Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

To be fair, enough is never being done in that we must continually reform the process as we introduce it. The Office of Government Procurement, OGP, is a new entity and has done a tremendous amount of work in a short period, but we must continually review what we are doing and get feedback.

I will have to discuss Cork again. I visited it with the OGP as part of the work that we were doing through Deputies and Senators in each constituency. I chair an advisory group of business firms' representatives - the Small Firms Association, the Construction Industry Federation and so on. Something that we decided as part of an outreach programme was to use Members in their constituencies, given that they speak with small businesses week in, week out about their procurement concerns. We decided to go on a roadshow and, through political offices and the chambers, invited them to meetings where we could explain what the OGP had been doing in recent years, give advice on using eTenders and so on, and take questions and feedback. We did that in UCC in December. A number of businesses attended that positive engagement. It was important for me to hear directly their feedback about some of the problems that they had been experiencing, given that second guessing our officials is an important role that every Minister must play in terms of undertaking a critical analysis of our functions. We have just had a meeting in Galway. It was very good, with even more businesses in attendance. We are planning for meetings in Mayo and Sligo in the coming weeks.

While we must keep reforming this space, it is important to note that 95% of the State's goods and services are procured from Irish-based companies, with the majority being SMEs. However, we still do not have the right way of qualifying an SME. We are working to European standards, which refer to 250 employees or less. When we discuss SMEs, though, most of us are not talking about a company that is so large. One of the pieces of work that we are undertaking with industry is determining how to get figures for micro-enterprises - companies of ten or 20 people - that feel like they are losing out to some of the new procurement processes that we introduced. We lot contracts together before breaking them back down again by regions, but enterprises might not be aware of that. In one industry, the average tender might only have been €20,000, which would be below the €25,000 threshold, but because the OGP decided to lump contracts together, enterprises were not aware, did not receive notifications, were not registered on eTenders and missed out. We now have metrics in place to improve this situation, but the main purpose of my outreach in each constituency is to let small businesses know that matters have changed. This does not mean that they have to lose out. We must be mindful that we work in a Single Market. While trying to favour SMEs, we cannot shut out other European companies. However, it is also worth noting - I can get the committee the exact figures - that we do better from procurement in other European countries than companies from those countries do from procurement in Ireland.