Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister said that SIRO informed him just before close of business last week that it was not going to participate in this bid contract. The dogs in the street have known for the past six months that SIRO was not going to bid for this. That should have been no surprise to the Minister. Folklore has it that he was on bended knee to SIRO to remain in the race because he wanted to have at least the rules met with respect to having an effective competitive process. He does not have an effective competitive process now because it is down to two entities and there are two contracts to be awarded. That would be fine if we were speaking, to some extent, in isolation but the real losers here are the 520,000 households-----

See this speech in context