Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the question. The first thing to say is that the Office of Government Procurement is not a policing or regulatory body. It is a policy body that provides advice on how State money should be spent along with guidelines and suggestions for suppliers that have been vetted to contracting authorities. I understand that the body that purchased these ventilators is the HSE. The HSE would have been the contracting authority. The HSE is responsible for spending its own money. It has its own Accounting Officer and is subject to audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General and to being cross examined at the Oireachtas Committee on Health. Primarily, that would be the method of oversight of the health budget or the HSE spend.

I cannot really comment on the particular circumstances of that supplier to that contracting authority because I am not aware of the details but we must acknowledge the extreme urgency of the situation in which we found ourselves last summer. We were facing a situation where we had a new virus and did not know the extent to which the numbers could increase to a point where they would overload our hospital system. We could see what was happening in Italy on television and there was a rush to acquire PPE, ventilators and other equipment to prevent a calamity. In those situations, there is room within the procurement rules for emergency procurement of equipment and supplies so that we do not have to go out to a full tender. If somebody's house is on fire and one needs a bucket of water, one is not necessarily going to have a tender to obtain buckets. Of course, there are limits to how emergency procurement can proceed but, generally, it seems to have worked very well.