Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have been down this road a few times regarding the local area employment services. The legal advice from the Attorney General is clear - these services have to be put out to tender. Community organisations won out in two of the three areas where they submitted bids under phase 1. That shows clearly that the community can win these contracts. As the Deputy is aware, the requests for tender for phase 2 were published in December. Following feedback, several changes were made in the request for tender, RFT, including increasing the marks awarded for quality to 80% and reducing costs to 20%. There is also a minimum cost component. We diluted the cost component and increased the referral numbers. The Deputy raised the matter of the requirement for reference contracts and minimum turnover, and they have also been reduced. We have, therefore, made a good number of changes to the process. We said we would take the lessons learned from the first phase and apply them to the second phase.

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