Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not believe we build trains in Ireland. There is a European definition for SMEs and for comparative reasons, we subscribe to that. Micro-businesses have up to ten employees, small businesses have up to 50 employees, medium-sized businesses have up to 250 employees and larger companies have more than 250 people. Under the SME definition, two thirds of the goods and services tendered for are won by SMEs in the State. We cannot discriminate against larger companies. If a company in Ireland employs 200 or 250 people, should it be excluded from potentially winning State contracts? Is there some sort of magic number? Is it 50, so if a company has 51 employees, it cannot get a State contract? That would be a ludicrous proposal.

The Deputy referred to the publication of books. I looked at what happened before we had the centralised Office of Government Procurement and individual schools were tendering for books. The same company was supplying the same products to a variety of schools at different costs. We must have some regard to value for money for the taxpayer; that discipline must be brought to play in a transparent fashion in the OGP process. I have said that of course there is room for improvement and it is something on which we will continue to work.

See this speech in context