Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

The statement on internal control gives some detail on what the €1.7 million is made up of. There are a number of categories. Purchases of goods and services were procured locally in 50 locations. These were in line with CDETB procurement policy but due to the aggregation of spend across the organisation, they exceeded the national procurement threshold. When a board spends more than €25,000 it is supposed to put the contract on eTenders but because this organisation has devolved procurement to different areas, individual schools or training centres were making purchases from the same supplier. These were in areas such as school books, arts and crafts material, coach hire, document storage, disability service providers, merchant banking services, school food provision and managed print services. These contracts should be available to anybody who can supply them.

In another area, there were purchases of goods and services where the tender was extended beyond the specified contract period, for which the total cost incurred in 2017 was approximately €1 million. It included expenditure relating to mobile phones, wide area network, ICT network support, design and print services, ironmonger and hardware supplies, plumbing and electrical supplies. These are also the types of activities that suppliers would be interested in competing for.