Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for all that. He rightly said a circular was published in 2019 promoting the use of environmental and social considerations in public procurement. Then the programme for Government set a specific deadline of this week for the inclusion of the green criteria in all procurement using public funds and nothing like that level of ambition seems to have been achieved. Is there a revised deadline on that and when will we see the inclusion of green criteria in all procurement using public funds?

In my previous role as spokesperson on further and higher education I repeatedly called for the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to use social clauses for procurement to incentivise companies to take on apprentices. I was initially pleased to see an information note was prepared for public bodies. However, there were again no targets set. There was an information note, but there was no requirement to use procurement to incentivise apprenticeships in that sense and we have not achieved what we might have had we done it differently.

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