Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 3 April 2014
Public Accounts Committee
2012 Annual Report of the Comptroller General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 11 - Office of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
Vote 12 - Superannuation and Retired Allowances
Chapter 3 - Financial Commitments under Public Private Partnerships
Chapter 4 - Vote Accounting
Chapter 5 - Vote Budget Management
11:50 am
Mr. Robert Watt:
We had a target of €127 million for this year, for 2014, so we are confident we will save around €100 million or so of that saving for this year. We are fairly confident we will make the savings in respect of 2014. In effect, the Office of Government Procurement has been established and it is now procuring more and more of the categories - of the types - of spend for parts of the system. It is now in effect implementing its work programme. We say €100 million will be the savings for this year and then over the three year period, so by the end of 2016 we have targeted savings of €500 million.
As the Deputy will be aware taking money out of procurement is going to have an impact on companies that were previously providing those services that might be getting less. Some of them may not win the new contract. It might be just around renewal of contract. There will be concerns here. There will be a lot of noise around some of the implications of this. I have not seen the submission the Deputy has received, so I am at a disadvantage. I do not know what they are saying to the Deputy.
What we are trying to do all the time - we did it with circular 10/10, which we published in August 2010, and we have done it now through Mr. Quinn's office - is to provide more support to SMEs to enable them to compete for projects. In terms of the stationery contract, which I think might be the subject of some of the correspondence the committee has received, we broke it into four lots. We have not gone out with a big contract. We broke it into lots. We are using more framework contracts. We are providing more assistance and supports training for SMEs in order that they can access contracts.
We are mindful of the types of representations committee members are receiving. It is impossible to make savings in any part of the public sector without there being difficulties and without a constituency of some description being discommoded. We are trying to work as closely as we can with the different groups. We have had many discussions with IBEC and the Small Firms Association, the different representative groups and the different groups within sectors as well. We are mindful of it and we are on top of it. We are happy to work with them in any way we can.