Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I understand that. As things are now, even as a preliminary consideration, it is public knowledge which companies have been involved in bid rigging and were fined and prosecuted in other countries. Does this automatically raise an alert in the CCPC or in the Government to give extra scrutiny to those companies that have already been prosecuted in other countries? How does the commission deal with companies that have already been prosecuted in other countries?

If we look to Spain, for instance, in July 2022, six Spanish construction firms were fined €200 million by the Spanish regulator for colluding on bids for public construction contracts. The Spanish state banned those companies from participating in public procurement processes. Five of those companies have won public construction contracts in Ireland. Is there any uniformity evident across member states in terms of the banning of companies that have been prosecuted?