Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

We will also have raised the matter with management in the organisation. Management will usually indicate the steps that it will take to try to reduce any non-compliance with procurement guidelines. In fairness to public bodies, we have been raising this issue for three or four years and there has been an improvement. More framework agreements with the Office of Government Procurement, OGP, are also coming on stream. Many organisations have been saying that they did not have competitive procurement processes and that they rolled over contracts because they were waiting for OGP framework agreements to be put in place. It is a slow process, but there has been progress. We need to keep the pressure on for the time being.