Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The only thing I would say in this regard is that it is an important subject. We all get people who, from time to time, say to us that they have tendered for whatever proposal it is but that they did not hear from anyone or that they did not know what went on. In many cases and over many years they have tried and failed to make a tender land, as it were. I accept that there can be situations where all of the documents were not supplied in the order in which they should have been and so on. It is a complicated business but the more complicated it is, the easier it is for somebody to rig the system. I just worry about that because it has come to my attention on a couple of occasions that there is a simpler way, and I am not going to be broadcasting that. However, I remember a guy saying to me that this system was rigged and that he could not do anything about it. I told him what to do. He then came back to me to say that I was wrong and that process did not do any good at all. I then proceeded to inquire as to who was the winner and who were the losers. There is a simple way to detect what is going on but one has to know what is in at least two of the tenders. One needs to know a higher one and a lower one.

The point about this is that it can be detected and the system can be broken by people who are attempting to, as it were, rig the system. I am happy our guest speakers are alert to this but I am not so sure about the number of cases we all have referred to us from time to time where the bidder says that they put in a bid, that it makes no difference and that they have been putting in bids for years, but they cannot get through the system. That is the point I am trying to emphasise and I am hope that perhaps, as a result of this discussion, it may be possible to make some inroads into any abuses which might be taking place.