Mr. Noel Dowling:

In terms of the contracting of private entities to provide Government services, it is not that unusual. Not all services provided, on behalf of the State, are provided by State officials.

In regard to the issue of certain companies being registered overseas and so forth, it is important to point out that it is a condition of the contract that any company, that is contracted to RIA, provides a tax clearance certificate every year. That means every single company that is engaged by RIA must be in good standing with the Revenue Commissioners.

A lot of these centres were established quite a number of years ago and we have not opened up new ones in recent years. In fact, we currently have 34 centres but at the end of 2008 we had 60 centres which means the number has almost halved over the period. It is not an expanding business in that sense. By definition, because they are places where people live, there is a tendency to keep centres as they are. We have had quite a number of difficulties and have had to close centres. As a few of the members will be aware, the last major centre that we closed a number of years ago was in Galway. It caused quite a deal of friction and difficulties because people had to be moved. As a result, there is a disposition to stick with the status quo.

Contracts are negotiated and a negotiated procedure is provided for in EU law. The Minister of State has made clear during several debates, and in response to parliamentary questions tabled about the matter, what will happen once this working group reports. Several things happened which disallowed us from going for a full tender process, one of which was a significant number of court cases. Last November we had a judgment on the CA and TA case which lasted quite a long period. In fact, it was the third case and the previous two cases had been withdrawn by the applicants. The court case lasted for six weeks and a judgment was issued in November 2014. It has not finished yet and is possibly still in play. The judgment challenged the entire direct provision system. It means there is no way in the wide world we could go tendering for something that we did not-----