John Lyons (Dublin North West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will move the discussion away from this and focus on something Deputy Peadar Tóibín mentioned, which is the social agenda and the social clause. Ms McGrath said in her opening statement that the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is responsible for determining national policy on public procurement. Is that a two way process? Can Ms McGrath influence that in turn and make recommendations surrounding how we should conduct our national procurement process? In other words, if the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is not encouraging her or does not have a policy requiring her to have some type of social clause, where possible, within any of the procurement processes, is she in a position to say this could be good thing or can she go it alone without the Department stating it or without feedback?

With regard to the social clause issue, I have been doing a little work on this. I have a Private Members' Bill relating to public procurement. There are a few glitches in it which must be fixed before it goes any further. However, the social agenda in Ireland at present is to create jobs. It has come to my attention from speaking to various experts in public procurement that it is possible to build the concept of a social requirement into the criteria from the beginning when one is advertising with the Official Journal of the European Union. Once some type of social clause or social agenda is included there, one can then implement what is really a social clause around job creation. The reason I raise this is that we are spending €2.25 billion in a capital investment programme that was announced earlier this year. If we are serious about taking the unemployed off the live register and giving them jobs and if we are one of the biggest providers of capital investment through schools building programmes and with nearly €1 billion being spent on roads and so forth, do we have to wait until the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform states that a social clause must be included before the procurement or is Ms McGrath in a position to do that beforehand?

What experience has Ms McGrath had of developing social clauses and developing them effectively? If she has had such experience, does she speak about the benefits of a social clause as part of the education programme being rolled out to show people the way to effective procurement? The National Assembly for Wales has a social clause but it will be most likely knocked down by the EU because it contravenes EU legislation. However, it can be done in the right way. The people to whom I have been speaking, who are expert in this area, say that once it is included at the beginning of the process, not when the tender comes out but when the advertisement is put in the Official Journal of the European Union, and a number of other things are done - it is not as simple as the advertisement - we can include a social clause, particularly with regard to having a job creation procurement strategy in any of the capital programmes we are procuring.