Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 29 March 2018
Public Accounts Committee
Business of Committee
9:00 am
Mr. Seamus McCarthy:
It is maybe worth considering that a draw-down framework has been put in place by the Office of Government Procurement and is available to all Departments so to a certain extent, the procurement benefit is potentially there already. A mini competition would be run for each campaign within the framework which would probably be required anyway to fit the job to the amount that is to be paid. From a value point of view, what I would really be looking for in examining any expenditure like this would be a clear objective to be identified before a campaign starts and a methodology to figure out whether the objective was achieved. This is what we would generally describe as a soft spend. Wishing to increase the uptake of a particular scheme which may be particularly low because people do not know about it would be an example of the kind of objective that should be set.