Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Across all sectors of the public service, the Government is trying to systematically reduce costs by combining the purchasing power of schools to jointly procure services such as electricity through the extra volume that can be brought to the market. Some school boards of management have traditionally had a local supplier in the area and want to maintain and support local business. If, for example, photocopying paper is deemed by the procurement officer to cost X euro, and the school can get that price from the traditional supplier, the school is free to do business with that company. The Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes, is directly responsible in this area. Different agencies of the public service were paying wildly different prices to the same company for the same product. The effort is to ensure we get the lowest price applying to all State agencies. It is a matter of combining procurement services.