Mr. Andrew Brownlee:

The education procurement service is essentially a shared service procurement vehicle. It was born out of the Shannon consortium, so Limerick Institute of Technology, University of Limerick, and Mary Immaculate College, as their shared service resource. It was considered successful and it has now been given formal status as the education sector hub as part of the Office of Government Procurement framework. It now performs procurement on behalf of the education sector and indeed other sectors under a remit set by the Office of Government Procurement. It is based in Limerick.