Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That seemed to be an unusual explanation. Do any members wish to come in on any of that? I ask for the agreement of the committee to correspond with Mr. Reynolds and to explain that the committee wishes to have a tendered solution for the taxation advice to support overseas offices. Is that agreed? Agreed.

There is an issue with education and training boards, ETBs, and non-compliant procurement. We may wish to consider this and address other issues that are arising. A number of the items of correspondence on today's list provide explanations for non-compliant procurement. Seven of those are from ETBs and there are a number of recurring themes within them. Members will have seen this over recent years. The first reason being given for why individual ETBs are not able to properly carry out procurement is that there are difficulties in securing staff for procurement-specific roles. Another is aggregate spend leading to breaches. A number of ETBs state that this happens on local sites within an ETB area. These procure separately but, when the spend is added up for the ETB, it can lead to breaches of the national threshold of €25,000. By way of example, it is noted that Dublin and Dún Laoghaire ETB has over 90 sites. If each reached the €25,000 mark, the overall spend would reach €2.3 million. I calculated that figure quickly this morning. Contract roll-over is another recurring theme and inadequate financial systems are also mentioned.

No. R1437 from the City of Dublin ETB gives a good overview of some of the issues. We will note and publish the rest. I am open to suggestions but it might also be worth bringing these items of correspondence to the attention of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and the Office of Government Procurement, although you would hope they are actively working on them. There is an issue with regard to the threshold and calculating costs over different sites. Each site can go up to that figure. I know that Dublin and Dún Laoghaire ETB is the biggest with 90 sites. A lot of non-compliant procurement could accumulate across these. Is it agreed that we bring this to the attention of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science and the Office of Government Procurement? Agreed.