Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Regarding the Minister of State's statement that if one's house is on fire, one needs a bucket of water, one actually needs to make sure there is water in that bucket rather than something flammable. Yes, we were all extremely concerned, as we still are, hence the reason we need to ensure certain things. As the Minister of State said, the Office of Government Procurement is a policy body. We need to make sure we have the right policies in place so that when we do have something like this - when our house is on fire - we are not bringing a bucket full of flammables but are actually bringing a bucket full of water.

Let us consider the ventilators, for example. What if people needed those ventilators? We spent millions of euro and had ventilators that did not work. This was in a global pandemic. This is why we have policies and why we need to make sure that our policies work. I acknowledge the issue of non-competitive procurement practices and I understand that they can be needed in times such as a pandemic but we need to look at this situation very clearly. With regard to companies that fail so greatly and so gravely in times of absolute need, we must ensure that they are not going to be used again and again, and that these issues keep arising. That is definitely something I would be concerned about.

I would also push back on the whole concept of the non-competitive procurement practices. What kind of data collection is there for these non-competitive practices? How frequently are they used? Who are the most frequent users? What is the value in a given year? What reasons are cited for going outside a competitive process? I am aware that the OGP has provided guidance to contracting authorities on purchasing during the pandemic without a competitive process via a so-called "negotiated procedure". That is one of the ways of going about the competitive tendering process but are the Minister and the OGP aware of the total number and value of procurement contracts for Covid-19 related spending in 2020 and 2021 that took place via negotiated procedure and without prior publication? Is the office aware of anyone who is collecting this data centrally? This is very important.