Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are 22 private institutions providing the service and assisting the State and there are procurement issues in respect of some of those and the Office of Government Procurement, OGP. In his opening statement, Mr. Waters contended that the Department is compliant with EU guidance on such matters but it is clearly not compliant with the OGP. Given that the OGP was, I think, established in 2014 - please correct me if I am wrong - I appreciate that there may have been rules that the Department is getting used to adhering to, but in the context of this budgetary year, 2015, and-or any other budgetary year, it has had knowledge of the Comptroller and Auditor General's assessment for some time. Has it put in place measures to comply in so far as possible with procurement rules as applied to those 22 private service providers?