Mr. Aidan O'Driscoll:

Of the 39, 15 related to sole supplier contracts. These are mainly things related to forensic science, in fact, and ICT, which is a normal issue with those kinds of contracts. Two were specialist but they were very small and only amounted to €74,000 so they are not a significant factor here. The main other element was 22 contract extensions. That amounted to €4.3 million. My understanding is that these arose for a variety of reasons. One was legal delays in respect of putting contracts in place. Another was delays in putting in place the Government cloud arrangement in particular and some delays in putting in place Office of Government Procurement, OGP, frameworks. As the OGP frameworks have rolled out, most Departments are gradually converting to their use but there was some delay in the roll-out. The progress in 2018 is significantly due to the availability of contracts under the OGP framework.