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

I understand what Mr. Quinn is bound by and I am not arguing the toss with him on the directives or the legislation within which he must operate. It is entirely as it should be. My concern is all of us know the vast majority of employers in the State are SMEs; for all of the hype sometimes about large multinationals and as valuable as they are, this is how we tick economically. I believe Mr. Quinn that it is the Department's objective to support the model because it is what employs our people, and so far so good, but then we look at how the Department is going about things, particularly in terms of aggregating contracts. I grant that Mr. Quinn made a fair point on energy supply. We are told by the employers that aggregation locks them out of the game. In a scenario where the majority of jobs are created by smaller entities the State procurement system is heavily biased in favour of bigger players because they do not face the same challenges as the SMEs and smaller businesses. There is something incongruous in this.