Ms Anne Stewart:

It could be run by the educational procurement services. I am just not sure whether it is the Department that runs it.

I will say a couple of things on general procurement practice. Through the procurement practice, economic operators do not get invited to tender. It is up to them to be registered on the eTenders system so they can get the alerts. When economic operators register on the system, they register with what is called a CPV code. That then alerts the operator to any tenders that are run linked to that code. It does not necessarily have to be only one code. An operator could register ten codes if it provides different services. What basically happens is the operator will get an alert to say there is a tender on the system it may like to bid for. It is possible some of those operators are not registered on the system at all and are not even seeing the alerts. The other thing that could happen is it may not necessarily be that the tender is going through Bus Éireann and it is farming it out. It could be the case that the tender is launched just for school bus services and it could be broken into lots. Hence, certain providers in, say, Munster will then bid for those particular lots but maybe not for the overall service. That is a general view to give the Cathaoirleach some context for how the tender process works.