Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is constantly being reviewed by the Office of Government Procurement, which is a new office. Its role in this area is to bring about the standards for compliance and the standards to be set for a competitive or non-competitive tender, and to liaise with the contracting authorities which might be a State agency or might be a local authority about best practice. I spoke earlier about the work that has been done there with the Comptroller and Auditor General's office and the Chief State Solicitor's office to try to achieve that. As the Deputy will know from his role in the Committee of Public Accounts, it is the responsibility of the Accounting Officer under section 19 of the Comptroller and Auditor General (Amendment) Act 1993 to answer for those financial management aspects. There is an internal audit function within the Department that will look at where a non-competitive process has taken place. It is then declared by the Accounting Officer under Circular 40/02. The Minister and the Accounting Officer are then responsible to the Committee of Public Accounts insofar as the Comptroller and Auditor General's external audit of that Department has taken place. That is the mechanism whereby this is reviewed and where accountability is held. The role of the Office of Government Procurement in all this is to bring about these reforms and better standards so that we can see what has been happening to date and we can drive further reform and improvement into the future.

See this speech in context