Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. I have comments and observations on all of them, maybe not in logical order but in the order of the presentations. The witnesses spoke about the whole-of-government approach including national, regional and local government as well as agencies and key stakeholders. Have we ever really achieved regional government? It has been on the cards on numerous occasions. We have had numerous reports about how to develop an Ireland of the regions, and we can talk about the Cork region, as Senator Burke did. This point is close to my heart. People talk, for example, about the Dublin region but there are regions within regions, in other words, there are regions within Dublin. Quite often people dismiss Dublin or the Dublin region as if it were a single entity rather than several regions with separate issues and complications. We have a great deal more work to do in developing a regional approach. Do the witnesses, especially Councillor Stenson, have any comments on that?

Councillor Byrne mentioned the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, tender process. It was incredibly badly handled. Much of what happened was illogical, with partnerships bidding against each other, although they were dealing with completely different regions, for example, Ballymun and Blanchardstown, which are not interchangeable. Senator Burke mentioned the population of 500,000 in Cork city and county but in the Dublin region the population is over 1 million. The process undermined the valuable work partnerships had done. Does Councillor Byrne have any comments on that?

Councillor Richmond mentioned housing. It is important, when talking about income and disposable income, to take on board the fact that there are greater costs imposed on people living in urban areas such as Cork, Dublin, Galway, and to a lesser extent Limerick, in order to provide housing. There are significant pressures on people to provide housing. There is a big wash-out in mortgage arrears, which in terms of the country specific recommendations is a major issue that will hit urban Ireland in particular. Would Councillor Richmond like to say something about the regional disparities that put pressure on people’s disposable incomes, such as the cost of housing?

The Government has set up the Office for Government Procurement, OGP, which has centralised the tendering and procurement process for State agencies. This creates a problem because trying to achieve best value for the taxpayer at the same time as centralising the tendering process may rule out regional competitors, for example, as happened with certain procurement for hospitals, or the leaving certificate examination papers when a Spanish company got the job. Do the witnesses have a view or position on what we should do to ensure that local small and medium sized enterprises, SMEs, get access to tendering for State contracts, particularly in view of EU tendering rules and social contract clauses?