Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 7 May 2015

Public Accounts Committee

2013 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 29 - Communications, Energy and Natural Resources
Chapter 8 - Operation of the Emergency Call Answering Service

10:00 am

Mr. Mark Griffin:

We must consider all of those issues when structuring the tender process. One of the matters we were conscious of in the original tender process was how to devise a competitive process that did not give an unfair advantage to the incumbent. This is perhaps the reason the convoluted base rate and the guaranteed rate of return process was introduced. We will have to go through a similar process of determining the best way of ensuring that the incumbent does not unduly benefit from the invitation-to-tender process. We will consider this issue as part of structuring the procurement process so as to determine in what way the existing service provider cannot benefit by virtue of being the existing service provider.