Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy raised a number of questions. I will deal with the last one first. There are set criteria for excluding somebody from the tendering process but, obviously, fair procedure must apply, because excluding somebody from being able to apply for a public contract is a significant penalty and the contractor would have recourse to the courts to vindicate its rights to do that. I can forward the criteria for preventing a contractor from applying to the Deputy. In the past two years I have established the Office of Government Procurement because much general procurement in the public service happened in an ad hocfashion. We now have a much clearer and more transparent procurement mechanism. I do not know which committee the Deputy is a member of, but if it is one that deals with procurement generally, it might be useful to have the new Government procurement officer explain the procedures and possibly answer questions about anything that needs to be tightened either in the contract documentation or in the contract monitoring that might be of use.

See this speech in context