Ms Anne Stewart:

I am the assistant secretary in the Office of Government Procurement, which is a division of the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. I have responsibility for public procurement policy, service delivery and digitalisation. I am joined by my colleagues, Mr. Declan McCormack, principal officer, and Mr. David O'Brien, principal officer.

I thank the Chair and members for the invitation to assist the committee in its consideration of the issue of bid-rigging in the public sector procurement process. To do this, I think it helpful to set out the role and remit of the Office of Government Procurement. The OGP was established in 2013 as a new division of the then Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to develop procurement policy and establish a central procurement body. It also took over administration of eTenders, the national electronic public procurement platform, to become a one-stop shop providing a complete audit trail and transparency of electronic tendering activity. In May this year, a new eTenders platform was implemented and the roll-out of new e-forms went live on the platform in October this year. While OGP manages the functioning and administration of the platform, the data contained in the platform is owned by each public body as the individual contracting authority.

With regard to policy function and EU law, in Ireland public procurement is governed by legislation at a European and national level. The EU Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union promotes the fundamental principles of non-discrimination, free movement of goods and services and freedom of establishment. These principles are reinforced in the four EU directives on public procurement. These are the directive on public procurement - goods, services and works - often known as the classic directive; the utilities directive on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal service sectors; the directive on the award of concession contracts; and, lastly, the defence and security directive.

The directives were transposed into Irish law as statutory instruments. These rules govern the way public bodies and utility operators purchase goods, works and services for contracts valued over a determined threshold. For tenders of lower value, the national rules apply but they must also respect the general rules of EU law.

Over recent years, the OGP has taken into account EU priorities on public procurement, which include the wider uptake of innovation, green and social procurement, increasing access to procurement markets, improving transparency, integrity and data, and boosting the digital transformation of procurement.

In addition to the directives, a list of the OGP's most important policy supports are: our circulars, of which we have a number; the capital works management framework for public works; our general procurement guidelines for goods and services; and technical guidelines, template, and documents and information notes. All of these together emphasise that public procurement must be conducted in a fair and transparent manner that affords equal opportunities for competing suppliers.

The OGP is a central body. We are one of five central purchasing bodies that collectively ensure one voice to the market by sourcing common goods and services on behalf of the public sector. The other four central purchasing bodies are education, defence, health and local government. In its function as a central procurement body, the OGP establishes framework agreements and dynamic purchasing systems, and conducts bespoke competitions. A key part of the function is the professional procurement expertise, consultancy and training that we provide to support all public sector bodies.

The OGP properly relies on all statutory bodies in the State charged with regulation of laws to examine possible impact or effect on market irregularities where they consider investigation it is warranted. Those areas are not confined to compliance of activity under the remit of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, but also cover compliance by economic operators across the board in areas such as taxation, environmental regulation, labour law, social regulation and technical regulation.

The OGP has always had and continues to have an open and collaborative relationship with the CCPC. Tender documents insist on legal requirements with exclusion grounds, as per Article 57 of the EU directive. The OGP guidelines include information on bid-rigging or collusive tendering and advise contracting authorities to inform the CCPC if they suspect this behaviour when running a tender. The CCPC also sits on the SME advisory group, which is chaired by the Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform with special responsibility for public procurement and eGovernment, and is supported by the OGP.

The OGP is very conscious that the identification of market irregularity is a difficult issue to reveal, let alone quantify. It welcomes initiatives from the CCPC to investigate market irregularities. It is working with the CCPC and will carefully consider any report emerging from such investigations as they relate to the public procurement market.