revised)
Vote 43 – Office of the Government Chief Information Officer (Revised)
Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source
I completely agree with that, not least because I am from a rural area. It will enable people to work part of the week remotely for all kinds of different reasons. I am happy we are measuring and doing a continuous evaluation of it. Those results will be interesting. Then, if we need to, we can make adjustments or whatever at an earlier stage. If we do that, we can get this right. As the Minister said, it is the way forward, particularly in a competitive labour environment.
On public procurement and Vote 39, the committee heard recently from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, on the issue of bid rigging in public procurement contracts. There have been a number of high-profile public cases in Europe that have been discussed. The CCPC repeatedly stated that despite the lack of prosecutions, it believes bid rigging on public contracts is likely to be taking place in Ireland and could cost the public purse hundreds of millions of euro a year. The CCPC raised the need to begin collecting and analysing all of the public procurement data in a systematic way to detect and deter that bid rigging. This was called for by the former head the CCPC in 2016. It was also recommended in the Hamilton in 2020. Are there any plans in place to begin collecting and sharing that data with the CCPC in 2024 to ensure that public money is being protected against bid rigging?
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