Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We will write to the Department asking it to give us a detailed explanation in each case involving a sole contractor and tell us how it arrived at that conclusion. For example, €100,000 was paid for the provision of legal advice regarding the Corrib gas field project. The reasons given for not having a competitive process include the contractor having specialist knowledge and an in-depth understanding of this complex project. We would certainly hope that whoever was getting the contract had specialist knowledge and an understanding of the project or it should not have got th.e contract but to suggest that there was nobody else in the country who could have done it does not stand up from our perspective. We will come back to that

We now turn to correspondence from and related to private individuals and any other correspondence. No. 1774 C from Senator Gerard Craughwell, dated 3 December 2018, is correspondence requesting the committee to make inquiries regarding the expenditure by the Department of Defence defending High Court actions on its failure to implement the working time directive for the Defence Forces. We will request a note from the Department regarding the matters raised.