Mr. Paul Quinn:

All Government procurement is governed by EU directives and a key principle in the process is non-discrimination in how people bid. It is not possible to consider one business against another in this regard. People bid and are successful based on transparent principles and processes to ensure probity, as we would expect in public procurement. The bidding process and evaluation criteria take into account price and quality. It is important to note that the Government has set out significant targets and savings to be achieved in public procurement. We are driving people towards looking at the markets more holistically and on an aggregated basis. That said, we will break down offerings into lots to enable small and medium enterprises to participate, but they need to participate and be competitive. That is the core principle.