Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

In terms of my policy on drawing attention to non-competitive procurement that we identify, we generally do so on a sample basis. Sometimes, the sample may not be exactly representative, which occasionally prevents us from scaling up. For instance, we might pick a particular class of goods or services to examine, but I draw attention wherever we identify more than €500,000. It is a blanket approach. The idea is that, because there has been a problem with this in the public sector in general, there might be a small element that we identify in many organisations, but we do not need to draw attention to them. The emphasis that we have placed on it reflects the concerns of the committee over the years and our drawing attention to it at the committee encourages public sector bodies to ensure that they use competitive processes to procure their goods and services.