Brian Hayes (Dublin South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government is undertaking a significant reform programme in the public procurement sector. Part of this will involve a move towards centralisation of data collection in the area of procurement activity. Currently, public service procurement activity is transacted by several hundred contracting authorities throughout the State. Data relating to these individual contracts are not currently collected centrally and, therefore, they are not available for the Deputy. It is planned that under the new office of government procurement, OGP, a sizeable data collection project will be launched. That is crucial in order that we have full knowledge of the entire spend, which has not been the case up to now.

The national procurement service, NPS, does, however, collect statistics from across the public sector on all contracts in excess of the EU threshold where contract award notices were published on the national eTenders website. The data compiled represent a response rate of approximately 75% from all public sector bodies that were required to submit returns to the NPS to compile this data. The data have been collected from contracting authorities in respect of competitive processes that were in excess of the EU threshold and where contract award notices were published. In 2010 the value of these contracts for goods and services was just over €3 billion, and in 2011 the value was just under €2.3 billion. The figures for 2012 are currently being compiled and cannot be provided to the Deputy at this juncture.

It is a legal requirement that contracting authorities publish certain information on contracts awarded within 48 days of the award in the Official Journal of the European Union, OJEU. Particulars, including the type of contract, the procedure and award criteria used, the number of tenders received, the name of the successful tenderer, the value of the contract or the range of tender prices, and justification for the negotiated procedure, if used, are published. The necessary information can be submitted electronically to the OJEU through the eTenders website.

Additional information not given on the floor of the House

Before signing any contract above the EU threshold, the awarding authority must write to all qualified tenderers to inform them of the result of the evaluation. This is called the standstill notice. In this notice, tenderers are informed of the name of the winning tenderer and how their tender compared to that of the winning tenderer. The Irish regulations governing the standstill notice were transposed from the 2007 EU new remedies directive under SI 130/2010. Under these regulations the standstill notice must give sufficient information to enable an unsuccessful bidder to decide whether there are grounds for seeking a review.

Number and value of contracts

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