Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

Much of this is about weighing up conflicting objectives. On the one hand, competitiveness should be a driver for good value for money, but it is also a driver for equality of access to supply. Small producers, in particular, have complained that too much concentration of the purchase will rule out small suppliers, especially small local suppliers. The committee will recall from the last committee the case of the stationery and book suppliers and so on to the education sector were particularly struggling. There is a balance to be struck between having an appropriate size of tender to achieve an economy of scale but not so big that local suppliers are ruled out of being able to supply the market. A lot of procurement is around things such as electricity, gas, heating and cleaning supplies or security which are quite big contracts but many of which would be local. There may be national suppliers who are supplying those kinds of services at a local level. The most valuable thing that the committee could do would be to have an engagement, perhaps a special meeting, with the Office of Government Procurement.