Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)

First, I will mention the survey results. The Minister of State mentioned that she dealt with the Dublin local authorities. I cannot remember - I would not say it in this House anyway - exactly who responded in what way but there was a very clear lack of understanding. I am happy to meet with the Minister of State and share my results in a way that shows her how little information is out there, not in the sense of trying to land blame on any person. That is not what that is about. It is more about the fact that the information is not there. The focus has not been there. That focus does, I think, have to come from the Government. It has to come from the Minister of State, in my view.

To be honest, I am quite disappointed that the Minister of State will not be supporting this Bill, or that she is putting a 24-month stay on it. The 24 months in itself baffles me, to be perfectly honest. I have had this done to me on numerous Bills I have had. I have had it done with my protected disclosures Bill and my lobbying Bill, and now I have it with this. To be clear, I do not take Bills lightly. It takes a huge amount of work over several months. I think it took well over a year, maybe a year and a half, to do this particular Bill because when I put a Bill forward I want to do it right. Of course there are going to be issues that will have to be teased out on Committee Stage. That is the nature of it. Unfortunately, as Deputy Nash mentioned earlier, it is probably not the most emotive topic. It is probably not the snazziest topic that really catches people's attention but if people realised the impact €22 billion can have and the way that money is spent, I think it would be quite a snazzy topic for people.

What I do not understand is the concept of kicking this down for 24 months at a time when there is a review of the public procurement system going on. That is ridiculous in a sense because what the Minister of State is saying is that in the midst of a review where we have been told it is the time to consider a progressive reform of the system, this Bill is here to do just that. As a result of that, I think it should be considered. The fact that this has now been pushed back for a two-year period, well after the review will have been concluded, I would imagine, does not make sense to me either. If the Minister of State was saying that the review will be concluded in a certain amount of time and we will revisit it then, that would be fine but if the review is going to take two years, how long is it going to take the Minister of State to make the reforms subsequent to that?

I have to say I am disappointed. I probably should not be because it is something I have come across before in this Chamber. I was hoping we would look at tangible actions. Even if the Minister of State felt there were certain issues that needed to be teased out, changed or whatever, we could actually look at tangible actions that we could do. I am worried that there does not seem to be the will there. This is about waste of money and how money is spent. It is also about how we can better spend the money.

With regard to some of the comments the Minister of State made, the EU Commission is currently engaging in proceedings against Ireland for failing to properly enact the fifth anti-money laundering directive because of the manner in which it was transposed. This relates to the issue of trusts the Minister of State was talking about. The State was also in the spotlight due to the use of trusts for listed financial activities, and this Bill would help to improve that. It is bizarre to hear that this is being used in an area where we have been found wanting. This does not make sense to me. When we talk about beneficial ownership, that is a no-brainer, in that we should know where our money is being spent. We should know who the money is being spent on. I think that is incredibly important, and that is what the whole issue of beneficial ownership comes down to. The concept that we do not know just baffles me completely. If the majority of companies in the CRO, as the Minister of State said, are not using public contracts, it is clear there is no massive creation of work here. If the majority in the CRO are not, it should not be really about creating huge amounts of work, and finding out who we are spending the money on should absolutely be a no-brainer.

The Minister of State was also talking about equality budgeting before the committee yesterday and her support for this, and I do not doubt that. On the use of social clauses, I welcome the fact that the Minister of State met with certain Dublin authorities. That is maybe too Dublin-centric in my opinion because we need to look at how our money is being spent across the State to promote both social value and equality. My Bill would help to highlight where that reluctance is because we need to know. If we have the data we can look at where the reluctance is.

We are talking about being prudent with public finances. There is talk about AI and digital transformation while at the same time, we are relying on procurement reports from 2019. It is like a Sunday league football team talking about preparation for qualifying for the UEFA Champions League. The words just have little relationship to reality. Even if the Minister of State never intended to allow the Bill to pass the last Stage, if we had the opportunity to talk about and go through this, the Minister of State would have the opportunity to tease out the issues in the midst of her review. By the time these things get to Committee Stage or get through it, it will have taken a huge number of months rather than waiting the 24 months. The Minister of State is telling us that she has to wait for the EU to tell us what is what, while at the same time the EU is telling us that national governments need to improve the functioning of their own procurement systems. That is what this Bill intends to do. What we are saying, however, is that we have to wait for the EU to tell us what to do.

It has also been found by the Information Commissioner that once a contract is awarded, the contractor and price are no longer confidential, so there should be no issue with connecting procurement systems to other public registries because the commercial sensitivity has, at that point, gone out the window.

The Minister of State also talked about deregulation. We do not even have the data on how the regulations would be applied because there is this black box I was talking about. I do not understand that either. We also had the Draghi Commission, and I know the Minister of State has not spelled it out. Undoubtedly this is part of it but the Draghi Commission was about promoting a new industrial policy. If we are serious about looking at a new industrial policy, there is one arm of the spending in the State that we have control of, and that is spending by the State, which again is the biggest expenditure in the State. We are talking about €22 billion. This is a tool. I have given the Minister of State a tool by which she could use the system for industrial policy purposes but she is saying "not right now". That just does not seem to make any sense to me at all, especially given that we often hear that lessons will be learned. We have often heard, when it comes to an overspend or wasteful spending in the State, that lessons will be learned. Lessons cannot be learned if we do not have the data to look at. We will often hear Ministers come back and say that we never talk about the spending that has come in on time or on budget, and all of those things, but we do not have the data. We need to have the data. In order for anything to work with regard to changing how we do things, we need to have the data.

This information would also be of use to the Minister of State specifically in this instance because she would have those data readily available to her. The Minister of State is at the start of her ministerial journey in this Department but she is going to continue. When she has all of that information to hand, she may come across things where she will think, "Do you know what? I want to do X. This is done well in this place, or this is done well in that place". Somebody might come to her with an idea, or she might come across it through her own research or whatever it may be. Then she could say, "Well at least now I have the data so I will be able to look at implementing it because I have the data to hand".

I am very disappointed because this has happened to me a few times when I have introduced a Bill. I am trying to work with the Government on this. It is not just about giving out. I will give out when needs be but it is also about working with the Government. I take that aspect of this job very seriously and I make sure I am offering solutions. We have a Bill here. It makes sense to me. I have only been in this House five years but at the very start, it came to me straight away and I thought, “Why in the name of God do we not have that information to hand? Why can we not work collaboratively?”. It makes zero sense to me, to be honest, that this is being pushed down the road for 24 months. I hope the Minister of State does not regret this in future when she does not have the information to hand to make it easier for herself to make changes that need to be made. I am sure she has her ideas about what she wants to change, and things will come up over time, but if she does not have the data to hand it will be far more difficult to implement it.

Sin é. Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach Gníomhach agus leis an Aire Stáit. I thank the other speakers.

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