Mr. Paul Quinn:

I thank the Deputy for his question. The Irish regulations transpose faithfully the obligations under the procurement directive of 2014. Article 20 will be transposed into Irish law. Those facilities and the ability to use reserved contracts is there for public bodies to use. Whether they are employing that or not, I have no substantial awareness of Article 20 being used by many public bodies, if any. The OGP, in its frameworks, would not typically operate in that space so we have not deployed Article 20 provisions for reserved contracts. We can provide information on the facility but the implementation of it would fall to individual public bodies, to decide to reserve specific contracts. I am aware of one that was done but it was relatively small, where a local cleaning contract was reserved for local entities. There could be many more examples of that practice but they have not come across my desk.