Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Measures on procurement are some of the most ambitious we want to take. We carried out a comprehensive review to examine procurement and we found extraordinary anomalies whereby various agencies of the State bought the same products from the same companies at different prices. There were some cosy arrangements at local level. We need to have value for money for the State. We want to make these changes and we have ambitious money target savings of €500 million over the next three years, and €127 million this year alone, out of the €9 billion we spend on non-property procurement. We have examined approximately 60% of this spend which we believe can be targeted and done in a better way. The Office of Government Procurement is the new co-ordinated State agency to provide pan-governmental procurement on a professional basis. We are very conscious in doing this to ensure we bring the SME sector with us. We did not want to create a volume of contracts which would exclude individual SMEs. We and the Office of Government Procurement have had discussions with the SME organisations. We must comply with national and EU procurement directives and law. We have a number of initiatives and discussions including the provision of an e-tender site and alerts to SMEs on goods, services and works that will go to tender. At present 97,000 suppliers are registered on our e-tender site and we have engaged with them. We want to reduce the barriers for SMEs to be able to tender. We want to ensure in every area of work we have standard systems and documentation to reduce red tape. We have group discussions with the SME sector to ensure this will work. If the Deputy and Chairman wish, I am happy for Mr. Quinn to elaborate on the specifics because he has been involved in it.