Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As a division of the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, the Office of Government Procurement, OGP, is responsible for national procurement policy, the national eTenders platform and for sourcing common goods and services. The OGP engages with stakeholders on an ongoing basis and has engaged with the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, which is the statutory body responsible for promoting compliance with and enforcing competition and consumer protection law in Ireland, on a range of issues.

The OGP's public procurement guidelines for goods and services advise that where a contracting authority suspects bid-rigging or collusive tendering, such activities represent serious infringements of competition law and should be brought to the attention of the CCPC. The OGP's guidelines also refer to the OECD guidelines for fighting bid-rigging in public procurement.

In the interests of time, I will briefly itemise the engagement that has occurred on this topic. The CCPC and OGP met a number of times in 2022 to discuss the availability and suitability of public procurement data for processing through bid-rigging screening tools. The OGP runs a series of procurement officers’ forums to engage with a wide client base on a number of key topics relevant to procurement practitioners. The CCPC sits on both the SME advisory group, which is chaired by Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, and its communications subgroup, which is chaired by the OGP. The OGP runs a series of community of best practice forums where public procurement buyers come together to exchange best practices and share experiences. CCPC employees have attended these events, most notably in Waterford, Cork and Sligo.

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