Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The procurement of consultancy services in my Department is subject to the public procurement guidelines of the Department of Finance and they are set out in the Guidelines for Engagement of Consultants in the Civil Service of 1999. There have been some amendments to those, but not many. Procurement of outside expertise in the public relations field is also subject to public procurement guidelines as set out in the 2004 Department of Finance publication and the Public Procurement Guidelines Competitive Process, which replaced the previous Department of Finance guidelines entitled Public Procurement 1994 Edition — Green Book. That is the basis by which all contracts are governed. Any contract must fulfil those regulations, and the section, the Accounting Officer and the financial people in each Department must satisfy the arrangements as set out in those documents.

In addition, the procurement of these services is also subject to the applicable EU procurement rules and guidelines. Since early this year additional guidelines have been specifically put in place for communications consultancies and that is now incorporated into the Cabinet handbook. Most recently a number of new measures were announced which will contribute to improving the management and value for money aspects of consultancies, and the Deputy will be familiar with those.

On the Department of Finance guidelines for engagement of consultants, the way we operate these in my Department is we try to avoid needing consultants in the first place, if we have the expertise within the Department. As I mentioned on IT, we managed to do without them totally because we were lucky enough to have people with third level qualifications in this area who were able to form a project team. This is not always the case.

A consultant transfers skills or expertise to an organisation, which either does not possess these in-house or requires an independent evaluation assessment to be made. These are the two circumstances in which we would get outside consultants: where we do not have the relevant specialists in the Department and where we think the work concerned requires an independent evaluation of the way we are doing it, or where it is questioned and we believe, for internal audit or other purposes, that maybe there is another way.

Work done by outsiders is often not considered to be consultancy. A definition in the 1999 regulations states that the engagement of non-permanent staff to carry out the work of the office, where it is staff substitution, is not consultancy. If there are contracted services, the purchase of ongoing and essential routine services for a specified period, maintenance and so on, these are not consultancy. Neither is expenditure on software development from analysis to implementation because this involves developing the system, not consultancy. These are the definitions.

The Deputy makes a good point. When we employ consultancy for a particular purpose we try to fully engage the staff of the Civil Service in the work involved so that when a similar job arises, perhaps in another section, at least the civil servants will be familiar with procedures. This also has attractions for civil servants as regards training. We try to avoid replicating consultancy work in different sections and paying for it all again. The Deputy makes a valid point, and certainly in my Department what is being done cuts down on expenditure. The figures from my Department indicate that we do not use very many consultancies for this reason.

One initiative my Department takes which costs money but gives value is that it encourages staff to embark on further education through night classes. The fees are paid and they are given time off. This helps to build up expertise within the Departments. There is always the danger that they may transfer from the Department, but it is preferable, at least, that they remain in the Civil Service system.

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