Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There has been a significant rationalisation of public bodies in recent years. The House will be aware that town councils were abolished, education and training boards, formerly vocational educational committees, VECs, were merged and county enterprise boards, as stand-alone entities, were abolished and reintegrated into local authorities. Many mergers also took place. To give one small example, the National Sports Campus Development Authority was merged with the Irish Sports Council. If Deputy Lowry or any other Deputies have suggestions regarding public bodies that should be abolished or merged, the Government would be interested to hear which ones they have identified and the reasoning behind their choices. What is undoubted is that lessons have to be learned by the Government. Further lessons will be learned. The Cabinet decided at its meeting this morning that among the matters which should be examined is whether we should avoid two-phase tenders in the future.

There are definitely advantages to it but there may be disadvantages as well because one does not know the full cost of a project until the second tender comes in. We are considering whether we should factor in optimism bias and promoter bias, whereby projects that people want to see delivered tend to give rise to optimism about the real cost. We also will examine the issue of low-price tenders and whether we should look more at median price because we have a real concern that some companies have been low-balling, coming in with very low tender prices to get the contract and then coming back with claims thereafter. We also particularly want to look at contractors' past form and public service references.

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