Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I come to the issue of procurement. We have had testimony today from the Small Firms Association and the Irish Schools Art Supply Federation in respect of the operation of the Office of Government Procurement and the procurement regime in play at the moment. I know that Mr. Watt and Mr. Quinn are familiar with some of the dilemmas that face small and medium-sized enterprises with a particular emphasis on small and micro businesses. This is not the first time we have heard this story that is very critical and quite alarming in respect of how we are going about our business at the moment. I wish to put to Mr. Watt and Mr. Quinn a number of the issues and at the end we might come to some kind of discussion on how we resolve them, because they must be resolved.

I know - other members have had the same experience - that the stories today's witnesses tell tally exactly with the story I am hearing from small and micro businesses from every county. It certainly rang true.

Aggregate contracts essentially lock out small players. The notion of smaller players coming together to develop consortia is the stuff of fairy-tales. We are advised by those on the front line that it is not practical. It is a theoretical construct rather than being deliverable in real time and in real space. The failure to unbundle down to an appropriate level and to regionalise tenders is devastating. We were told earlier this morning that if this part of the puzzle does not change it will result in very significant job losses. That is what we have heard.

On the manner of deciding on the successful tender there is a focus on price only rather than looking at the most economically advantageous bid that would capture issues such as regional balance, social objectives, environmental objectives, taking people off the live register, creating new work, all of those sorts of things. The Welsh model has been cited as a successful operating model in that regard.

There is the issue of the Department's gathering and analysis of data. In his opening remarks Mr. Watt conceded the point when he talked about the efforts that had been made and said that this was actually a great step forward because previously there were no data or analysis. I draw his attention to the outworking of that statement. No analysis and no data up to a couple of years ago mean that we established this new office, Mr. Quinn came into the position and a regime was put in place in the absence of overall data and analysis. That is just a statement of fact unfortunately. I recognise that Mr. Watt seems to have taken steps to remedy that position and I know it is a huge job of work.

It is a very problematic, however, for those of us who are legislators and policy makers, and more problematical again for people on the front line that we still have what seems largely to be a vacuum. Even the data that have been pulled together are partial. It is not the full picture of the €9 billion spend. I am not sure what one can glean from the data.

I have not read the document from cover to cover, so I am not familiar with the methodology the witnesses have employed. I would like them to address those issues in the spirit of understanding that we do not have to go through the whole palaver around the need for efficiencies to save money for the Exchequer, which I acknowledge we need to do. The issue here is the means of assessing what matters, what is valued, the quality and the social objectives, all of which are allowed within the EU framework, as the witnesses know. We are told that the manner of assessment is heavily weighted in respect of price, to the degree of 35% of more, which is counterproductive. Crucially, the issue of aggregating the contracts locks people out. It was said earlier, and Deputy Connaughton may have said it most clearly, that we have here, as it seems to some of us at least, a problem in the remit and orientation of the office in respect of what it has set out to do. It has a crude approach in regard to moneys saved and expenditure avoided, and it misses the real bang for the buck, and the €9 billion of them that could be achieved.