Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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I want to talk about public procurement, which I have an interest in. It is madness how little information we have on the spend. We are talking about a yearly spend of €22 billion and we do not have information on it. This was one of the first things I noticed when I was first elected to the Dáil. I find it crazy that the level of data on and oversight of the spend is really low. We do not know how many contracts came in on time in a year or how many overran. We do not know the types of procurement procedure or where contracts were awarded directly versus those that went to competitive tender. We do not know the level of non-compliant tenderable expenditure. There is a lot more.

Does the IFAC believe that this is an area of spend where significant improvements in transparency and oversight need to be made? At the moment, it is just like a black box where we do not know. Not only is it a huge area of spend, but it is one that can have an impact on particular areas, by which I mean local area economies. In Donegal and the west coast in general, there is a massive infrastructural deficit. The spend could be done in a way that included labour activation and apprenticeships. Does this area need greater oversight?