Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Chairman is right to raise this issue which has been ongoing now for a long time. It is more than 20 years since the contract for the entirety of the country's phone books was contracted out to a company in France and a fairly significant portion of the staff of the Smurfit organisation on the northside of Dublin were laid off. We later discovered that in other countries they do this by region, such that the contract for the 01 phone book forms one tender and the 02, 03 and so on are contracted for separately.

In terms of the Office of Government Procurement, it would be helpful for us to know more about it, perhaps by way of site visit or a report. There is procurement going on all over the State, involving State money. I welcome any measure which ensures we get better value for money or greater purchasing power as long as it does not lead to contracts being awarded to companies abroad and people in Ireland being laid off. Presumably, the OGP framework applies to all sectors, including the universities, schools, the HSE, local authorities and the Civil Service. I have been on the boards of State bodies where procurement above the thresholds, three tenders and so on took place. We need to have a better understanding of the overall operation of the Office of Government Procurement and how it permeates through the whole of Irish society, which is, perhaps, a discussion for another day.