Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."

This Bill comes at a timely moment, as I am sure the Minister of State will agree, when her Department has launched a review of the public procurement system. I hope this review will be constructive, that it is not just a box-ticking exercise and that we look at the nuts and bolts of this issue. How the Government deals with this Bill and the review will be really important.

I have worked with a number of Ministers, depending on the Department in question. When I introduce legislation, I have always told them that I am open to working with them. I do not just complain about the issues I see. Rather, I bring forward solutions. I have introduced numerous Bills during my time in the Dáil, some of which have been accepted and others that have not. I am here to work with the Government on these issues. I hope it is willing to work with me. There can be a reflexive attitude whereby the Government is unwilling to agree to things that come from this side of the House solely on the basis that they come from this side of the House. I hope that will not be the case with this Bill. What I have always said is that if the legislation is good, then it is good legislation no matter who introduces it and we should work with it.

We are talking about the Transparency and Social Value in Public Procurement Bill 2024. The Minister of State and I discussed procurement yesterday at the finance committee. The Minister of State acknowledged that there were serious deficiencies when it came to data collection on the spending on public procurement. People would be shocked if they realised that we spent €22 billion per year on public procurement and that the State was the biggest spender in the State. We have a responsibility when it comes to how that money is spent, not only in ensuring we spend it wisely, correctly and within budget, but in how it impacts on all of society. We know there is a money multiplier effect. When money is spent within a local economy, it can have an impact on that local economy. We always need to make sure we have that in the back of our minds when we talk about this.

We do not have timely data on the number of contracts that ran over cost last year versus the number of contracts that came in on cost. We do not have the total level of cost overruns in big contracts. We have no idea how many of the contracts that concluded last year came in on time versus how many came in behind schedule. We have no idea what the most popular type of procurement procedure was last year, such as how many contracts were awarded directly versus how many went to competitive tender. How many SMEs won contracts? We do not have this information to hand. How many contained social clauses to promote some social labour or environmental objectives? We do not have the data on that.

In the last Dáil term, I contacted a range of local authorities and State bodies asking them about their use of social clauses in public contracts. A huge amount of them did not know what I was talking about. Some responded to my survey saying they adhered to the minimum wage. That is the law; it is not a social clause. That just shows how much we are operating in a system where we do not know what is going on. We are operating within a black box system when it comes to public procurement. The situation currently is one of “No data, no problem”.

My Bill is not going to revolutionise the procurement system. It would, however, provide a reformist Minister with an important tool of oversight with which significant reforms could be made. The laissez-faireattitude when it comes to public procurement in this State is hopelessly outdated. I drafted the Bill in such a way that a money message should not come into the equation. The information the Bill would like to see as part of the report is already largely being collected by the individual contracting authorities. It is just not being collected centrally in a timely fashion. It is not published, presented or analysed in a strategic way. We are talking about €22 billion. We should be able to know what is happening with that money.

There is an analogue approach to public spending in a digital age. While I hear great things from this Government about AI, the digital transformation and so forth, when it comes to a public spend of €22 billion per year, the most up-to-date report we have is from 2019. That was six years ago. I had not even been elected to this House at that stage. It seems nothing has changed since. If the director of a major company asked the chief financial officer, CFO, for information on the number of contracts awarded directly last years versus the number that went to competitive tender and the CFO was unable to tell the director that information and only had data from six years ago, that CFO would not be long in the job. I am not equating the public and private sectors to the same extent. I am just making the point that we do not have that data to be analysed.

I understand that the review of the procurement system was probably put in train some time ago, perhaps before Deputy Higgins was a Minister of State, but she is the Minister of State with responsibility for this area now. I hope she is serious about the reform that needs to happen and that we can work together on this Bill. Not only is it timely legislation, but we have a duty in this regard, given of our positions in this House. The Bill is not a party political one. It is a Bill that tries to get a certain amount of work done. I do not know anyone opposed to the concept of having more data on a €22 billion spend, considering the lack of any kind of concept of what exactly is going on.

This Bill is compliant with EU directives, so there is no issue there. It follows on from some of the recommendations of the European Commission about using our public procurement system to promote industrial policy purposes. What those purposes are will depend on the Government of the day, but I cannot imagine the Minister of State would disagree that it is better to have such tools at her disposal than to not have them.

This Bill would not even involve the Minister of State with responsibility for the Office of Government Procurement, OGP. As the Minister of State rightly mentioned yesterday, the OGP is not a regulatory body. The Bill would involve the Minister using his or her powers to have this report compiled. The Bill also sets limits so that contracts of a small value would not be included. Therefore, it is not creating some unnecessary administrative burden on contracting authorities. If the Government is serious about tackling wasteful public spending and the prudent management of the public finances, it should support this Bill. If the Government is only interested in staying on the old "lessons will be learned" merry-go-round, then it will not support this Bill. In issuing external value for money reports and going about business as usual, I am sure some excuses will be found to oppose it.

When I first got elected to the Dáil, I became my party’s spokesperson for public expenditure. The first thing I wanted to do was look at the issue of procurement. I met the OGP and looked into the issue. The first thing that shocked me was that we did not have the information. In the context of better public spending and everything else, this Bill makes sense. It also means that State bodies would have a lot more information as to what worked and did not work. We can always learn from one another. At the moment, we are relying on freedom of information requests or an investigative journalist to uncover large cost overruns or wasteful spending of public money. As the Minister of State with responsibility for this area, I imagine she does not want to be answering questions about issues she was not aware of due to a lack of data and that she only ever became aware of because someone got a tip-off or found out the information some other way.

It comes down to how we look at the money we spend for the public and economic good of our citizens across this State. Looking at different parts of this State, I think of areas like Donegal that are infrastructurally far more difficult to get to than others. Conamara is another example of an area with bad infrastructure leading out to it. We are trying to get private capital into these areas to get businesses started in order that there be more and better job opportunities for people. If we are the biggest spender in this State, then we need to look at how we spend that money to employ people and get people on apprenticeships. For example, when I was on Galway City Council, we put forward and passed a social clause in terms of labour activation to include the apprenticeship model. That means for some young fella or girl who has decided that he or she wishes to do an apprenticeship, there is a big capital project. The Government is saying it is big into the infrastructural aspect and wants to invest in that space. No matter who is awarded the contract, a big capital project just up the road from that young person would give him or her that opportunity because of the labour activation element.

This would ensure that there are not only the jobs but the apprenticeships. I do not need to labour the point because the benefits of this are quite clear. I do not think there is any reason not to support this Bill. I will listen to what the Minister of State has to say and I will see what comes out of that. Sometimes, we need look at how things can be done differently and more simply and not just think that this is the way we have always done it and not change it.

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