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

I thank the Vice Chair. I want to add my voice to what the Vice Chair said. It it an absolutely excellent report. I also sit on the Committee on Budgetary Oversight and it was discussed there but I think it is excellent and I thank Ms O'Loughlin for coming in front of the committee. The whole report was a very important initiative in its own right in improving how we match spending inputs to performance outputs. It has certainly helped to narrow a gap in oversight, which is welcome. I note from today, and also from the previous committee, that the Department is always looking to improve. The Committee on Budgetary Oversight was mentioned as were reforms made which were based on improvements recommended by members.

I want to raise a couple of areas which could potentially be improved and to get Ms O'Loughlin's thoughts, if possible. These generally relate to procurement. As we know, we are big spenders on procurement - approximately €17 billion annually - and we have new initiatives like green public procurement and promoting social considerations in public procurement. What I have noticed since being elected is that we do not have as much information on this big area of spend as I believe is needed and it would be good to analyse it. The Office of Government Procurement publishes its spend and tendering analysis report, although the report published last year related to 2018, so there is a lag there. If we had annual up-to-date information on procurement spending of the kind reported in spend and tendering analysis report, could that be incorporated into the public service performance report?