Ms Patricia Callan:

Let us go back. I give a lot of credence to this committee as it was amazing how quickly the circular was reissued and republished after the hearing last year. It was actually done within four weeks. The circular in and of itself is good, but the implementation on the ground is not. What is the point in having a circular if it is guidance not law and, therefore, not mandatory? I took an approach last year whereby every time somebody brought to my attention a tender that was in breach of the circular, I would e-mail Paul Quinn and say "Tender". He would reply "I have no power to tell them that they are wrong or to stop and do something different". He would e-mail them and say "By the way, this is in breach". Sometimes, they would come back, put their hands up, apologise, rewrite and give people extra time. Sometimes, they would not. That is only those which were brought to my attention. Certainly, it has improved in the last year in the sense that turnover threshold, insurance threshold and all those basic things were changed and that is all good. However, there are many other things on which we need to make progress.