Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I was the one who asked for him to come in given that he is the head of the Office of Government Procurement. We had a discussion about this last week and, essentially, this is entirely within the remit of the Committee of Public Accounts because it is about process and failures of process. We need to understand those failures. It appears that there is an institutional gap and yet we cannot explore that with this official in the context of his exact remit. For example, would he be looking at industry norms relating to bids for a contract in terms of whether it is good tendering practice and what advice he might be able to give us. There is no point in having the head of Government procurement, who effectively can control the purchase of biros, give advice and ensure that proper procurement happens if we do not have people controlling the big projects about which the public will be concerned relating to the way tendering happens and how a particular type of arrangement happens. I refer, for example, to a special committee and the control there is of that. It would be enormously helpful to us given that he has the dual roles of being head of the Office of Government Procurement and also having been on the board of the national children's hospital. He is in a unique position to give us that insight. We said that this morning would be about capital projects and control of capital projects. One would have to ask whether he has a role in this at all. I would have liked to ask him about his role. I have to say I am deeply angry that the decision has been made to essentially exclude him from that discussion, which I believe is a very valid discussion.