Ms Deirdre McCarthy:

I am not a legal expert. If anyone has had a look at an EU directive, they can see that it is 200 pages of fairly complex documentation. We have done a bit of research on it and, at times, we feel that you are bamboozled by this information and are almost afraid to challenge it because you do not know exactly what you are talking about. At the same time, we are aware that there has been an extensive debate at European level which has argued that social services that benefit the public good such as social inclusion programmes were not to be put through tender processes. This has been the tenor of the debate at European level over recent years. The free market economy they are aiming for is not inclusive of that type of social service provision. The Council of Ministers of the European Union adopted three new directives on procurement in February 2014 which must come into Irish law by April 2016. The directives provide for a range of clauses and features relating to how public tendering for services like social inclusion programmes is to be handled.

I know the committee received a response from the Department on some of the issues we raised in our petition. The Department said that it had got legal advice from the Attorney General and it had to do this in respect of the directive which is currently the law. The Department is right in that this directive is law. However, that directive applies when the choice to go to public tender has been made. It does not make you go to public tender. The fact that the Department chose to go to tender means that those directive rules apply, but the Department did not have to go to tender.

Our argument is that the point is twofold - to tender or not to tender. We would argue that social inclusion programmes should not be put out to public tender. If it is felt that they must be put out to tender, they should go on the basis of the new directives which allow for particular clauses to be put in place to ensure the protection of good quality social inclusion programmes for citizens. Although those directives are not currently law, there is no reason they cannot be transposed into law earlier than the deadline of April 2016. There is an argument that this current programme was put out to tender when the Department knew the new directives were there because they were published in February 2014. The first call came later. Is it really good practice to operate on the basis of a legal situation that is going to change in 14 months time? I would argue that this is not the case.

The current directive has existed since 2004. During that time there has been a range of social inclusion programmes, none of which has gone out to public tender, including the one we are currently operating, the local community development programme. It seems an unusual decision that this one was chosen. As I am sure everyone is aware, the Leader programme is not being put out to public tender, and there are a lot of similarities between it and the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP.

Now that we have managed to get the committee to listen to us, we are asking it to support the principle that social inclusion programmes remain funded through a grant-based system and not put out to tender, as allowed for in the new directives. We ask that it be allowed to exclude these programmes. That would be adhering both to the spirit of the EU debate and to the law. We are also asking that the committee seek for the tendering of SICAP to be halted until such a time as the new directives can be transposed into Irish law, and for the committee to recommend that they be transposed as soon as possible. We are asking the committee to ask the Department to explain its decision on putting SICAP out to tender. When we ask about this we keep being told it was the Attorney General's advice and the Department cannot give us that advice. We are concerned that the advice relates to the specifics of tendering as opposed to the decision to go to tendering.

There have been examples throughout Europe of social inclusion projects, or projects aimed at dealing with those most disadvantaged in the labour market, that have gone to public tender. Overall, the results have been disastrous and more expensive. In the UK, there has been a lot of research and reports - we provided documentation on one of them - about how work-related programmes had the least benefit for those furthest away from the labour market, and how it was no cheaper for the State to provide them in that way.

I thank the committee members for their time and for listening to us.