Mr. Paul Quinn:

They are obviously not paper-based exercises because of the amount of money that flows through them. People draw down services and goods through them all the time and in significant volumes. It falls to the contracting authorities to manage those arrangements, to ensure they are getting what they paid for and to raise issues where they are not.

Coming back to the questions around the Department of Education and the ViraPro question, they are both matters for the Department of Education. We set out in the documentation sent to the committee in advance that there are possibilities under the procurement law to exclude parties that have not performed in contracts. To be reasonable to suppliers, however, that has to be proven and acted upon by the public bodies. It cannot be on the basis of conjecture, statement or assertion. People have to exert their rights and, once they do so, those parties can be excluded from further public procurement competitions in certain circumstances but they also have to be given the opportunity under law to self-clean.