Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform will deal with the question on EU procurement because it falls within his remit. As Deputy Bríd Smith correctly stated, we have already indicated on a number of occasions in reply to parliamentary questions why it was decided to have a two-stage procurement process. PwC will continue to analyse the appropriateness of all of those matters. There were benefits to the two-stage procurement process and it is important to acknowledge that. Deputy Bríd Smith is correct that it was decided and endorsed by the Government contracts committee for construction and by our procurement sub-committee in May 2015 that this was the right approach to take given the size and complexity of the project. It was also decided that the traditional design and tender method of procurement was not suitable or realistic. Those were not determinations made by me, as an individual, or by individual Ministers, they were made by procurement experts and endorsed by the Government contracts committee for construction and its procurement sub-committee in May 2015.

Some of the benefits of that process included full participation of suitable main contractors and some specialist subcontractors in the tendering process. Also, in terms of the timelines and the need to facilitate an early start on the site, the approach of breaking the work into sections ensured that the early phases of the work could commence while the detail on later phases was being finalised and agreed. I do not mind stating in advance of the PwC report that where we were extremely badly let down was in the context of the elasticity of the cost for phase B. So while the GMP process – a phrase we have all become used to now – locked in the prices at 2016 rates, it is the quantity of material required that were clearly not realistic. That is what PwC needs to grapple with now in the context of what went wrong and where. Had we gone with a different model, we would have potentially taken longer to deliver the project. That seems to have been the advice of the procurement experts at the time in 2014 and 2015.

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