Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

A couple of points are raised in the response. First, a distinction is made in the note between non-competitive and non-compliant. The standard process is that there should be a competitive tendering process for any sizeable contract. For smaller contracts, quotes might be sought from a number of reasonable suppliers - people who could credibly supply the service - but for a bigger tender one would expect a competition. There is a very complex set of rules deriving from EU law governing how these competitions are to be run. It is onerous but nonetheless it is expected.

Certain exceptions are allowed within the EU rules. For instance, if it can be demonstrated that there is only a single supplier of a particular service or good then it is acceptable that one would look for a price from the supplier but obviously one would have to be satisfied that it represents good value and so on. There are other cases. We have talked about emergency procurements and so on. In such circumstances, that can be an allowable explanation for not having a competitive process.

We draw attention to any situation where an organisation has had non-compliant procurement in excess of €500,000.