Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)

It depends. In terms of sourcing, they often are. If the Deputy can imagine it, we have two different wings of the Office of Government Procurement. One is in relation to policy and one in relation to sourcing. From a policy perspective, our officials work to devise frameworks, guidelines, circulars and a lot of support for Government Departments and agencies to be able to understand the bandwidth and how best to tender, for example, how best to utilise tendering documents and how best to use eTenders.

Part of what our Vote will be covering is the likes of eTenders, for example, which is the platform that most of our Government Departments and agencies would use for their larger and particular tenders.

The other side of what we have is our sourcing division, which is where we source on behalf of public bodies. That is where we have devised contracts already. If you can imagine all of the most commonly sourced items that happen right across the public service, whether that is tables, computer equipment or whatever, that is all sourced at the best possible price using economies of scale. The Office of Government Procurement does not pay for that; that happens within each Department. What we are doing is providing them with the opportunity to use us and our already agreed sourcing partners who have come through a framework. We advertise our frameworks publicly and very clearly, and people come to tender through a transparent process for them. It is our way of being able to provide other Departments across the Civil Service with the opportunity to purchase at a better price, usually, items that are commonly used and without having to go through their own individual competition. We remove that bureaucracy and unnecessary hurdle and providing them with, usually, a better price. It is a value for money proposition.