Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 5 March 2015

Public Accounts Committee

Procurement Issues: Small Firms Association and Irish Schools Arts Supply Federation

10:00 am

Mr. Ian Martin:

A new trend I see in the marketplace in the United Kingdom relates to facilities management companies. Twenty years ago these types of companies would essentially have provided contract cleaners and not much else; these days they provide stationery supplies, security staff and a range of other services. They are becoming massive conglomerates in the UK. I am aware of a tender over there worth €20 million for just one facilities management company. In my industry, we would be talking about a contract worth perhaps €10 million a year. I have never seen such an amount of documentation required for a tender. We are dealing with much larger contracts in the UK, and this type of aggregation is going to exclude a lot of the marketplace.

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