Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This will be a brief question, as Senator Jerry Buttimer is on his feet in the Seanad, and I have to attend the House to debate the Finance Bill. My question is about badly performing contractors. Earlier this year, the construction firm, Western Building Systems, was awarded a contract to deliver the 60-bed modular extension at University Hospital Limerick but the same construction firm was found responsible for structural defects in as many as 42 new schools that have been built in recent years. In August, the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Joe McHugh, stated that structural flaws had been identified in a further 17 school buildings, which would require temporary works to be carried out in the following weeks. Section 56(8) of the European Union (Awards of Public Authority Contracts) Regulations 2016 indicates that the contracting authority "may exclude from participation in a procurement procedure any economic operator in one or more of the following situations: ... where the economic operator has shown significant or persistent deficiencies in the performance of a substantive requirement under a prior public contract, a prior contract with a contracting entity or a prior concession contract".

Will the witnesses give an example of a contractor, such as Western Building Systems, that has been disqualified from a public tendering process on these grounds? Is there a database in place that allows contracting authorities to score contractors on their performance and share information across Departments and authorities while disqualifying contractors or penalising them during a tendering process?