Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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We will now move on to the next category of correspondence from and related to private individuals and any other correspondence. No. 511C is from Senator Gerard Craughwell, dated 15 April 2021. He raised the matter with me some months ago and I suggested that he write to the committee. The letter is requesting that the committee review a contract for a search and rescue service that has been managed by the Department of Transport. At our meeting on 28 April, we agreed to write to the Department to request that it respond to the matters raised.

I remind members that this relates to a contract which may be subject to a new procurement very shortly and that in light of the EU procurement principles of fairness, equity, transparency and non-discrimination, the committee and the individual members thereof cannot express a view that indicates a preference or favour for any particular tenderer, nor tenderers of any particular EU member state. I ask members to keep this in mind when discussing this matter. There is a commercial sensitivity around this.

This item was flagged for discussion by Deputies Catherine Murphy and Matt Carthy. The original contract certainly needs to be reviewed.

There are certainly issues in it that would raise an eyebrow or two. It is certainly worth examining.