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

I have more than words of comfort. We have done a lot of work with the SME representative bodies to make sure that they are included in these contracts, that they are fairly treated and that they are not pushed out by larger, better-resourced organisations that might then deliver a worse service to Government. We are therefore keen that we get small firms that successfully tender for business. The majority of the spend on public procurement in Ireland goes to SMEs. Most of it goes to companies that are situated within Ireland.

I regularly meet with representatives and I ask them what changes they would like to see in the procurement framework and in the way that we do our procurement. They come to me with specific problems. Over the last year, they have come to me with questions about inflation, professional indemnity insurance, Brexit, emergency procurement during Covid-19 and how they can bring contracts, for example, during the pandemic. I meet with people who represent all of the different sectors. For example, the Construction Industry Federation is there, as is the Small Firms Association, ISME and IBEC. We have a co-operative relationship. I am rarely unable to help them in their requests. We work together to make sure that Irish companies get a fair share of the pie and they can competitively obtain contracts.

One of the things that I particularly want to do is to make sure that smaller, high-tech companies can win contracts for software services in Ireland. This is because many of the most innovative companies tend to be fairly small. We managed during the pandemic to award contracts in an emergency process to smaller companies. We are looking at, for example, the strategic platforms for innovation and research in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and seeing if within that mechanism we can include more smaller high-tech companies in Government contracts.