Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 2 March 2021
Select Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach
Estimates for Public Services 2021
Vote 11 - Office of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform (Revised)
Vote 12 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances (Revised)
Vote 14 - State Laboratory (Revised)
Vote 15 - Secret Service (Revised)
Vote 17 - Public Appointments Service (Revised)
Vote 18 - National Shared Services Office (Revised)
Vote 19 - Office of the Ombudsman (Revised)
Vote 39 - Office of Government Procurement (Revised)
Vote 43 - Office of the Chief Government Information Officer (Revised)
Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source
I meet regularly with SMEs and their representative bodies to ask them what they would like changed in the procurement process in order that they can win more procurement contracts as small Irish companies. I do that quarterly and I am due to meet them again in a couple of weeks. It is a fact that the majority of public procurement spend goes to SMEs at the moment. That is the situation. They are winning contracts. We engage with them and try to help them, and we change the rules, if necessary, within the law. We have to follow European law and we then have Irish law. We have to follow the European directive but, within that, we work with the SMEs, and we recognise it is a question and a problem.
No comments