Mr. Paul Quinn:

I would not say that the directives are transposed verbatim. They are closely aligned. The directives have to be transposed into the relevant law of the country so minor changes would have to be made. The main provisions are there within Irish law as they are in the directives. The issue with the use of reserved contracts is that they are usually quite niche and targeted. If one takes something like a cleaning service, that I just mentioned, a public body may want, for specific reasons, to deploy Article 20 and to use a reserved contract for something that it is trying to do. I was aware of a large construction contract that used it because it wanted to use the local community for its site offices since it was a disadvantaged area. That was an appropriate use of Article 20. The issue with the scale at which the OGP operates is that our commercial cleaning framework is pitched at a different level and would encompass more than €200 million in annual spending on cleaning services. That is why there are certain things that can be done at a smaller, local scale and the mention of local authorities and local bodies is quite appropriate, where they would deploy such mechanisms. It is not that we do not use them but that they would not be generally appropriate in what we do.