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)
Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source
I understand from speaking to the CCPC that sometimes it strongly suspects some form of collusion is going on without being able to get the evidence together. I asked the OGP this year to collaborate more strongly with the CCPC on this and take the data it is gathering and perform analysis on it to look for the patterns that would indicate that type of collusive behaviour. The OGP has been working carefully with equivalent procurement bodies in other European countries and asking them for their help on how they detect bid rigging. However, I think it will come down to data analysis and working with the CCPC's specific experience and gut feelings about where collusion is happening. Certainly, it is a form of theft from the public purse if bidders for a particular contract are managing to extract higher prices from the State.
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